The paper HAS to be removed for better thermal contact to the pill (and I believe the anodizing/paint should be removed for better thermal path too). I'm sure that each light is manufactured to different tolerances, so the 0.0001mm that one person adds with a shim is different from the 0.001mm that someone elses needs. You just have to adjust your own light for the most focused beam. I didn't notice mine not being focused entirely perfect until I compared it to another light which seems to be.
I will be going that direction. The power sag on my brothers light was pretty severe. Now with the paper removed, I just have to carefully remove the anodization. Trying to do this without totally removing the pill is tricky though. Don’t have a soldering gun to remove and reconnect the star. I guess I have a tedious sanding job for this evening.
Ya, until it’s your light and ya mess with it too much. 8)
Well at least we have some dimensional ranges that Viffer gave us to play with. Now I gotta go ferret out various copper shim stock at my local metal supply store that approximates his findings and go from there. It’s one of those things I’m not in a rush to do but my curiousity is piqued here and no doubt I will learn something from it.
Like Garry said, every light’s different and yes these things are VERY sensitive to reflector depth changes. Fiddling and patience - a necessary combo when working on these lights of our’s to get the most out of them. But that’s what flashaholicism will do to ya. Semi-controlled insanity.
for maybe making it easier to work on. There should be enough wire between the star and the pill face to remove the anodize without desoldering anything. At least on mine it’s that way. I’m gonna try Greased Lightning judiciously applied with a Q-tip. I’ll let ya know if it turns into the Titanic without an orchestra.
Lumatic, you may wish to pickup some copper foil from this Ebay seller. Here is a link to what I bought for wrapping P60 hosts. They sell various thicknesses. Good seller, recommended.
Ok, now I have a little twist on this thing. I just removed the bezel and lense off the light. With the light on a carefully lifted and pressed on the reflector. Moving it perhaps .050” each direction. Did this with it spotting on a wall about 10ft away. I could see absolutely no change in the spot, flood, or focus regardless of pulling or pressing. None. It just seams to me, at least in my brothers light, that as long as the base of the reflector is still fitted around the metal ring on the led, the slight depth change had no real effect. I’m sure if it was moved more, perhaps .10” in either direction, it would likely make a visual difference.
That little experiment tells me, at least to my mind and eyes, that the removal of that thin paper will have no effect on focus - on my brother light at least. Now someone else might have a more recessed pill or protruding led, whatever, and it might make some difference.
Anyway, for certain the paper removal in favor of a good thermal path makes much more sense to me. And I’m doing this at my brothers request - so if it backfires, he can’t complain. But I’m pretty confident we’ll see only gains from it. We did do lumen and lux tests on the light before hand, so we have a good baseline to compare the modded light to. That is if I can get that darn anodizing off so I can put the thermal paste on bare metal.
Quick question and sorry about not doing a search before hand, but we just picked up Radio Shack Brand Thermal Compound with 99.9% pure silver. I assume that should be a decent choice?
There was a serious, well done test of dozens of thermal compounds done on motherboard CPU’s (I can’t find the link at the moment). There was only a couple of degrees difference between the best and worst performers.
One potential problems with many thermal compounds is their performance over time. They tend to dry out and lose their thermal goodness. Checking the specs on some well known big name industrial compounds showed that some were rated at as few as 500 hours.
So we got the mod done on the A60. Removed the paper thing, sanded off the anodizing under the pill to expose bare metal, dabbed on a couple daps of quick silver thermal compound, and put it all back together.
We did a lux test, tailcap reading, and CP test before and after. The throw before we discovered was off due to this light needing longer than 1m to get proper readings. So that part I can’t compare accurately.
——————————————
Before the mod-
300L at start up, 170L after 30sec.
39,000cp (calculated at 1M-not a good test)
Tailcap 1.7amps
——————————————
After the mod-
335L at startup, 285L after 30sec.
57,500cp (calculated at 5M)
1.9amps
——————————————
So the major improvement was the power staying up there reasonable after 30sec - not dropping to almost 1/2 like the stock light did.
We also took the light out and did a real life throw test. It was cool dry night, about 45F, so it might have helped us out a little, but the light was impressive non the less.
