Just walked the trash down to the road for pick-up in the morning. It’s a 300 yd walk one-way. Took the Z1 and X1 with me. The X1 with led4powers LD-2 driver works beautifully, the XP-L HI has a nice hot spot with an aura and nice spill. The Z1 with it’s SBT-70 is in a whole different class. Virtually no spill (in zoomed mode of course) and it’s really like a theater spot-light, whether shining up into the night sky or spotlighting cows in the field. It’ll put light on the barn at 610 yds, but it’s not intense out there at that range. The intensity is in the heat produced! It get’s hot! Hot enough to mess with the operation of the FET+1 driver actually. I find the tight round circle of light to be pleasing, but somewhat disorienting due to the lack of any peripheral lighting. I was walking of course, so this would be explained… if stationary and searching or hunting it would be quite ideal. Very easy to spotlight a crittur in a tree top without disturbing anything else.
Both lights are very well made, both lights fit the hand quite nicely. I was one handing the zoom option and the battery tube started to unscrew… the X1 is one piece, this can’t happen with it and of course it’s not a zoomie anyway.
All in all I’m pleased with how the Z1 works in conjuction with the SBT-70, although I may need to change out the driver to something more reasonable in amperage and functional reliability. Perhaps a 9A LD-2, or even 12A? Pulling almost 18A from the single 26650 is pretty excessive…
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Right. #1 says don’t be rude, or your account will be deleted. It does not say please don’t be rude, unless you are having a bad day, in which case it will be tolerated. This is far from the first time this has been an issue.
Thanks Dale!
It sure is quite the LED you have used!
When you tighten the battery tube it won’t unscrew hopefully? First time using the UF1504 that happened to me too, highly annoying but easy to stop by just a little more force.
I removed the AR coated window and it’s metal frame from the SBT-70. I like the look of it better and it seems to have a bit cleaner beam profile without that extra piece of glass between the phosphor and aspheric.
Got a chance to put mine together tonight. Overall I’m very pleased. Its a 4000K MT-G2 with an LD2 driver. I think this big emitter looks great in there:
The overall light is a great size, smaller than I expected for a 2x26650:
Yes its got that hexagonal beam profile when zoomed in:
I’ll try to get some real outdoor beamshots later when it gets dark.
I do have one gripe/complaint. The machining on the brass pill was pretty rough, especially on the surface where the mcpcb goes. I know many of them from all sorts of manufacturers show the machining rings, but this one was even still domed up in the middle, like a very shallow cone. My mcpcb just rocked back and forth up there.
Took about an hour of sanding to knock it down flat, but the final results came out very well. The mcpcb sat down like its supposed to and the black cover piece fits like a glove.
Anyone else ever have one of those days modding that nothing seems to work and/or work in reverse of the plan? Today was one of those. I attempted to put an LD-2 in the Z1 in order to have the current lowered to 12A and regulated. No worky. I couldn’t change modes, Turbo only. So I tried again, a second LD-2 this time a little more painstakingly modified with the required components. I got modes, but it was a chore to actually make them change.
I finally decided to re-install the FET+1 and use smaller leads to tone it down a bit. This is sound logic, right? Going from 18ga leads to 20ga leads should throttle the draw at least a little, right? Well, not today. I went from 17.97A to 18.75A with the smaller leads.
Miller, I think what happened is that a total rebuild ended up giving me better ground contacts such that even the slightly smaller wire’s yielded higher current. Considering the first build was purely off the cuff, the second, third and fourth likely taught me something.
[built it with the FET+1, rebuilt it with the LD-2, then tried another LD-2, then put the FET+1 back in. This is a piggybacked driver set-up, so each revision took a complete tear down and rebuild.]
The brass pill in both my Z1 and X1 were done very well. So perhaps they had a rough one slip through?
Edit: Finding that I can keep the Z1 to reasonable current levels with the FET+1 in place by choosing an appropriate cell. While the dark purple Efest 4200mAh cell yields preposterous current, a MNKE 26650 yields a more reasonable ~10-11A (9A with a low charge, charging now to see what a full cell actually does) A Samsung 26F 18650 will do around 8-9A, so it’s feasible to use a proper low discharge cell to run the SBT-70 at lower levels.
I really like that MTG build, and if I decide to go multicell, that’s what I’ll probably use. I still have a bunch of them from when they first came out.
I have to believe they know there’s at least a slight issue there since the assembly video they provided showed taking a knife of some sort and scraping that surface smooth before assembly. That would help to remove some of the ridges I guess but it wouldn’t help reprofile the surface to remove the dome/conical shape mine had. My noctigon literally rocked back and forth like it was perched on a fulcrum, because it was.
I mean these are mass-produced parts and at some point you have to call it “good enough” and put it into production, and at these prices nobody should expect perfection, but I would hope their intention is that most of them turn out better than mine did. And Dale said his was fine. It would be helpful to hear from others on this issue.
I thought that’s what the guy was doing in the video. Maybe I misunderstood him. I think I’ve been very fair to Jaxman in my two posts about this issue, stating that while it wasn’t ideal, it really wasn’t hard for me to rectify it and I can understand why any mass-produced product is going to have some small issues. If I’ve come across as anything less than helpful and understanding it wasn’t my intention.
Mine were both smooth while I always emory sand or file regardless. I do believe they (Jaxman) are being meticulous to make certain these are all done right. That is the purpose of this trial run. Very optimistic about this. I did try and purchase more parts and was asked to please wait until everything was in order first. That is also a very good sign.
