I’m in a modding streak I guess. I had promised an Oslon SSL80 4500K 96CRI build in my test thread, and this need was emphasized by Ouchyfoot in his Oslon try-out thread. So I thought let’s make it a nice triple. I had an Eagle Eye X2 spare that had been my bike-light until replaced by the BLF-A6, and one of the shorty tubes from ReManG’s effort fitted it so this has become a 18350 shorty:
Specs from front to rear: clear o-ring instead of green stock one, stock glass lens, Carclo narrow optic, 3xSSL80 4500K 96CRI, triple Noctigon, 20mm diameter x 8.7mm aluminium spacer, flattened brass pill, BLF-A6 driver with 680Ohm bleeder over C1, silicon wire bypassed driver spring, flatted copperwire made into a ring as extra spacer between pill and battery tube because the battery tube is just a bit too short for a 18350 battery, intl-outdoor Be-Cu short spring on tailboard, PD68 switchboard with white small Omten, PD68 dumb six-led lighted washer with 3x 22KOhm resistors and yellow/orange/red leds, translucent silicon tailcover.
I think it has become one of my cleanest mods, every problem was solved with a quality solution.
Measured without the tail it draws around 8 amps on a purple Efest 18350 and about the same with the black Keeppower IMR. 8 amps is a bit too much, I was aiming for 6, but the switch will lower the current somewhat, and the battery drainage will solve it as well
The turbo output at start was 860 djozz-lumen, 725 after 30 seconds. Moon is 0.2 lumen.
Some efficiency numbers. At turbo the efficiency is a mere 26 lumen/W. Even budget cheapies (from the time when they were still using Cree’s btw) did 40 lm/W. It is no wonder, the leds at 2,7A are already on the flat bit at max of the output curve, SSL80 leds have small 1x1mm dies, and you can not make 96CRI for free. At low currents it is much better: level3 is 32 lumen with 56 lm/W, level 4 is 101 lumen with 50 kumen/W.
The tint/colour reproduction is outstanding, less rosy as the Nichia 219A 4500K 92CRI with which I just compared it, but more plain white, I like it even better.
And the tail-illumination is wonderful, a bit less bright than last mod which is much better at night, more an indicator than a bright beacon. The moon mode draws combined 9.6mA because of the bleeder resistor, this limits the moon setting to about 3 days. When off, the tail leds on a fresh battery draw 0.3 mA, assuming that the current lowers a bit when the voltage gets lower, it will drain the battery in about 4 months.