51 led Defiant mod to 12 up XP-G

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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So the photo below outlines the basics of the build. The host is the shell from the Defiant 51 LED flashlight seasonally available from Home Depot. I've made several posts and build threads regarding these hosts and the short story is that they have a lot of potential as well as a lot of shortcomings. The attributes that keep me coming back are that they're a short side clicky host that share a lot of measurements with a d cell maglite. fact is they're just a cool host that feels great in the hand.

The basic internal components are a foursome of aluminum 3 up boards with optics that used to support Nichia 219b emitters, a short chunk of 2" aluminum rod, and a BLF17DD with four modes and off time memory. I chose some cheap first gen XP-G emitters sold by Fasttech in five packs. These were advertized as 4500k emitters so I used nine of these and three cool white XP-Gs I had laying around. The result is more of a sunny yellow than warm or neutral white. On to the build pics.


The first step is to unflow from the tiny original boards and reflow onto the triples.

The stars are attached to the heatsink with thermal epoxy in a non-random and pleasing pattern.

Next step is to wire the driver in such a way as to keep the main emitter current out of the cheap clicky switch. I was expecting over 10 amps so this was an important step. The switch only handles what current the driver components need for switching and regulation of the emitters.

I've been using hot glue to insulate the drivers and hold them in place. I wouldn't recommend that for 7135 or buck drivers but it seems to work fine for these cool running FET based drivers. acheiving solid negative contact to the body has always been a challenge with these hosts but I tried the soldered screw trick on this one and it works great.

There will be at least a couple people yelling something like "don't turn it on you fool you've got it wired backwards!!!". Those folks would be both correct and too late by far. Only cost me a diode

The driver is now fixed and the emitter are wired in parallel. Ready for the optics!

All done, the light draws 14 amps off a Powerizer 26650 and puts out about a 3000 lumen wall of sunny yellow light. It has a pretty nice low mode too!

I always put the Foy bezel on for Defiant glamor shots!

Well, the prototype is done, quad triple XP-L mag next?

Brian

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How cheap?

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That ^

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How cheap on total? I have a bunch from all my neutral swaps but they are all cool white and Mismatched. Will be cheap.

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What about a three five-packs of 3000-3200K 5W LG LEDs from fasttech for $5.74 per pack?

They’re XP sized, warm white, not abysmally inefficient and according to LG’s website and datasheet (I’m thinking they’re the H35C1’s), they’re supposed to be >80CRI.

I believe there’s a thread about them here called LG LED similar to XP-G, fits on cree star. There’s also some beamshots of it in Ota’s Beamshot Thread.

ECHO

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+1 :bigsmile:

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Gentlemen,

Thanks for the input. The XP-E2s seemed like a good deal but I wanted to avoid cool white if possible. The LG deal was also very good but the five pack deal got me looking and I found some 4500k XP-G R5 5 packs for $5 at fasttech. Comes out to about $0.93 each with enough left over for a spare triple. I'll update with a build thread later.

Brian

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Those XP-G’s sound like a great deal too. Good find

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Bump for update