Bestfire soup can, I gave in.. (edit: fake XP-L's, see from post #22 on)

I resisted the SRK style lights for years now (ugly, far too much work+time to mod), but finally gave in :tired:

Bestfire, $31.39 at dx

That’s not a bad price I guess, to say it’s got 9 XP-L’s in it.

Do you know if it has a shelf under them? Not seen a full review of one yet I do like the look of it though.

Only 8500 lumen? My, SkyRay S9 with 9 XM-L T6 is listed as 15 000 lumen :wink:

Now this is fugly.
K19 9 Cree XM-L T6 5-Mode 3000LM Pure White LED Flashlight

heck aren’t the XPL’s worth that much or more?

let us know how it works out

What is?? I don’t see anything! :evil:

I’ve never owned SK light before, but now I want to get one just for modding.

Do they come with a shelf? Do they all work with RMM’s 46mm 32x7135 driver?

I just want to swap the driver, replace led wires, change thermal paste, spring mod… Leave the XP-L stock, probably not worth the time and cost for reflowing all into copper mcpcb…

Damn couldn’t resist either, ordered one now, guess I’ll find out if it has a shelf when it lands.

Those new 9x LED were $50-60 in Aliexpress at the beginning of the year, not sure why sudden drop in price now. Hope it is not clearance due to quality issues.

At fasttech for $30.63 minus BLF discount. Appears to be exactly the same, plus FT has the 7, 5, etc. version, but in a different body.

I clearly was too fast, could have saved a few extra dollars and FT probably delivers faster as well. Well, never mind, I''m curious about it anyway :-)

FT added them yesterday, so you were 2 days early - oh well, think you are catch'n my luck Wink. I was more think'n of the 7, but the 9 has the bigger head, but not sure I like those colors of the 9...

I still haven't modded my 5X SRK style but I'm really spoiled on the SupFire M6 - sooo much nicer with a real SS bezel, screw down retainer on the driver, nice quality. My modded M6 does like 4,950 lumens at 30 secs with a DD driver, XM-L2 U3 2A's on 20mm Noctigons, 20 AWG LED wires.

Sigh… I wished I never bought this light… it has hollow pill and the head is about the same size as regular SRK… same brightness with the old SRK except more floodier, the only cool thing about this is… it has lighted color on the power switch

Did you receive this light already?

Ohh - also with the new XPL lights, FT has this: https://www.fasttech.com/forums/2417900, which looks exactly like the TrustFire 12X 6 cell lights that have been around, but a lot cheaper. Hope quality is the same...

Hollow pill make sense for this cost - can't get M6 quality at these prices.

Me Likey!

I have ordered one from DX, just because I have one more item to order and I want them combined for tracking.

Update: I received the light and let's say it has opportunities. I like the looks (and the green led shining through the switch cap ) but the performance, as expected, is meh.

I threw in a mixture of high drain cells (2xCGR18650CH, 1xNCR18650PF, 1xVTC5 :bigsmile: ), and measured output: 1800lm at start-up, 1500lm after 30 seconds. That is 200lm per led . I have not measured current but that should be around 500mA per led, 6A in total. The leds are on a single ~2mm thin aluminium board clamped by the reflector, without thermal paste, against an anodised shelf inside the head. So the low current is there for a good reason, it makes the emitters survive.

So how does the light achieve that low current on four parallel high drain batteries?? First cause are the steel springs at the bottom, perhaps it uses a cheap high resistance FET, but I think what truly gets the job done are two long and tiny (24AWG?) led wires feeding all 12 emitters (they are on the right, the four wires on the left go to the e-switch and green indicator led):

With those wires you can just have zero Ohm current limiting resistors on the driver ;-)

Modding plans? I will do do this one as lazy as I can get away with:

The ledboard shelf is quite broad, that is nice: with some sanding away the anodising and adding a bit of thermal paste, the heat path will be improved a lot. With a thin copper plate under the ledboard it should be good enough. I will dedome the leds because I want a bit warmer tint. I will not be replacing the 12xXP-L ledboard because the current per led will be under 3A anyway and I don't want to do the work and spend the money for 12 copper DTP-boards. Perhaps a better FET can be used on the driver (or two in parallel?) and I will have a look at the traces on the driver board if they need reinforcing. I may go for no driver at all, just connecting the batteries to the leds, and replace the e-switch for a high current clicky. Tail springs will be bypassed. That all should get this light over 6000lumen, will it?

This mod is low on my project list, so it takes a while for a next update.

I looked at buying one of these a few times to mod, but the red-bezel kept me away.

I quite fancy the red bezel :party: