UF-1504, 1503, 1505 - multiple LED's tested for throw (just what you have been waiting for!!!)

Yeah and the 3A should be to warm to dedome. Should be a nice tint though.

I’ve never been scared of a warm tint.

C’mon, this could be fun, let’s push the envelope on these things. Let’s take them as far as we can get them and then swap our final resulting lights. My goal is to beat my K50vn at 575kcd. I’m thinking I can definitely do it with a 1405, but the 1504 should be a nice challenge.

You got some terrible results for 50mm aspheric. In fact they are more than terrible if you ask me.

So maybe this time in this particular 1503 unit lens sucks?

Good 50 mm aspheric should throw 260kcd with 3,5A driver.

Well the S3 3A light I built only measures out at 343kcd without a collar, not going to be getting ahead of your numbers with that.

It staggers me that you are getting numbers 25% higher than I am. I really hope the S4 2B’s don’t disappoint when they get here.

I agree. I was disappointed in the 1503 and 1505 results

KKW, maybe your meter is off since Djozz said I was within 5% of his numbers

Wow. this is some great info here thanks n10sivern :slight_smile:

It has cleared lots of questions i had, but raised some new ones.

For example, please do a full description on how you modded your 1504, i am wondering what low resistance mods you did just to know if you left any performance on the table or not.

I know for example that KKW did not do a switch board bypass & if you did that could explain some % of the lower numbers he got, but he also used the better 6A ebay switch for example, so please do a full write up of the mod host you used & hopfully that could solve some of these questions.

The new XML-2 U4 looks very promising :slight_smile: i suspect RMM will see a bunch of more sales from this comparison.

You said you where going to try out running it without a driver like i do, and compare with a DD driver to see how much of max output we lose by using a driver, i hope you still want to try that because i am very curious about the result :wink:

If you can get a similar performance increase as KKW got with a home made collar, that XP-G2 S4 458kcd + 20% could get you as high as 540kcd :slight_smile: & that is at 30 seconds. Who knows maybe at start it could break 600kcd :wink: to do that it would have to voltage & heat sag 12% from start.

For reference I tested the recent XP-G2 S3 3A build with a 6A ebay forward clicky. I’m just not getting the numbers he is.

It’s making me want to send him one of my tested lights and see what his meter measures it at.

I have read many times here at BLF, that warmer emitters generally in the same flux bin most often loses to colder ones.

It can be from the higher phosphor thickness or the not pro level light meters affinity to read colder light higher, or aspheric lights that often seem to get higher readings from colder leds.

Not a 100kcd difference though. I have an S2 2B running at 5 amps in a 1405 that only measures a tad over 400kcd on my meter. That’s the same tint, 2 bins down, at almost 30% more power. It shouldn’t be 55kcd lower than his S4 2B.

As i calculate it thats almost exactly the expected increase of 14% (400kcd +14%=458kcd)from 2 flux bins.

I know you said its at 30% more Amp but, the higher flux bins always seem to need less power/watt to get to max output.

If you check his XP-L V6 (that i believe is a V5) and compare that to the XM-L2 U4, that is also 2 flux bins difference (if i am right about the V5 part) and show a similar lower Amp because of higher Vf but a higher output characteristic.

EDIT, The difference of the XP-L to the XM-L2 U4 is almost exactly 3 full flux bins or 21, that would fit if the XP-L is in the lower scale of its bin & the XM-L2 is in the higher scale of the allowed 7 variation on flux bin steps.

But as you say the only way to be sure is to use the same meter, or that you send him a light to test :slight_smile:

The bin by itself would only explain it if they were running at similar power levels as I understand it.

I’m really starting to suspect that I have a meter that reads low, which is a much better situation than my lights all underperforming in a very consistent manner.

I am not sure it works like that, how would you explain the difference i bring up in my EDIT at the previous post then?

I mean the good old XM-L could sometimes pull 8-9A, but that doesn’t mean it would output what a XM-L2 U4 at 4.73A can, the higher flux bins with optimised for efficiency emitters, always seem to pull less amp but output more when running fully DD. They are just converting less of the energy to heat, but unfortunately they also seem to get higher Vf in the process, so they get harder to drive with our battery’s sloping discharge curves at high output for long, in single battery DD driven lights at least.

