I had an old fenix E20 that had a pill and driver but was missing the optic setup and lens (I guess it was some sort of adjustable beam by twisting the head light originally, I got it as parts) and I really liked the slinder style plus I've been upgrading most of my 1xAA lights to a BLF driver to run on 14500 only recently so I wanted to do something that was 2AA to have as a long runtime backup / glove box light, maybe keep it down in the basement for my sister who just moved in...Something that doesnt require the brightest flashlight in the world so I decided to stick with the stock driver, its single mode only 500mA to the emitter and only .55A tail draw so it'll last forever on 2 eneloops or energizer L91's (even alkalines but we dont own any).
The emitter shelf of the pill was kind of wierd, like several other older fenix style that I've seen that take an XR-E with no MCPCB (I didnt take pictures of this step) but I filled the pill up to the very top lip with 3 22GA 18mm copper disks and ultra grey silicone (the disks took up most of the space, I just didnt feel like soldering them together and at 500mA really the only reason is to fill the air gap, dont really need high performance.
The pill ready to go in with the body and three TIR lenses
Its really easy to swap out the optics, just unscrew the head, turn it upside down and the old one will fall out then pop the new one in and screw the head back on, no fighting it to line it up or any tools required.
The emitter is a brand new XM-L2 S6 7D3 I just got 10 of from richard, at 90+CRI and 2900K its very pleasing light. Its on a non-direct copper 20mm star board that I cut the mask off of to make it direct (again at .5A this wasnt needed but who cares, this was a for-fun build) and the optics are Carlco 20mm, an elliptical, spot and wide optic. The optic is just a little on the small side to fit the bezel and be water tight so I had to get a lens from Flashlightlenses.com and clear silicone that in place, its AR coated but I know its still gonna give some extra optical loss, I figure with the S6 and the extra losses its probably making about 150Lm OTF for 4+ hours (6+ with L91's).
All beamshots 48" from wall, wall is grey, iphone camera
Elliptical lens
Ripple wide lens
clear spot lens
Really bad storm here tonight (and for the next few days) but I'll get some outdoor beamshots when I can.
I’ve decided to carry this light in place of my Quark till I get my triple S6 built (it’ll be my replacement EDC, I have all the parts just gotta find time to put it together in the next week or so), if anything it should get me to get the S6 finished sooner lol. I’ll still have my Nitecore D10 in my pocket (along with the spare lenses for this) but I’m going nostalgic with a single mode, <150Lm, 2 AA light, it’ll be like carrying a minimag again but 10 times the amount and quality of light
nice work but I’ll leave my E20 as it is but this has me thinking about my old L2T which has as lovely 3 watt Luxeon LED :bigsmile:
It has been my bedside light for more years than i can remember, OK 2006 lasted longer than the missus and is more useful.
At the moment i get about 80 lumen on high for 2 hours and on low of 10 lumens 24 hours plus.
Yeah i know wow massive lunens and runtimes but back in 2006/7 the L1T/L2T where the dogz bollocks for most of us.
Nichia 219 is what i was thinking on high that is about 250 lumen and on low about 35 lumen, has anyone done similar upgrades and if so what where the pitfalls if any ?
While I’m sure its doable the problem with that (and the reason I didn’t use a Nichia in this) was the stock drive current, at 500mAh it wouldn’t even be 100Lm, the XM-L2 offered two advantages- the highes lumen output at .5A (225) and the lowest Vf.
If you want 350Lm on high from a 219 you’ll need >2A, I highly doubt the stock driver in the old L2T is anywhere near that. Not tha driver swaps are an issue, the majority of my lights get them, but like I said the longest possible with ~150Lm was the point of this build so I didn’t even bother looking at what other 2AA drivers that would fit are avaliable (I know there isn’t much).
Another thing I really like about this light is I can hand it to anyone and not have to give and safety lecture- no “don’t use the wrong batteries”, no “turn it down when it’s to hot to hold”, not even the “this is how you turn it on” demo.
