Just looking for impressions. Considering grabbing one to play with tinkering. So, a couple questions:
What is the driver? I am really starting to loathe lights without a mode memory, plus I want to drive it a bit harder.
What is the lens diameter? Considering replacing it with an AR or something.
What about the pill? Does it have one? Is it threaded, press fit or what? Copper, brass, aluminum?
How is the build quality? Pictures I can see look like decent threads but I’m not sure of that. Any idea how the heat sinking is?
I’d order it and take it apart to figure it all out myself but I don’t want to wait three weeks (or more — thank you CNY) to get it, then another three weeks to start playing with it. So, any information you can give me would be great.
ETA: moving this to the modding forum, as I suppose it makes more sense there.
and i can tell you it is a mediocre light. For the price its not too bad. Could use a better driver.
The treads are ok (came unlubed). It has an alu washer holding the driver in place(i drilled the 2 small pits in it cause i could not unscrew it )(its an better idea than soldering IMO) . The pill is alluminum and so is the reflector.
It has NO thermal grease under the led. You better fix that!
The lens is glass and is 20mm.
It is on the trowie side and trows quite ok. I will order a 8x7135 driver for one of them for comparison. Overall i like them!
Wow. Isn’t 2800 mA a bit much for an XRE? I was only thinking of pushing it to maybe 1750 or 2100 mA tops. Looking at a couple different drivers for the project.
I’m just looking for something fun to tinker with. If the host is decent enough, it’s a great price. I mean, just the emitter would cost $3-4 at least. So about $6-7 for the emitter and a decent host seems worth it. My budget is pretty tight this winter, so even at those prices, it’ll probably be a project-in-progress for a little while, while I buy some parts here and there.
I believe on the site I saw them listed, it listed the diameter of the light at either 19mm or 20mm, so I’m surprised to hear that the lens is 20mm. Are you sure of that? I’d trust a live measurement over that of a Chinese website I suppose. Just want to be sure. Must have been thinking of some other light I was looking at at the time. It is definitely not 19mm.
I think I may order one of each color (black and silverish) and go different routes with my trials and see how they end up. Speaking of the colors, how is the finish? Is it a good anodizing?
I’m still trying to figure out what I want in an EDC light. I think this little project will really narrow it down a good bit for me.
Thanks for the reply; I really appreciate the input.
The reflector should work. May need to add a spacer or something in case it’s too short. No idea on the pill.
FWIW, my first attempt was…iffy. I should replace the pill or something. The new board is just too wide (err, long - depends on the orientation I guess). I’ve gotten really busy with a lot of other things, so my flashaholism is taking a back seat right now.
Used the same pill.
Replaced reflector (OP).
Used XM-L2 T6 1C
Used 2-Mode LED Driver Circuit Board for Flashlight DIY 3V~4.2V DC / battery guard / direct drive / 17mm
Used insulation/centering gasket.
Assembled and turned on: Wide beam and brighter!
2.7A at tail cap (from 1.7A)
I also have a black Ultrafire S5 laying around. It is not a great light, but for the price i think it’s ok. The most bugging thing about this light is the next mode “memory”. I want to get to the pill - perhaps by drilling holes in the retaining ring - and modify the driver board to get rid of this weird “memory”. Any thoughts on modifying the circuit to always start on high - so no memory? I’m thinking about the resistor mod i found here in the forum. Anyone tried this on the original S5 driver?
I just got my hands on this light from the recent wallbuy’s huge discount and am planning to mod this…
can anyone shed some light whether it would work or not.
For UF-S5 from WB, I do recommend to swap the driver, it uses the type that is not very reliable, if you push some higher amps through or left it on high/hot for too long, it can simply die just like that. I killed two similar drivers already from different cheap lights (they pretty much look exactly the same).
The driver for S5 is 17mm, same size as the NANJG, so it will fit.
Your S5 uses XR-E for real? All of mine came with XP-E (EDIT - I bought them from ebay), and I wouldn’t drive them much harder than 1.5A because they don’t seem to gain anything much more after that (except heat). If yours really came with XRE, you can go between 2.2A - 2.4A or so which IMO is a nice peak, driving any harder won’t give much more output.
That pill you linked is for C8, totally different, that won’t work.
And why you want to swap the reflector? Any reason? The stock one seem to work very well.
Well, according to wallbuys’s listing, its a XR-E Q5. Link
this one was on sale for $6.60 previously. the light has arrived but i haven open the package at all… too hectic from work. will do so asap and get back to confirm whether its really a XR-E or XP-E… i hope its the XR-E as advertised…
so i should just get the 7*AMR nanjg Drivers then?
for the reflector, its just my thought. no idea how the original one will perform yet… cant wait to get some time to actually open the whole package… (2 lights in there :heart_eyes: )
this will be my first MOD since i started this “expensive” hobby 2 months back… kekeke
so the default pill will work? or need to swap for a better one…
For thermal paste, does CPU thermal paste such as Cooler master’s work or do i need to get some dedicated ones?
how do you know that the XR-E can drive up 2.4A while the XP-E is only useful for driving up to 1.5A? where can i find some data that supports and mention this? cause the datasheet from CREE only show max current at 1A.
and in between XR-E T6, Q5, their current can all drive up to 2.4A, only difference is their tint perhaps?
