I just gave away my “Sipik”, or something of that stile, to a night runner. I ordered an other from the same place, which is http://www.ebay.com/itm/121161815800 . It was only $10 with shipping, but I am not sure about the quality. Where have others been getting them?
Review was informative
I just got the “Sipik” type from ebay seller digitalzone88 ($9)
The listing has changed a bit so I won’t link; there are a lot of variations out there, as noted above.
Mentioned: Your best modified flashlight (buy) in 2014?
This light’s battery tube is symmetrical — the one I got has the button on the left side, unlike all the pictures.
It seems sturdy enough; I agree it’s awfully blue-white and needs modding, which will be easy to do.
EDIT — oops.
That didn’t last long.
The center contact spring broke right off — it looks like a bad cold-solder connection failed where the spring was just sitting on the edge of a board in the middle of the light.
Yellow thing is the board the spring was soldered to; raggedy gray thing is where the bottom of the spring was before it fell off.
Nothing on the spring itself but a little green corrosion.
Anyone taken one of these apart?
EDIT, got $5 refund on $9, good enough I guess if I can get the thing apart to make a better positive contact.
Has anyone successfully unscrewed the battery tube (it’s in 2 halves, screwed into the center part; somehow one is the positive and one is the negative side, so there’s an insulation layer in there somewhere — and looking straight down into where the spring fell off, there’s an insulating board.
I need to get that board out, and make it support a better-anchored positive spring, and get it all back together.
EDIT, and with a little DeOxIt Gold to clean up the conductive plating on the insulating board, and a little creative spring-bending to make at least somewhat better contact, and reassembly with an insulating gasket dropped over the spring to at least discourage it from waving across the tiny gap to the metal case, it works. Replaced the emitter with a neutral one with better color and it’s a decent headlight. Still a little worried about that spring short-circuiting, may try to slip more insulation into the thing in various places.
I got my new one from the Ebay store I linked above. The only problem is next mode memory that didn’t go away with a pencil mark on the capacitor.
As with the first one, I increased flood. I took one fin, about a millimeter, off the back of the bezel ring, which also reduced the throw. And another mm. off the back of the sliding head, which increased the flood without affecting the throw. The pill now nearly touches the lens, but the LED is set back in the pill, so the flood is still not maximum for the lens. The anodizing is not good for files, but mine was already dull from filing the coatings off stars to get copper disks. I might put a new driver to fix the NMM and an old XM-L in it.
and after taking it apart and making a better connection for resoldering the spring, it’s become the first-grabbed headlight at our house
(much preferred over several generations of old 5mm-LED headlamps we’ve had around)
Hmmm, you’re making me want another one to start grinding pieces off.
Great post, I know it’s a year since you wrote it but I’m trying to find a decent headlamp. Great seeing what the common cheap ones are made with.
Thanks for your review! It’s affordable. I prefer to the 90° angle throw of light.
Excellent reviews, very detailed pictures, great job , lights however are trash
