The main design problem, aside from the hollow pill, appears to be the thin section between the bottom of the pill and the finned part of the body. This may keep it from becoming too hot to hold, but it reduces the cooling of the led. A way for a clone maker to avoid that may be to make the light slightly longer and overlap the pill with the thick finned section. Or one could make the head thinner and the front of the body thicker. In practice, the finned section heats up about as much as the head does, so it may not be a serious problem. The overall thickness and the well shaped fins imply importance of thermal management, so these problems threaten its right to dominate it class.
An aftermarket fix for the hollow pill is to use a thicker star.
(The one I am working on with an XM-L2 on a Noctigon draws two amps. from an IRM, so I want to braid the tail spring/switch.)
I use thermal compound on all my lights with screw in pills and on most of the really high power ones at the head:body connection. Dont forget that on higher quality lights the threads are going to be more precision cut leading to a better amount of surface contact.
I’m surprised the lens cut so cleanly! I’m also surprised to see copper inside the clicky.
I'm surprised to see copper (brass) in the switch too.
The cutting did not go that clean, I sanded the individual pieces after the cutting, and then fitted it together again. The lens cut was even a bit polished with a piece of paper.
The problem with screw thread fit is apparently thermal expansion from the heat generated while machining. Of course more expensive lights can be made with the lath turning more slowly and maybe cooling liquid and better compensation for the expansion.
Cheaper lights, on the other hand, because they may sell in much larger quantities, can have more work and talent going into programming the numerical control, so they can have nicer shapes than more expensive lights can.
For future reference, sectioning like this goes a lot better, and easier if you pot the entire part and draw a vacuum to remove the air bubbles. Once you remove half, you can polish up the face to get a nice outline with everything frozen in place. If you remember to cast it in a nice “frame” or have a way to square it up and polish the outsides, it makes for a good showpiece.
very nice work, though. Definitely an out-of the box review!
edit… Just found some money in my DX account and have one on the way :party: