What is the point of factory brand light worth 200$ when some kid in garage can make light with better performance for 30$ :)
Maybe this competition among them will led to some new inventions (new focusing system or better lens, factory de-domed emitter specially made for them, their versions of collars, maybe they will even start to pot drivers etc.).
I think Uniquefire will take biggest part of cake in this field of flashlights and other sellers should not just easily watch that. They should sit to their drawing boards and find a way to protect themselves.
I have been also thinking recently about lenses. AR coating which would be in/or on the lenses. AR coating that would allow reflecting and light passing function with wavien collar effect. I think it is not impossible.
This Uniquefire 1405 can be acquired at $38, and with all the additional modding parts like LED, Noctigon and driver you will have a 1km+ thrower at under $50.
I don’t know why it took those budget light manufacturers so many years to finally come out a big aspherical lens flashlight like this.
Went through an unpleasant modding process last night.
Killed four LEDs including my one and only XP-E2 R4 1C when attempted to mod this light. Ended up with stock driver + dedomed XM-L2 U2 1A. Throw = 145kcd.
When I took out my dedomed XP-E2 from gasoline and clean it with distilled water it didn’t light up. When I inspected it I found its bond wires were broken.
The stock XM-L2 was destroyed when I tried to take out the stock aluminium board, which adhered super-tight on the pill. A lot of heat and brute force was used and the aluminium board finally came out but the XM-L2 was damaged.
As for the other two emitters they were killed by the LD-40 driver by excessive voltage. I am not sure if it is really the LD-40 or it was something shorted inside the pill when assembled. Have to risk another XM-L to do the test again when I go home later.
That is a bad streak you are having there. I too killed many leds lately while before I was very lucky with that for a long time.
The ledboard of my UF-1405 was also very tight glued, I got it out (without heat) approaching it via the driver cavity, I stuck a small screwdriver (as tilted as the cavity allowed) through the wire hole and used it as a lever. and even that required quite some brute force. BTW, I had managed to kill the stock XM-L2 already by that time by trying out the DD-FET driver on it while still on the alu-board (they do not like that for long...)
I'm jealous of your dedomed U2 1A though, that is what I want to end up with in this light.
And I am jealous of your shorty 1405. I can access to my university workshop equipments to cut down the tube but I don’t know how to connect them back later.
Yeah, and the strangest part to me is how could I fail to dedome the XP-E2? I never had a single problem by dedoming a lot of XM-L2, is XP-E2 really that fragile?
The XP-E2 is not more fragile than XP-G2 or XM-L2. They all share the same size bond wires and the lay-out of the emitter is the same. I have dedomed several XP-E2's without problem (I use the hot method, but that should not matter).
I did not test the LD-40 tonight, because some ideas came into my mind.
I used a 26650 spacer and modified it into a “dummy cell”, then using a 12*7135 Nanjg 105C in my 1405. Now it is a single 18650 flashlight and it draws 4.10A with freshly charged INR 20R and I got 250kcd. It still does look like a 2 x 18650 light though. :bigsmile:
It is begging for dedomed XP-G2 S2, heavy gauge wires and direct-drive.
I tortured the stock board+led in place (so with the original thick layer of white stuff thermal glue) with a NANJG92 DD driver for short bursts at a time, I did not measure the current but later with a XM-L2 on a Noctigon it was 5.5A. When I dedomed the stock led it showed burnt silicon around the bond wires, that is when I decided not to use it. It did light up alright with my led-tester (50mA).
Tonight I tried a dedomed XP-G2 R5 1A (from Fasttech) in my UF-1405 shorty with NANJG92 DD driver. The tail current was lower than with the XM-L2, even lower than expected, 4.6A at 30 seconds after switch-on. The throw disappointed: I expected over 500kcd, but got 407 kcd at 30 seconds after switch-on. I would expect that also from a good dedomed XM-L2 !
I'm not sure how this happened, apart from me plainly doing the wrong calculations, several reasons come to mind:
-it was a cheap R5 led emitter from Fasttech with perhaps by random a relatively high Vf. The current is quite low here, 4.6A compared to 5.4A in a similar mod with the same cheap led of the UF-1406 (5.4A current alone would still not get me to 500 kcd btw)
-the careless reflow I did this afternoon was too hot and damaged the output of the led a bit.
-there's a bit of current leaking around the led via the (anodised, but touching the solder blobs) led tightening ring.
Well, that was the experiment, I'm not going to finetune the XP-G2 in this mod, the final led will be a dedomed proper XM-L2 if I can find a good one (I'm in no hurry)
Use XP-G2 S2 1A from Vestureofblood and expect 15-20% improvement, and why drive it more than 3.6A?
I think it starts to loose performance over that point if it is just on noctigon + brass. So with S2 if 20% that will be around 500kcd but even 400kcd is killing throw.
407kcd is very good already, don’t forget you are using 66mm aspherical lens, it’s not small but it has its limitation too.
XP-G2 Vf is higher than XM-L2, thus with only one battery used and direct drive the current draw will somehow limited at some point due to the voltage sag of your battery. High current buck driver with two (or more) batteries can overcome this issue because we will have a lot of input voltage. Ahhh well… until we have a good 17mm buck driver we will talk about this again, for now a single 18650 and 17mm Nanjg driver will do the job pretty well.
I used a 17mm contact board and 18awg wires to the LED, so it is now a one mode direct-drive light.
Current = 5.5A at tail (single 18650)
Throw = 290kcd (only?!) converted from 4.5 meters.
Why my lux number is so much lower than djozz’s with similar setup? I am suspecting my XM-L2 U2 is a bit beaten up, and also is it because my measuring distance is too short?
Direct drive wiring the battery straight to the led is always a great idea :-)
Measuring from 4.5m compared to 5m should not make a measurable difference if calculated back to 1 meter: different than a reflector light an aspheric light does not need a considerable distance to collimate, as long as it is focused correctly.
I don't know why your number differs. There's more variation in luxmeters than we like to know, but 25% off is quite a lot. Further, the correct way to measure is moving around the meter a bit inside the hotspot and look for the highest reading, but also that should only vary a few %.
Another factor that may be of influence: Luminarium ejaculator has reported that different copies of the Uniquefire UF-T20 vary considarably in the quality of the lens, with a measurable difference in throw capability. The UF-1405 has a glass lens as well, so perhaps they also have this varying quality
I can access to my university workshop equipments to cut down the tube but I don’t know how to connect them back later.
