This particular flashlight is a Quark Mini MA by Four Sevens. Picked it up from Four Sevens when they were closing out their inventory and it has lived in my go-bag’s charger/cord mini kit ever since. Wonderfully compact travel light. Honestly I would have preferred a lower low and a higher high but all in all a perfect back up light. Original LED was a cool white XPG2 probably around 6000k with a nice, even tint. But I like warm or neutral and more CRI! Been waiting to swap LEDs for a few years now but was really unsure if I wanted SST-20, 219, LD351D or something else. Tonight I decided to do it and happened to go with a 219B sw40 LED I had laying around from azhu here. I had previously used one of his sw35 emitters in my Thrunite TH20 upgrade and was very pleased.
The actual upgrade was about as easy as one could hope for a emitter reflow. The pill was a bit tight in the head; not sure if it was a bit of weak glue or some dried up thermal grease. Either way a little wiggling back and fourth and it eventually gave way. Interestingly, the solder used by Four Sevens seemed to have a fairly high melting point. Had to flow a touch of my silver solder onto it to conduct enough heat off my old Radioshack 45w pencil iron to get it to melt. Reflowing the emitter took a lot longer than normal as well, but nothing too bad. I reflow them the hard way by holding the mcpcb on the iron tip and that replacing the LED with needle tip tweezers. LED was on a very small star. I didn’t measure but it was probably 8mm and it had some old, white thermal compound which cleaned up easily with an alcohol prep. Reassembly was smooth and I used a touch of Arctic Silver under the star and on the pill threads with Nyogel for the lens and bezel o-rings as well as the threads. Nice and smooth operation with a bit of resistance as one would want in a pocket twisty.
All in all, I’m pretty happy. Compares nicely to my other 219B lights! Like I said, wish low was lower and high was higher but it is a great back up light! Now, I wonder if there is any clip that would work nicely for a ballcap brim…
Here it is in pieces. Notice the black plastic shield centering ring. I really like this design and it places the LED perfectly centered while allowing access to the solder points.
Nichia goodness.
Four Sevens Quark Mini MA. 1xAA twisty. Was an XPG2 now Nichiga 219B sw40!
Most of the [Nichia] gang. Lumintop Ti Tool, Fireflies Stainless AA, 47’s Quark Mini MA and the Eagtac D25a Ti. Its a good crew. Just need something in 18650 to match.
