After seeing OldLumens post up pics of his… I simply couldn’t resist for $25 local B&M retail.
First and foremost its considerably bigger than the Stanley fatmax. Its reflective surface measures 91.5mm diameter, that makes it the biggest diameter XML reflector I’m aware of. Weather or not that translates directly to lux, remains to be seen. The stanley measures 75mm by comparison. So like the stanley I am looking at this as a mod host, so stay tuned for all that.
After dissecting it and playing around with stuff inside, I think its a worthy mod candidate. It feels strong and decently robust in the hand, and theres plenty of room inside for a 26650 and additional heatsink mods which I think it will need for the 7135 - 3.5A driver I plan to push it with. The front window is glass and surprisingly thick. Mine had some cloudy haze on the inside so I cleaned it all up and now its just fine and I dont see any reason to upgrade the lens.
The stock rechargeable AA alkaline cells will have to go… and soon. They offer no advantage over a Lithium or NiMH chemistry that I am aware of. Here are some OEM-stock pics for now. I’ll post up some beamshots later tonight, comparing it with my 3.5A modded HD2010 and 3.4A modded fatmax.
91.5mm versus 75mm
tail stands very nicely
Kickstand, the classic “roadside changing the spare tire” hold.
Driver board + recharge circuit. The large green resistors on the far right are the current sense resistors. The two in parallel measure .7 ohms. Some of you who really know RLC circuits could probably mod this section of the light to increase current to the LED.
The whole board easily comes out with one screw. Its a single sided PCBA with thru-hole components throughout, no SMT anywhere. Bring back the early 80s!!!
Reverse clicky, very similar to the ones found on many hand held lights.
Lots of open space for additional heatsink-ing
Smooth plastic reflector 91.5mm across and glass lens
OEM cast aluminum heatsink, easily removed with 3 screws to expose the LED. I didn’t take pics, but it says “XML-T5” silkscreened on the standard 20mm star sandwiched between the reflector and heatsink. White thermal grease is used to enhance heat transfer to the heatsink.
Ran it on the bench for 6-7 minutes. The heatsink got warm to the touch, but not alarmingly or painfully hot. I could continue touching the cast aluminum directly beneath the LED with no discomfort. It was definitely doing its job. The green current sense resistors however got painfully hot. I could not touch those for more than a half second of gentile pressure. I am positive a 7135 driver would do a far better job at regulating battery power.
Heres a quick white wall… er garage door beamshot. Just snapped it 5 minutes ago in broad afternoon daylight, with the iphone flash on, in an attempt to under-expose the spot intensities. I don’t have the photo-skills to do this the right way, so I think its easiest for me to capture all the beams in the same exposure to better show relative brightness and beam concentrations. The neighbors were staring at me like I was crazy, with the garbage cans lined up on the driveway… and such is the bizarre life of a flashaholic. What I tried to capture is the crisp and very abrupt cutoff to the edge the Defiant spot beam. The Defiant spot has no gradual ramp down or, dimming the farther away the light gets from the center. Its just a wall of flood with a circle in it, and a slight ring. There is no cloud of gradually dimming light surrounding the hot spot. You can kind of see that in the pic, but its much more apparent in real-life.
L-R
3.4A Fatmax (T5-5000K) - 3.5A HD2010 (T6-pale white) - Defiant stock (T5-unknown tint)
BUILD LOG #1)
OK so I spent part of the morning wiring up the 4P-18650 pack.
Cells have been matched for storage capacity, self discharge, and current delivery. Each delivers a steady 3.5A in my HD2010, which is 4x the current they will be asked to deliver in this application. All together the 4P group will have 8.4 Ah capacity.
2 dabs of shoe goo between each cell, and press cells together. Give it a couple hours to solidify.
Use your fattest, hottest blunt-est iron. Brute heat-force is what it takes. IIRC my iron is ~120W. With the right iron and tip you will only need to hold it on the cell for 1-2 seconds to get the solder to adhere.
Once the shoe goo dries tape with 3M packaging tape.
Solid core copper wire, 22AWG doubled over and tinned will serve as a battery bus.
Flux each cell. Load the blunt tip with a little solder. Touch each cell for a second or two to flow the solder
Use a damp sponge to cool the cell immediately after you pull the iron away.
Insulate with black electrical tape… black for -B, red for +B
Same procedure for +B, only its a little more tricky because +B is smaller than -B… but its the same thing.