If there are no such data, i was planning to have to run an experiment to test all the different emitters and bins?
i have some good equipments at my disposal… (University equipments ) just need the source to obtain those emitters and bins… any sponsors for this test? :bigsmile:
It’s all been done before, you just need to browse through this forum to find the materials Heat management is the key - that’s the bottleneck factor for LED nowadays.
Maybe it’s not too late to say welcome to the hobby and BLF. Modding is a nice hobby, they’re not too expensive, plus you sharpen and gain good, useful knowledge while you’re at it.
I’ve personally driven XREs at 2.8A before, just for the heck of it. I think our member gords did 3.2A once. They don’t burn up even with original aluminium base, but doesn’t give much more output than, say, 2.4A.
Once you start using direct copper base (Noctigons are VERY nice) you’ll see a whole different level of performance, heat management is much better and those current limitations are no longer the same. I don’t recommend jumping to this right away, for starters, just learn to open your S5 to bare bones and reassemble without breaking it. Afterwards maybe we’ll see what to do with the driver.
Can you snap the driver picture. AFAIK S5 only has two types of driver, 3mode and 5mode. The 5mode driver is quite good, very high PWM throughout Hi-Med-Lo and also can easily be modified to 1.5A.
For 3mode, I normally to swap them out for modding, not very reliable.
mine’s a 5-mode one.
I measured the tail… the high is only at 0.66A
any clues on where i should start modding it?
i’m guessing that the XR-E emmitter wont be able to fit in this light unless there’s a fair bit of modding? since the emmitter die in the XR-E is much larger than the XP-E. still, i wonder why wallbuys advertise this as a XR-E in their website and description
Is the XP-E or XR-E better? i saw some topics saying that the XP-e is better then the XR-E while some says otherwise?
XPE’s ok for this light. For one of mine, I swapped in an XML for a nice flooder, but leave the rest as is.
Your driver’s the good one. Did the light came with the resistor soldered on top of the capacitor? That’s the memory reset mod, kind of BLF trademark, I think you got a returned light. FYI WB tend to ship out refurbished stuff for their “sale”, they’re not very honest. And this S5 can be gotten for under $5 anyway through ebay, so you got screwed paying $6.60 for a returned light (I got mine between $2.99 and $3.69 shipped).
0.66A is about right. You can get around 0.8A with good batteries. To raise the current, you can simply desolder the white wire and resolder to the blank pad right next to the resistors. That’ll raise your current to about 1.5A right away.
yea… i expected it… the wires are actually a bit burned! sad case… well, a buck for a buck eh?
EDIT: the resistor is already modded on top of the capacitor… its a small value and i tested it to reset the memory in about 7-10 seconds. so if i increase the resistor value, then the time for est can be reduced? are there any dangers/damages if i put too high a value?
the pict i posted is the actual one when i opened it up
i’m using some sanyo’s 2600mah batteries… haven tried with my samsung batteries… well, i thought i had a good deal in the “sale”.
for e-bay one, they usually wont ship for free right? cause i’m from the same country as u are - Malaysia…
planning to try out your suggestion for the black pad, do the memory reset with a 1Mohms SMD 800 series resistor, and swap the wires for thicker and better wires.
whatcha think?
this right?
i read in some post than stacking another resistor would reset the memory mode even faster than increasing the ohms
anyone in BLF here would admit to this flashlight being their mods? and return to WB after that? haha
That’s right, desolder current wire and switch the location just like your picture. You can use thicker wires if you want, but I recommend you try one thing at a time.
Yours uses higher resistor than mine, yours are 2.2 / 4 = 0.55ohm whereas mine uses 1.5 / 4 = 0.38ohm. So that may explain the difference in reading and not caused by battery.
But after mod, you should get around 1.5A anyway since the resistors are bypassed.
As for ebay, you can always pick those seller with free shipping, no problem. My purchase prices above are all final prices. But nowadays after the nutty China shipping issues, everything’s gone up, most likely because everybody has been filing Paypal claims for delayed shipments.
I bought a gray 3 mode S5 a few months ago but didn’t realize at the time it was an 18650 light so I hadn’t gotten a chance to use it. I recently saw cr123’s at the dollar store so I picked up a couple to try it out. Its brighter than I thought but it does get pretty hot if I leave it on for more than a couple of minutes. Is that just how this light is, or am I driving it too hard with cr123’s? I’ve got other lights I use most of the time and I never have it on for long but I’m just wondering how safe it is to use cr123’s in it?
) just need the source to obtain those emitters and bins… any sponsors for this test? :bigsmile:
Heat management is the key - that’s the bottleneck factor for LED nowadays.