I guess you can draw some conclusions when you get your XP-G2 S4 from IOS and compare :slight_smile:

What meter do use? Maybe its know to read low.

n10sivern and I have both built XP-L V6 3C versions of the 1504, and his measured much higher than mine there too. I’ll know more once I put one together with an S4 2B.

I’m using a Ceto CT1330B meter.

My mods are simple. Hot dedomed emitters with hot air reflow gun. Melt the solder on the pcb, continue with the heat and count to 20-30, then wait on solder to harden and dedome with a razor. I’m using a DD driver with 20ga wires. Artic Silver paste. Pot the pill with duct seal. 20ga switch spring bypass. High drain batteries.

Ok thanks :), good to know when i estimate where i could end up with similar emitter options.

“Pot the pill with duct seal”, is something i don’t know. How does it work?
I guess its for improved heatsinking, a pic would be interesting :wink:

When you “20ga switch spring bypass” do you solder it to the bottom of the brass post or drill through it & solder it to the top?

I did that on mine because i suspect that long brass post, could be limiting current, of course not more that a % or 2 at most :slight_smile:

But i know Dale have pushed XP-L’s up to around 7A (EDIT forgot to add, at start here sorry :wink: very different to at 30sec) & it seems like with these new high Vf emitters, every little bit of less voltage lost in the circuit, have a big additive effect in the end of max output & max amp.

I just noticed that your second XM-L2 U4 is about a full flux bin lower (9) in result than the first, that would almost fit in the allowed 7 flux bin variation, but the first one is even higher than that, so that one could be a flux bin lottery winner :slight_smile:

I do both. Just depends. These have a small piece of wire soldered at the bottom of the spring and then soldered at the top of the spring. I then solder the brass button to the spring. I have soldered the wire directly through the board the switch is on. I’ve tried 18ga wire and saw no difference so I use 20ga as it’s easier to manipulate and fit in the spring.

As for the differences in the XM-L2 U4 emitters, you have to expect some differences in emitters after dedoming. It may not be completely obvious but there could have been slight damage to the phosphor or whatever to cause differences. Or it could just be the LED lotto, win some lose some.

2 seemingly almost identical looking 50mm aspherics?

one could me 10 or 15mm different FL, and while they will LOOK identical? they should perform differently enough to notice…

I still can not believe how bad results you got on small aspherics (worth to do test with another 1503? ). They are so bad that I would take a risk of finding replacement lenses all over the world if it will happen to me...

Cajampa you really must get yourself lightmeter man :) Although you did very good and tidy mod I think that 22awg wire is more than enough to bypass switch spring, and you don't need to bypass anything on driver if you use carobronze spring from FT. But who knows? Maybe I am wrong. I would like to see your opinion when you get lightmeter(even budget one). Because it will tell you if you are getting something or not with your mods.

I tried before with thicker wires(but of course I will admit I did not tried with currents above 4A in single cell light) and there is absolutely no difference. But problem I did encountered while bypassing with thicker spring that flexibility of main switch spring decreased(no flexibility at all) and it unnecessarily forced bottom driver spring to bend to its maximum or I used to have small dents in protected 18650 batteries which is not good.

When upper and bottom spring flex properly they works as one and handles any kind of recoil without damaging battery.

There are so many variables. A Cree bin is a few percent wide, but Cree guarantees their own measurements only within 7%, so that is on top of the bin-variation. Then the variation introduced by dedoming (which I have never measured separately but suspect is less than what is the general opinion) and quality of the reflow. Then the variation between luxmeters (not to be underestimated!), varying levels of clumpsiness of the measurers causing measuring errors, lens lottery.

Of course all variations will not be the maximum that is stated (manufacturers are careful with their claims, measurers may be have a well thought out and consistent method), but still I sometimes wonder how it can be that different people get comparable results at all.

10% variation is a job well done when measuring light!