CANCELLED -- Group Buy for Trustfire TR-S700

@ rich: True about the power. I have cooked off a 7 emitter king clone once running it on high with no step down. All 7 leds slid off their pads and some of them died and went to heaven. Funny thing is I did not notice it to begin with though. But when I did and turned around I was just in time to see the last 3 go out :-)

EDIT: And make no mistake about the quality difference between this light and a king knock off. These genuine trustfires are a quality that is wayy up there compared to what people generally consider xxxxfire quality. Leagues above.

Hi there Ray,

I have to agree with RichWouldnt’s comments. True this Trustfire S700 is a large heavy light, but the proper heat sinking is one of the reasons I was sold on it, not to mention Trustfire custom building it the way I want. I also use my lights to tail stand, which this one would be great, but I sure wouldn’t use it to go for walks due to the size and weight.

Recently I purchased the high power SuperNight 12x (Lightcastle) flashlight. Simply using it for beam shots to post to the forum, the Fujitsu heat sink paste under the star already began to melt or loose adhesion, allowing it to slide around with the reflector removed. I guess that’s what 10.45 amps at the tail cap can do when heat dissipation isn’t great.

Richie086;

Isn’t that 10.45 amps at a nominal 12 volts or more or what was the voltage drop you saw? That would still be in the region of 100 to 120 watts of heat to get rid of from a relatively light weight light. No wonder things heated up in a hurry. IIRC I have also been reading of the springs heating up and discoloring on those lights. Sounds like they are NOT going to be examples of reliable flashlights except maybe in the middle of a Siberian blizzard in January which MIGHT give adequate cooling.

Hey Rich, I didn’t monitor the voltage, but the cells were fully charged to 4.20 volts. I used the new KeepPower IMR26650 5200mAh versions due to the protected 5200mAh Keeppower’s were much to long to fit properly. But I did get a tail current with the protected versions of 9 amps. But the IMR’s fit perfectly, so that’s what I’ll be using in it once I remove the star from the light and go with some Artic Silver or something.

I used the standard formula and came up with the following, 10.45a*3.8v*3=119 watts. Basically the same as what you came up with.

Sounds to me like some of the Chinese budget light sellers are really starting to push the envelope on output and need to start paying more attention to the basics as far as LED heat dissipation is concerned. Use copper LED mounts, smooth heavy integral mounting tables and have plenty of metal cross sections in the path from the LEDs to the rest of the head. Otherwise they are going to have lots of failures which will not help sales once the web starts reporting them.

For years we complained of underdriven LED lights from China and now we are starting to see the exact opposite in some cases it seems. Underdriven allowed for reasonable reliability even without the best engineering but at high output levels things need to be right or failures WILL HAPPEN. That includes the possibility of battery cook offs and explosions if people leave them in tailstanding turbo mode. Not good!

Rich, you’ve really hit the nail on the head with the above. In addition to that, they also forgot to realize they’ve overpowered some of these lights to the point, only the highest end IMR26650 cells can run them on HIGH mode.

I guess that old saying fits here, be careful what you wish for, you may get it.

My background in Silicon Valley was Reliability & Specification Compliance Test Engineering on electromechanical monsters for years, ie daisy wheel printers at Xerox Diablo Systems. Any one remember them? Electromechanical monsters that the laser printer and then the inkjet killed. So I know something of subjects like component derating, temperature sensitivity and it’s effects etc. Overall a LED flashlight is pretty simple in comparison.

Speaking of batteries does any one think that this TrustFire flashlight could come close to reaching full output with TrustFire batteries? :wink:

I haven’t received mine yet, but I did want to see how it performed with the 4 different 26650 cells I have. The light is wired to have the cells in parallel, which is another thing I liked about it. I assume the Trustfire 26650’s would act as a single 4.2v 15,000mAh cell (rated mAh not actual) and simply share the 10 amp current load between each cell on HIGH mode.

The power output I come up with is, 10a*3.8v= 38 watt gross output.

Considering it’s rated to run on HIGH for 2-3 hours, depending on how good the cells are, I’d say on lower settings, this should be a real long runner.

This was the review HKJ did on the Trustfires, REVIEW TR26650

ok now theres an incentive . i didnt know that this light has superb heatsinking. thats what makes the difference.
since this group buy isnt a huge savings, i think id wait for richie to give us his 2 cents after he receives his light.
im curious to know what the otf lumens is after 5 mins of running it on turbo.

JohnnyMac posted a review of the light on the FastTech web site shortly after buying the light. I suggest you read it. Short but interesting and it has a Pros list which references the heat sinking and it is expanded on in the text.

http://www.fasttech.com/product/1398604

Click on “Reviews”

I have no means of testing Lumens. I know what some of my lights output as I sent them to RMM for modifications and asked him to give me his test sphere results for all levels. The TR-S700 will probably make the same trip for wiring, LEDs and braided springs upgrades along with testing before and after.

I didn’t even check the normal price until blueb8llz said the GB isn’t much cheaper. If they GB doesn’t go through. I’ll still buy one for sure.
Want a light that can run on high for a long time.

Only wish it had a tripod hole so I could use it on a tripod when working on the car and stuff.

If you're not planning to mod, then the GB price doesn't save you much. If you plan to mod, the XM-L2's will allow you to drive the emitters harder, especially once you reflow them onto Noctigon mcpcb's.

Read post #3 from JohnnyMac. It looks like increasing the output much with the current driver board may be difficult. Does any one know of someone who has upped output appreciably or has a source for an alternative driver that is compatible with the current switch assembly?

I’m abit confused.
http://m.gearbest.com/led-flashlights/pp_80245.html
Isn’t the one listed on gearbest the same as the GB? Both XML2 or am I missing something?

The GearBest one claims to be XM-L2 while the one I bought from FastTech is XM-L per the listing. When I originally looked for the light my Google search did not show the GearBest listing. So it all depends on where you buy it looks like.

It looks like they've lowered their price. With that price, I see no point in waiting for a GB to happen. That said, there's two other options being looked into, so I'll wait to see which of those is best.

Sorry guys, the price was wrong by the incorrect system operation, now it’s revised now :slight_smile:

Should of bought it. Now the price went up :expressionless:

Acccording to the Trustfire representitive I delt with via email, a retailer can order these lights from Trustfire in any of 3 versions.

In either Cree XM-L T6 emitters (didn’t ask color temp) Cree XM-L2’s available in both 6500k and around 5000k-5500K color temperature.
I went with the 5000k-5500k NW. Gearbest does have it in the XM-L2 version, but I’m not sure which one, so if it makes a difference to you, please get clarification from them.

I’m pretty sure JohnnyMac mentioned on one of these threads modifying this light with wiring and braid made very little output difference. To get output up higher, would likely require a driver mod of some type.

From what little we do know about the s700, it seems Trustfire really did a nice job on it and appears to be a very efficient design, inside and out.