Cree changed production process for XP-G2 emitters!

Realy? You americans make extremely good Jack Daniels, one can have a 50ml just before bed time, its a sin not to test that m8, hornestly :slight_smile:
I am doing exacly this atm, hehe

Anyway, lets hope those Cutters S4s to be from the old ones, or we have to stick to U4/V6 emitters till something else emerge …

Cheers

Mitko,

I don’t know what to think about you right now… I mean we talked about XP-G2 S4 2B emitter all the time in this thread.

Several people including you confirmed(you even posted pictures) that new production XP-G2 S4 2B has green tint shift.

I think that RMM and Mitko are terrible wrong.

I know what I know and I know what I see… Nobody can convince me in opposite.

Chill out m8, ( have a drink or smth :sunglasses: ) , as i am sure we all agree that the tint isnt the big issue here: yet the throw drop is
Indeed there is a tint shift comparing the old IOS S4 2B stock with the new

Btw Digikey also have XPG2 S4 stock with a prod. date september 2015( several reets, both E1 and E2 kits) but nobody could be sure what exacly are those untill they are tested

Mitko,

Sorry but I can’t chill out on foolishness… Who agrees that it is not big issue?

I will tell You difference among them

B158 340 kcd (old S4 2B)
B158 200 kcd (new S4 2B)

UF1503 250kcd (old S4 2B)
UF1503 170kcd (new S4 2B)

Lumapower turboforce 350kcd (old S4 2B)
Lumapower turboforce 220kcd (new S4 2B)

Once again I responsibly claiming that batch I tested and send to Djozz (he tested them but he did not de domed them) has terrible green tint (hulk color) and significant lux output loos.

I can say that I do “gas dedoming” 99% of the time…

Its much easier and pain free than other dedoming methods, and yes, tints usually shift a lot to the yellow spectrum… but, the last few XP-G2 S42B dedomes Ive had done been a whole lot greener than usual…

Maybe using hot dedome method remains the same… maybe the problems with XP-G2 dedoming (apart from less throw due to bigger die size) only affects gas dedoming…

Still. Its a bit of a pain…

But currently I am still dedoming XM-L2 U3 1A’s and 1D’s with barely any green shift at all with no problems… Sticking with those for the foreseeable future, as XP-G3 doesnt seem viable for dedoming either…

I will say again like I did 20 times in this thread. I am fair familiar with all de domed methods mentioned on BLF and I used them all (hot gas, hot thinner, hot de dome on 2 possible ways). There is no difference in tint shift between de dome methods if you do them properly!

It is not just maybe… It is 100% confirmed! New production process for XP- G2 emitters makes them de dome unfriendly, they loose performance and you can literary toss them in a trash cause they are worthless piece of trash. And anyone defending Cree is giving terrible information to public.

So with new production XP-G2 S4 2B you will get:

- green tint upon de doming

- 30% or more performance lux drop upon de doming

- unsatisfied costumer

  • serious performance degradation!

So this is not serious issue? It is one hell of serious issue with new production process emitters.

Cree are bound to release something new that we can use…

XQ-E HI / XP-L HI sort of thing…

I am not writing Cree off yet…

Not many people “de-dome”, apart from people on this site…. Maybe we were just lucky with the last two generations of Cree’s, that we COULD de-dome nicely…

Nobody can write them off. They are no.1 manufacturer on led market. They create, upgrade and in this case downgrade production of leds.

It is big fact that there is no better emitter for thrower configurations than old production XP-G2 S4 2B de domed.

Now that is gone… I did my last 9 old XP-G2 S4 2B emitters N10sivern send to me and now my production stopped.

I will not build something that significantly downgrades throw performance cause I simply don’t know how to explain to costumer that his flashlight is crap comparing to same flashlight his neighbor has? You know Sir… Cree manipulates market by creating “upgraded-downgraded” emitters so I am unable to build something good again… He will just answer: “I don’t care… Refund please”.

Yeah, you might as well go out of business… retire… relax… watch a little TV… play a little board game… read a little more BLF… and enjoy the rest of your days in peace and tranquility. Since, obviously, there’s no other way to get good throw other than using an old style XP-G2 in a flashlight. :person_facepalming:

Look, I get it. You’re supremely peeved that a component you trusted in and depended on has changed. I know how business works (well, sorta). You’ve optimized your workflow, figured out all the things that can be figured out. You’ve made your job as simple, easy, effective as can be. All so that your product can be as perfect as you can possibly make it. And now all that is gone.

Ok, so how about moving on and figuring out what you ARE going to do, instead of whining about what isn’t there any longer? Venting can be fun at times, but it really doesn’t accomplish anything. Anybody wanna talk about finding a solution to luminarium’s dilemma? Anyone know where to get old stock genuine XP-G2 S4 2B? Or a possible workaround using current emitters?

