A few pages back someone asked about a holster for their D4. I carry mine with the Maxpedition UFBS Universal Flashlight/Baton Sheath, the height and diameter can be adjusted to carry almost any flashlight. It’s expensive but it works for most all of my lights.
LOL
Nah… only California and New Jersey. 
While I dont have an S41/42, based on the reviews I dont imagine the host has enough mass to make a real difference. A few extra seconds of Turbo? Either one will get too hot to hold very quickly. I just set my D4 thermal config really low call it a day. You wont find a host this small that can sustain 2500+ lumens for any amount of time no matter how much copper it has on it.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the copper heads on the Manker E14II / Astrolux S41.
The copper is effective at getting heat away from the LEDs. However this has a major downside: The outside of the copper head will heat dangerously hot in seconds…. so hot that it’s too hot to touch. This is especially bad for the E14II and S42 where the switch button is in the head, because you may not be able to operate the controls without possibly burning yourself.
The limiting factor won’t be overheated LEDs, rather it will be overheated fingers. To prevent burns you’ll probably need to turn the temp sensor to an even more aggressive setting than on a stock D4 and will get even less time at turbo.
Also, both the Manker E14II and the Astrolux S42 have significantly larger heads than the D4. Sure you could swap the D4’s guts into one of those other lights with a copper head, but you’ll likely end up with a bigger, heavier light that can’t run as long at turbo.
I have a few S41 and 42’s, and the Copper is beautiful. It’s also about triple the weight. My favorite is the Stainless steel bezel and tail, black anodized Aluminum body with Copper head. The Aluminum S42 heats much quicker than the Copper version. I’m getting about twice the run time before it gets too hot.
My Manker E14II’s copper head gets too hot to touch much faster than my D4, all while producing much less light and weighing far more than the D4.
I changed the driver in my s41 xp-g3 to a mtn 17 dd driver and it went from 2300 to 3000 lumens.So the driver in it has alot to do with it.
I have a tactical strobe and party strobe in my new firmware, both with adjustable speed. However, I’m not sure if Hank will be willing to use it. I doubt he’ll go for the strike bezel idea though; all his lights so far have avoided any sharp or pointy parts.
At the moment, strobes are mapped to “click, click, hold”. It’s like a triple click, only the third press gets held longer. It remembers which strobe you last used, and goes to that one first. However, there is a bit of a pre-flash from the first two clicks, so the full-blast strobe probably won’t be as surprising as if the light were completely dark before strobing.
(pre-flash — the first click goes to moon until you let go, then goes to the memorized level on release, then the light turns off when starting the second click… this gives a faster and more intuitive response during regular use, but has the side effect of making strobes a bit less tactical)
The Astrolux lights are less bright for two reasons:
The D4 is brighter because its creator cares about quality and understands more about how to design lights.
However, copper would be helpful for extending the turbo runtime a bit. Copper can hold more heat, and generally is more useful as a heat-sinking material. The D4 could really use more thermal mass, except that this would also increase its actual mass and make it larger / heavier. But, that said, it does pretty well for aluminum. The unihead design and thick MCPCB shelf go a long way toward making it capable of handling heat.
I wouldn’t recommend trying to improve a S42 using parts from a D4. It would be difficult and have very limited returns at best. The most feasible option for a brighter Astrolux is to get a S41, replace its driver, and bypass its springs. It’s pretty close to the original BLF design, only using cheaper parts, so it can be modded back to a more impressive state relatively easily. The S42 is more of a dead end.
What’s the best battery to use on the d4?? Sony vtc5, 5a or vtc6… thanks.
I guess copper head would reduce thermal lag between the body and the driver, leading to more effective thermal control.
All of those 3 cells are good to use, the highest spec would give the highest output be it the vtc5 or vtc5a. I would have thought you would need a meter to see the difference though, to the eye all would look the same. How quick the D4 eats through the mah, you will soon be swapping out the cell for another…………….So used on higher outputs, it will be minutes before swapping out anyway.
I have used 30Q and vtc6 along with vtc5(dont have the a version). All work great, all get the light toasty this side of 20s…………
Not sure if this has been posted already, but this is a quick gallery of comparison shots between the D1 and two flavours of the D4 from a Chinese site.
ToyKeeper
How difficult would it be to put an e-switch on a tail cap?
Great beam pics, thanks for sharing! Even better when i worked out the title is under the pic :person_facepalming: ha ha
Great shots, thanks!
Copper won’t necessarily speed up the thermal response though; it’ll generally slow down the response. The reason is because copper is a more effective sponge; it can hold more heat energy. It’s like making the head out of ~142% as much aluminum, so it heats up slower and cools down slower, and the regulation can respond slower. Unfortunately, it also weighs ~332% as much.
Specific heat:
Density:
Specific heat by volume:
Quite difficult
A clicky has a rotating mechanism inside it like that of a pushbutton pen. Press and it clicks to “on”. Press again and it clicks to “off”, interrupting main current.
In contrast, main current does not flow through an e-switch. Instead, the driver remains powered at all times. The e-switch is simply a data input used to tell the driver MCU that the button has been depressed and it’s time to following its programming. Since main current does not flow through the e-switch, a much smaller switch with thinner wires can be used. Also, since the switch is merely a data input, a rotating clicky mechanism is not needed. Mechanically, an e-switch uses a momentary pushbutton in which electricity flows only while the button is held down.
The biggest problem is you can’t simply swap out a clicky for an e-switch. You either need a dedicated setup with the driver in the tail near the switch (not easy to do), or you need separate electrical connection to the tailcap e-switch. Lights designed to use clicky switches don’t have this extra electrical connection.
Some solutions:
Bottom line: converting a tailcap clicky light into a tailcap e-switch light can be done, but doing so is a quite advanced and difficult mod. I modded a couple Sipik 58s to use tailcap e-switches by adding an extra electrical connection from the head to the tailcap. Building the mod and making sure it worked took some very careful thought and probably around 15 hours of work per light.
I think those are Neal’s pictures — the same Neal who has helped with so many BLF projects. He sells Emisar products now too.
Sure, but the temperature difference between what user feels and what driver reads would be lower.
