My goal in this thread is to stimulate conversation and hopefully some ideas to improve these lights. I have no problem with people making and selling souped up drop ins. And from what I have seen them are very reasonable priced for the amount of time and effort put into them.
My standard for buying a drop in is that it has to achieve a better price to lumen ratio. Now I can buy an under powered drop in from Solarforce for $16.99 and have confidence in their product. But I know we can squeeze some more light from these items. So if I buy a replacement drop in that costs twice as much then it has to return at least twice as many lumens. If the drop in cost 40% more then it has to deliver 40% + more lumens.
I’ve looked at some of the budget drop ins online and most of them don’t make as many lumens as those sold by Solarforce. The custom made drop ins are more powerful but also cost twice as much as the Solarforce ones. So nothing meets my standard which is why I am thinking about building my own. But then there comes the time and effort, having bad eyesight and no work room to do soldering etc and I think if these were just easier to use, modular, then I would build exactly what I want.
As I mentioned before I am not looking to build a pocket light house. When I need a flashlight I will probably not going to be at home so the large light house flashlights won’t be available. When I am out I need to have a small light on my person, in my pocket or in my backpack. The P60 is perfect. But I want to most light I can get for a budget.
I may play around with swapping reflectors to see how that changes the light display. My current solarforce XM-L2 with OP reflector is quite powerful. But I wonder how the light will be with a SMO? One of the things I like about the Solarforce drop ins is they have a wide volt spread so they will work with either 2 or 3 CR123’s. Many of the drop ins online don’t have this flexibility.
If I give building a try who do you recommend I get the parts from.
My goal is to make the assembly easier for those who aren’t as handy.
These are xpl emitters but they have xml and xpg as well. Cheaper than solarforce, which they have too, and much brighter. These have a wide voltage range too.
It doesn't really matter how brilliant the design, it will still have to fit in the P60 lights and remain easily swappable so it will still have similar performance limitations. The only change will be that the new proprietary Lego parts will be many times more expensive than standard parts.
You know, learn to solder and read up on some basic volts/amps/watts and your angst over not being able to build your own stuff will be greatly lessened.
Let me ask this group are there any good mod videos where someone walks through the whole process from picking out the right parts, to step by step assembly and discussing how different parts would effect the out put of the drop in? I’m asking about a simple drop in assembly without extra drilling or sanding etc. Straight off the shelf parts.
Actually I am surprised that no one has come up with a larger drop-in intended to fit a C8 size light but with large solid pills and as optimized a design as possible for good heat transfer. Have the light head threaded and the drop-in screw into it over a relatively long contact distance for a good heat path. Afraid that it has not happened due to needing a sizable company to produce it. If Surefire had not have developed the P60 standard and it’s associated drop-ins then I doubt that there would be modular flashlights and their drop-ins available today.
My own feeling is that the SolarForce light heads I have are bored a bit too large to provide optimum contact with their own drop-ins and no metal wrap is going to provide as good a contact and thermal path as a truly precision fit between a drop-in and light body with thermal compound helping the heat transfer. Not sure if Surefire heads are bored tighter in an attempt to provide a tighter drop-iin fit as I do not own a Surefire light.
That one simple piece of copper will get you the same thermal benefits of 'wrapping' without all the headaches. Dropins still swap just as easy as when using the dumb outer springs that do nothing for heat transfer and a very poor job of even providing a ground path.
Agreed, not incredibly hard, if you buy “stock” and just tack the pieces to go, that is the most “basic” beginner level modding there is…more or less “assembly” rather than modding, and the P-60 hosts, and the Convoy S series pills are the absolute easiest to work with
soldering is the easy part of modding…everything else is what gets to be a pain
Don't you realize there could be up to nearly half a dozen people out there who want to make their own customized P60s to suit such essential configurations like one to four CR123s but don't know how to solder. Think of the untapped dollars somebody is missing out on!
Kaidomain is very inexpensive but you might wait 4-6 weeks to get the parts. Mtnelectronics is in the US and has everything you need including a p60 host to build one. There are many ways to go in terms of modes etc. so you might want to consider starting with one that has mode groups accessed via the switch until you settle on your preference. Once you have learned to assemble driver/pill/led mcpcb it’s not too difficult to change either the led or the driver. This is true of many lights but the p60 is an inexpensive place to cut your teeth.
How do you hold the driver(?) to the bottom of the pill? Is there some adhesive involved? How do you solder the wires to the emitter while holding a solder iron, solder material, the wires and the pill? Maybe one of the members here will create some videos each one on a different part of the process.
1) choosing the right components to work together properly.
emitter, bin , color, amp restrictions, etc
which driver works best for that LED, modes, battery configuartion, etc
2) which parts to assemble first, why
assembly tricks and tests
3) How to connect reflector, springs, and heat sink wrapping
4) conductive heat sink paste
Bushwhacked, this is interesting. My first question is how do you judge quality in drop ins? I have read on many of these websites that the market is flooded with fake parts etc. The second one certainly fits the criteria, has a wide voltage spread where using 3 or 4 CR123 fits the voltage spread. I certainly like the price, but the price also makes me believe it may not be the real deal. Is Kaidomain a quality company and do you trust the quality of their parts?
What other companies can I do business with and not have to worry about low quality or fake items. I recently received a daily email flyer from Newegg, who I have done a lot of business with, in which they had 3 flashlights for sale too cheap and when I looked at them I believe the flashlights were fake UltraFires. Also the vender had a terrible user review rating. I wrote Newegg about this and they promised to get back to me but I have not heard from them since which seriously disappoints me.
I also looked at Mountain Electronics, who offers to assemble drop ins for a small ($5ish) fee. which is something I would be interested in as well. Is Mountain Electronics a good company? Thanks.
Mountain Electronics is excellent. The owner is member RMM and he has an excellent reputation for providing top quality batteries, parts and customized lights. Also look at Malkoff Devices and below is a link to Vinz Custom listing right here on the group.
Malkoff Devices has an outstanding reputation for very reliable drop-ins.