I just received my XPG2’s (different bin) from FT but can’t tell anything yet. I need a better magnifier as my old plastic eye loupe has gotten foggy over the years and I can’t see the needed details. Hoping I’ll be lucky though!

I think we should remember that Cree never intended for us to dedome; they build emitters for use as-is so it was just great luck that the XPG2 worked so well for us. Cree is our friend, not our enemy, and maybe there will be a better lucky break coming along from them in the future. If there is then I’d suggest buying it in massive quantities to defer the inevitable changes the future always brings.

I have great faith in us that somebody somewhere will find a good substitute for the old XPG2, we’re a persistent bunch of folks!

Phil

Well you are certainly right about business method.

But don’t be sarcastic about old XP-G2 S4 2B replacement emitter. So would you be so kind and recommend replacement emitter cause I can’t find one. Maybe I am whining but there is really no replacement for it… If you want to suggest I am listening…

And of course I would invest even 1000 $ if someone wants to sell good old XP-G2 S4 2B.

So far only N10sivern helped me and sold 9 pcs although he also needs them.

One would expect that future brings upgrades and no downgrades… So stocking old tech emitters in a fear of possible performance drop of new emitters is not a solution imho cause we are all expecting progress as the time passes by. But If I only knew what I know now I would stock them… Who would think this will happen?

Well, I’m sorry. I don’t know of a drop-in replacement emitter for XP-G2 that performs exactly the same. But, there are some very smart people on this forum and a large number of them have experience with a wide range of emitter configurations. There might have to be other tweaks done besides just changing emitters, and even then, it might not be perfect. But, I’d say that there is a good chance that there’s some kind of path forward. And that finding a path forward is certainly going to be a better use of time than talking about the road that was shut down.

One thing that might help is to look at your current build process, techniques, components, host, et cetera and see if there is something that can be changed to help increase throw for the new emitters. Maybe a tighter reflector, or change to an optic, add a recycling collar, or something.

Path forward is currently lost since emitter is main and most important part or upgrade of a flashlight.

If I have single cell configurations I really don’t want to extend them or modd with lets say buck drivers etc, or adding larger optics/reflectors to have same throw as I had before in smaller configuration…

That in other word means 50mm optics would have to go 70mm to have same throw as 50mm one
Same thing with reflector… Larger reflector to achieve same performance it previously had with smaller one…

Instead that we all rise up against something that is not right like for example this Cree’d changed production process for XP-G2 emitter you are guys talking like everything is fine… Why???

- Just to adopt building or modding process or techniques?

- So what if lux performance dropeed for 30%?

- So what if tint shifts to green one?

  • etc.

In other words so what if they beat me? I can withstand everything?

So we should adopt to manufacturer instead manufacturer adopts to us, our needs? Sorry David but you are terribly wrong here…

If someone messes things up he can make them right for sure… But someone needs to tell them that mistake happened and that it should be changed.

When we are as small as we are and cree is as big as they are, and seeing how cree has no reason to try to please us, yes, you adapt to the manufacturer, not the other way around.

And when an experienced builder reports differences to your findings, it makes no sense to write them off as misinforming the public. Maybe you should try to figure out how they got better results than you.

Alright…

Maybe Cree will not try to please us… Maybe Samsung, LG, Osram and others will look into this thread and try to please us.

I did not seen any results… Did you seen them?

Real results are lux numbers in well known hosts.

Well, with my limited understanding, looking at djozz’ tests, it looks like the closest is Nichia 219C. Maybe you can convince your customers that even though there is some loss of throw, they get much nicer tint and color rendering index from a Nichia. And, since the 219C is still new, there’s probably plenty of room for Nichia to continue improving its performance.

We also still have left to see the performance of the new XP-G3. Maybe Cree will be redeemed in your eyes with this one? I’m looking forward to seeing how it performs.

Sorry, but I doubt that as well. Flashlights are probably less than 1% of the market for these LEDs, and flashlight modification like you do is probably less than 1% of the flashlight market. It would be a terrible business decision to spend money developing products just to meet our desires. We just have to hope that the greater market’s desires fall in line with our own. Luckily that seems like it might be happening with Cree’s HI variants

Well, he was only testing three specific claims: The de-domed tint is green, the Vf is higher, the Die is larger. He told us his results in those areas. The tint was not green to the eyes of his testers, the Vf is actually lower, and the die is confirmed to be a little bigger. He only tested one of each LED ( old and new XP-G2 ).

RMM does use LED Seal, maybe that makes a difference as to why his aren’t green?

Exactly…

He used some kind of lacquer on emitter surface… I will tell to RMM that I also know how to do that but that is not real test…

Real test is pure de domed emitter and not lacquered one. Why?

Cause lacquer changes tint to cooler one

Vinz did that long time ago with “diamond treating” method

So look how 2 same emitters behave when one is “diamond treated” :slight_smile:

And even that won’t change anything! Emitter (XP-G2 S4 2B) will still have significantly les lux performance.