There you go… 8.4 Ah capacity at 4.2V. Its electrically the same power configuration as the Skyray king and Apex 5T6.
BUILD LOG #2)
I spent a little of the evening at Craigs place (Illumination supply owner). We hang out a little and talked flashlights and mods. Great guy!! quality gear… Can’t recommend Illumination Supply enough. I picked up the illumination supply 3.04A driver, XML-T5-3C and extra 380mah BIN 7135 driver chips. Had a go at it…
Remove all the extra plastic from the inside.
Stock charging plug and reverse clicky
7135 driver, 3-mode L-M-H. I double stacked an extra pair of 7135 chips, and it now pulls 3.78A from the 4-18650 cells. Thats a litte under a 1A draw for each cell. I am a little concerned the 7135 chips get very hot. They are almost too hot to touch, and seem to generate almost as much heat as the LED. I have been using 7135 based drivers for 3-4 years and never realized they got that hot.
I remember now Erik (E1324) had mentioned to me the dangers of heat build up with stacked 7135 chips, and that they can fail when mounted like this. I took some extra solid copper wire and jumped over the double stacked chips, I am hoping this will help dissipate the added heat. When I get the fan thing figured out I’ll have to make sure the driver also gets some air flow circulation.
Everything tucked in… its not as roomy in there as I initially had thought. Getting a small fan in here is going to be a challenge, but I think its manageable…. I also need to center the LED a little better, so I’ll play around with that today. I also removed the white nylon pieces in the click-stand that make it go “CLICK-CLICK-CLICK”, so it just moves smoothly now.
BUILD LOG #3)
My son and I spent an afternoon at our favorite local electronics part retailer (HSC ELectronics). Its basically a warehouse stock full of tech-industry overstock merchandise buy outs. Floor to ceiling electronics parts and… just stuff to play around with. And of course LEDs!!!
Came home with the fans I think will work. Bench test time… The 4 parallel draw 380mah from the 5S eneloop array. I wired the eneloop pack using the same procedure as the 4P-18650. I am overdriving the fans, they really move a lot of air for their size. I am not sure if I want to use all of them. But I’ll probably put two in front of the 7135 driver and the other two positioned above the LED heatsink . Pack voltage measured 6.8V… I hope they don’t cook!!
The most important thing I am doing here is evaluating fan performance at different voltage levels. I used a partially depleted 18650 (3.7V), 4S-AA and 5S-AA. I could feel and hear the difference in output with increased voltage, the difference was slight but noticeable. I let the fans run for a few minutes at each voltage level, and concluded the 5S pack is the way to go. Time will tell if that was a wise decision. I also have the option to slightly under-charge the eneloops, they can handle the under-voltage just fine. One of the great things about a hobby charger is I can manually under-charge if I so desire… This mod wouldn’t be possible without one.
I spent the other part of the evening dremeling, grinding, drilling and perforating the plastic shell. I haven’t knocked the holes for the fans yet, I’ll do that tomorrow.
With a little help from my EDC light…
A view of the inside
Getting full!!!… Eneloop & Panasonic FTW!!
BUILD LOG #4)
Spent my lunch break drilling and dremel-ing out the holes for the fans, fan switch and the eneloop charge port.
Marking the center lines.
The biggest drill bit I could find in my tool box. They used a really soft plastic for this light, easy to cut and grind.
Hole for the Eneloop charge port
Rear fan intake and hole for the fan on-off switch. I decided to go for two here that way the 7135 driver gets as much air as possible.
Two more vents for the LED heatsink fans.
View from inside. You can see the dremel grind marks and scuffed up surfaces around the fan holes. This is where I plan on epoxying the fans in place.
BUILD LOG #5)
Heres a pic of the fans glued into place. I used small dabs of hot melt glue at the corners just to hold the fans in place, then I used epoxy to firmly mount the fans. It turned out pretty well, and the fans make an air tight seal to the case.
2 fans (one on each case-half) for the 7135 driver. I made sure to position the driver so the double stacked 7135 chips face into the air flow. Those copper wire heatink things had to be bent over a little to get it to fit.
Wires. One of the main reasons I chose these fans is they had long wire segments with tinned ends. All the other fans were terminated on very short wires with connectors. Part of my flashaholic OCD, forced me to use as few wire splices as possible. Single segments only, cut to length.
All finished!!
two charge ports, one for the 4P-18650 and the other for the 5S-AA
Beamshots next….
