My thoughts on receiving the Supbeam K50 V2

Just got the K5 today and I thought I would do a quick opening and my thoughts on it.

Big hole in the box. Didn't look like it actually hurt the case.

but the case has issues. Not well made and I would not trust the handle to carry this thing around very much.

Recommendation: Forget the warranty card and pay us for the return shipping instead!

What you get. Light, extra pushbutton rubber, charger, cables, car adapter.

Color issues

Looks worse in real life. The head is Matte Black. The Control ring is Grey. The body is shiny black.

Not acceptable at ANY price.

AR lens

I think the carrier will hold protected cells. Mine are unprotected and there's lots of room. In fact, I wouldn't use unprotected in this. They slip out of the carrier, because there is no tension to speak of.

The spring is not centered and if you just slap in the carrier and screw it together, it jams instead of falling into the center hole in the carrier.

Not good at any price.

That's the voltage reading. On high I read 1.5 amps, so that's what? 4x1.5 amps, because the batts are in series?? I dunnow.

Lots of springs, lots of resistance. Springs everywhere. Don't they ever learn?

My camera would not take the beam as I saw it, either that or I didn't see all this. To my eyes the beam was bright white. I have to say, it's the tightest beam on an XM-L2 that I have ever seen.

It measured 101,200 lux at one meter on high.

Glam shots?

Guess you know, I prefer my Maglites to this light.

All in all, I am glad I did not pay money for this light. I would have been seriously disappointed! The different colors in the body and the general workmanship are not at the point where I would want to pay big bucks for it. The light is probably worth it, just because of all the electronics and all the work that went into it, but the color difference spoils it all for me.

I don't know what I will do yet. I really don't want to mess with it at all. I have zero interest in throwers any more and don't want to tear everything apart to do an MT-G2. I don't really want to do a giveaway just yet either, so it will go on the shelf till I figure it all out.

Sell it! You deserve the commission :slight_smile:

Passaround??? :bigsmile:

Agree bout the springs. Maybe they are better springs in these $$$ lights? Well...

The spring design is all the same in this class light (ThurNites, etc.). Usually we wire them up, just like the $10 lights. It won't get you more output (because of the well regulated driver), but should lengthen the battery life by drawing less current from the cells.

We pretty much know bout spring compression issues - a high degree of compression reduces resistance, so that's why sometimes protected cells perform better than unprotected - nothing to do with the cell itself, simply it's length resulting in better compression.

I figured they would have sent you a perfect one since you went through all that work to organize the GB… I guess not. :~

I noted the carrier seating issue as well; have to be careful when threading the tube in, definitely.

About the springs in the battery tube... wouldn't the only one that matters, in regards to performance, be the center spring? The others are just for the parallel charging, right?

That’d be cool, one member doing one mod at a time.

Cells are in series not in parallel, even if they placed them so you to think that way.

i have the same colors of you OL :~

its a flashlight for coming out by only dark :nerd_face: :*

Springs are not a big deal for high-voltage / low-current setups. You just aren’t going to drop much voltage at 1.5A.

I see where you are coming from on the anodizing issues. Different colors is bad enough, but different surface finishes really takes the cake. If you cared to do it, maybe strip and polish is an option? You could possibly even leave some black accents?

1.5 amps x 16.48v = 24.72 watts... though that's not entirely accurate, the voltage will fall when you draw 1.5A from them. To get the actual number you'd have to measure the voltage while it's running.

i hope my X40 doesn’t have any problem :~

The cells charge in parallel.
The light functions in series.

I’m thinking the resistance for the springs that make contact for the charging circuitry wouldn’t have any impact on the resistance of the ‘functional part’(not really sure what to call this).

i gonne try the collor do with shoe polish

My, my, OL. That thing sure does suck.

I am wondering if you boil it with Black Rit dye powder for a few minutes the colors might be more uniform, but will it hold?, who knows?

I guess I should feel extra lucky, as there were no faults of any kind with my light or it paraphernalia. The entire lights anodizing is an even matte black.

It wouldn't charge at first, but the problem was the little button in the center of the charging cable. It was a little cockeyed, like when you're trying to tighten down a tail switch and the little brass spring cap goes awry. I just poked it, and it snapped into place.

I'm not big into throwers that just give you a point of light in the distance. I shone it at an apartment 400 yards away accros a highly illuminated hiway, and it lit up the whole sided lots of usable spill. The light throws far, and I can also see what it's lighting up.

I'm extremely happy with my purchase Justin, and I'd like to thank you for making it happen.

That purple Maglite, though :heart_eyes:

Well, not touching mine lasted a couple of hours. I have some boards coming for MT-G2 maglites. One might fit in the K50 for a 9 amp MT-G2. Guess I will totally strip it tonight at work and see what happens. Probably won't be a magnetic ring any more, but who knows. I will have to take some good shots of the driver and send them to another member for analyzing. Might still be a magnetic control ring when done...

Stripping sounds like a good idea. A polished K50, hmmmmm.

I wasn't expecting anyone to make a separate circuit so that cells working in series to power the driver (16.8V) to be charged in parallel (4.2V).