I bought the Skilhunt E3A in Slate Blue, Neutral from AliExpress as soon as it was announced. But while I’m waiting for that to arrive, I noticed some are being sold on Amazon (US) so I picked up a Carmine Red one to check it out. I just got it today, so I haven’t done a full teardown, output check, or runtime test so I’ll revisit once those are done.
What I received from Amazon was the cool white version – unfortunate, but means that I’ll probably be tearing this down to (1) see whats inside, and (2) see if the LED is replaceable. Everything looks and feels great. The anodizing is great. The TIR is lightly pebbled and quite floody.
AAA battery, AA battery, Skilhunt E3A, Olight i3E, Lumintop EDC01, Jetbeam Jet-u, Astrolux A01, Sofirn C01S
Skilhunt E3A, Olight i3E, Lumintop EDC01, Jetbeam Jet-u, Astrolux A01, Sofirn C01S
Skilhunt E3A, Olight i3E, Lumintop EDC01
Skilhunt E3A, Olight i3E, Lumintop EDC01
Thank you for great pictures I’m a big sucker for smaller lights. This E3A looks great as it is on the same size as Olight i3E. Beam pattern seems floody and nice spill.
Only thing I wish they would include a pocket clip. It looks like there are 2 positrons for the reversible clip.
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Thrunite T2 |
I couldn’t resist the urge. Had to get a glance at what’s inside.
Looks like a single board with the LED mounted on it. Board is glued to an aluminum pill. Real easy to take apart, the pill isn’t glued in.
Well, we’re certainly not reinventing the wheel here. The TIR seems nice, and having more options for AAA twisties is probably not a bad thing.
agTac D25C Ti | L6 XHP70.2 P2 4000K FET+7135 | Jaxman M8 | MF02 | Jaxman Z1 CULNM1.TG | Blue S2+ w/ ML Special |
Can the bracket of the polarity protection be pulled out of the pill? Or will it break?
I have not realized that this light is as small as the i3E, if not smaller! Should get one.
Smile, you cannot kill them all.
I’ll try again today. Didn’t have much time to play with it last night.
Dammit, I hoped for a real thermal path.
Thanks for the pics gchart!
Ok guys… another quick teardown. As it turns out, there is NO GLUE. What I saw as glue was actually thermal paste between the board and the pill. The white clip can carefully be removed. After doing so, the board comes right off. That entire area that is covered in silkscreen is a big thermal area. So while this isn’t a MCPCB, it has a big thermal path right to the pill and is covered in thermal paste. For 100 lumens, that seems sufficient. LED swaps would be difficult though… perhaps with hot air reflow.
EDIT: looks like the IC is the tried and true PAM2803
The resistor says 043 (underlined). If I understand correctly, that would mean R043 = 0.043 Ohms. But for a PAM2803, that would mean a LED current of 2.2A which certainly isn’t right. If it were a 0.43 Ohm resistor, that would make sense… translating to an LED current of 220 mA.
Thanks for the “deconstruction” gchart! Seems like the original setup is made to “stay as it is” ! And with a nice led, I guess it is not bad at all
Nice light!
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Thanks a lot!
The i3E could be placed in the pan right on the contact pad to reflow the LED. I’d try the same here.
Smile, you cannot kill them all.
You could probably kapton tape the components on either side of the positive contact button too.
On a side note, the “Red” in the above pictures doesn’t look anything like the promotional pictures.
Hey gchart, is that the real color Red? Look more like tan/brown to me. The color does not look like Red on their Amazon listing or website.
Anw nice color options though.
Sorry, I messed with my camera settings in my initial images and I’m colorblind so I have no idea how accurate the colors are.
Here’s one I just took. Outdoors (obviously) under a direct noon sun sitting next to some ripe tomatoes. Default image settings on my Pixel 3. How’s this look?
I hope I never lose this one in the grass because I’ll never be able to find it
Hmm…. Hats off for your skills. I have no words. Such a sexy photo. Hahaha
much better, initial pictures were favoring a burnt orange color
You will. If you own a C01R.
@contactcr, I need to get this tape anyway
Smile, you cannot kill them all.
Interesting… the deep red light of the C01R would help a colorblind person distinguish between red and green?
Thanks for the interesting teardown.
Just curious, do you think that boost converter could be used with a UV-C LED with ~6V Vf? I could not find a Vout max in the datasheet.
The grass won’t reflect much light as opposed to the flashlight. No color vision needed.
Edit: Tried it. The theory was good at least
Smile, you cannot kill them all.
Good question. It looks like the ratings top out at 6V. As long as you don’t go over 6V it might work.
The posts at this link seem to think the same: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/340226/driving-two-leds-...
So it didn’t really work?
I would have hoped for a result similar to in this test with an artificially colored surface:
http://budgetlightforum.com/comment/1677320#comment-1677320
Notice in the normal photo which squares on the toy are red and which are green, then compare how those squares appear in the photo lit by the C01R.
Very interesting light, the knurling is a nice change of pace. Thanks for the tear down.
LH351B is a peculiar choice though.
Cactus vs. red C01 (same anodization as C01R): undecided. The cactus reflected a lot of red light, the red flashlight reflected surprisingly little red light.
Smile, you cannot kill them all.
Real tiny AAA twisty!
I just ordered one slate blue NW from AE to see how it goes. 8.65 euros shipped looks like a good deal.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Look what arrived today! The Slate with a neutral LED. Quite nice.
Mine comes today from Amazon. Curious if the TIR opening is big enough for a larger LED but I assume it’s the same dimensions as Sofirn one with tiny opening.
Will probably try to reflow whole board with components in place later tonight
Stock Cool White is 102 lumens, just under 6000K CCT and above BBL. Looks mostly white but a slight light blue hue to beam. Not my taste but I didn’t really care cause it was getting removed no matter what.
The anodizing and machining is excellent, definitely the best i’ve seen on an AAA light ever. One thing I dont like is the threads are stiff. It’s very hard to operate one handed. Since it only has one mode maybe it’s OK. It seems like it uses the same TIRs you can find on the Yaji aliexpress store but I didn’t confirm this yet.
Mod time, liberal use of kapton tape just to keep stuff from falling off:
Fail #1: Try to channel heat through brass button. Nothing bad happened but I gave up when the heater was around 215-220. Not sure if heat path wasn’t good or if they used lead free.
Fail #2: (not pictured) try to use soldering iron on brass button from the bottom. Duh, brass button wants to come off instantly, had to re-center it after it slid.
Success: Preheat from the bottom, used the hemostats to keep it in place and keep everything pressed on the brass button and then I used hot air from the top. I dont think I ruined the LED but it definitely took more heat than I expected.
I ended up slicing a LH351*C* 4000K 90 CRI. Since it was sliced it already had some 60/40 solder on it and I put a liberal amount of flux paste between the old Skilhunt solder and my 60/40 tinned and sliced LED. It went on much easier. I’m not certain the original solder on the pad fully melted but at the very least it’s flowed on top of their solder if not completely re-flowed. Oh well it’s <250 mA and I’ll redo it if it fails.
Now it’s >90 CRI and 63.5lm – bigger drop in output than I thought but it makes sense going to NW+sliced+high CRI
Geesh, 0.0000 DUV?!
Really glad it worked for you. Helps gives me some confidence that I might be able to do the same. I’ve got a boat load of Luxeon V2 in 4000K and 5000K that I got for a song. I might switch in a 4000K and try playing with the current set resistor to get a lower output (for use as a reading light).
I see this now is available in a “high CRI” emitter option from Skilhunt. Anyone know if this is also a LH351D emitter? I can’t find any specs on emitter or color temp
It’s the smaller die, less power “B” version of the emitter, not “D”. The dome on the “D” is too big to fit under the optic (im fairly sure).
Smaller emitters make sense in these lights anyhow. After seeing some reviews of this light and seeing the CRI version I’m actually interested in it now
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