This is how it did -
————————
50M-29.1cp
100M-6.9cp
200M-1.8cp
300M-.8cp
400M-.4cp
500M-.2cp
————————
So pretty impressive to say the least. I figure the temps and dry air boosted it another 25M or so based on the fact that it tests almost dead even with my brother Crelant 7G5 V1 inside when we got back, but the numbers outside were a good notch better than the 7G5 did when it was tested in more normal ambient conditions a couple weeks ago. Last night those numbers outside calculate closer to the 70K range.
Irregardless his A60 is a solid 500M thrower now. Awesome light for the money. And thanks to all members above recommending the paper removal mod - it’s a great one. Anybody on the fence doing - I say go for it. The power drop the stock lights have is pretty sad. The mod drastically improves on it.
Oh lastly a couple side notes. Apparently the Radio Shack thermal compound is actually real Quick Silver compound. It’s has radio shack packaging, but all Quick Silver name, tags, and info on the actual tube. And we also did a quick little tailcap reading with an AW IMR 18650. The light measured 2.4amp vs 1.9amp with a standard 18650 (ET). We did do all the above testing with the regular 18650 though, we were just curious how the IMR did, thus the tailcap reading.
Btw, did you get a noticeable difference in hotspot size with your changes? IIRC some here commented that removing the paper disk messed with the original hotspot dimensions some. On mine I can’t tell any difference from the original to the modded version.
I couldn’t see any difference. My brother thought it looked slightly different, but with out two lights to compare side by side, its really difficult to say.
Yeah my initial impression was that the spot was a little bigger but I think I was just a little afraid of removing the paper disc after reading both pros and cons on doing it and imagined it. All I know is now this is one BAD little thrower. Any reflectored light that throws neck and neck with my 7G5 gets my full respect and especially a single 18650 light that set me back $15.00. It out threw my HD 2010 too. Rdrfronty should be posting our updated chart with the Jacob a60 and the HD 2010 added to it on the original thread.
I got in three of these from DX and took one apart. No paper ring under the LED star, just ookie gookie pookie. The star is held to the “pill” via compression from the plastic insulator ring and reflector.
I did some measuring: at 4.0V in took 2.3A on high, 0.45 amps on low, around 1A strobing.
Low lumens: 67
High lumens: 250 at start, down to 200 lumens after 30 minutes.
CCT: 6000K to 6500K depending upon the unit.
PWM: 1010 Hz
Strobe: 9-10 Hz
I hope to do a run with all the sensors connected and post some plots soon…
I can tell on white wall hunting with this light it drops pretty quick. We took the green xre modded one out to the deer lease this weekend and at say 50 yards the beam looks muddled/blurry (maybe its the fading of the intensity from bad heatsinking). If that makes sense. :~ Comparing it to the small sun c10 (green xre also) at a distance of 108 yards the small sun spanks it for recognition of animals and general identification.
Guess i need to remove the pad on my two. lol
Wish i had measuring tools for the red and green lights i have to get some lux numbers.
The drop from 250 lumens to 200 lumens is a little bit on the high side of normal, but is acceptable. I was using a lab supply for that test so battery droop is not the cause. It looks like with the star in contact with the pill, you are OK. If you have that paper spacer under the LED, lose it!
BTW, the beam is a bit ringy with a well defined hot spot. Noticeable at closer distances, fine at distance. I tried screwing the reflector out, and the rings shifted some but the hot spot did not mutate.
Here’s the plot of the Deal Extreme A60 run on high. Battery was a Panasonic 2300 mAh. Got around 2 hours out of it.
The values are the center line of the plot area. The cursor values are those in the column with the “X”. The RMS values are a statistical average of all the points in the curves. Ignore the LED numbers in the left column… those sensors were not connected.
The light started out at around 220 lumens and was at 100 lumens near the end. Without all the clip-lead connections, the light would have started at around 240 lumens. Temp peaked around 50 degrees C.
There’s quite a bit of color temperature shift with this light… peaked at 6080K, fell to 5700K at the end.
Received my second A60… replacement for the one I botched. :~ Plan on checking for the paper disc and modding as needed. Hopefully this goes better than the first. Fortunately, the lens on this one appears very clean!
i got mine the other day from dx. it did not have the paper disc.
im going to mod mine with a nw xml and a kd 3a driver. ill have to fiddle with the height of the led to see how it turns out. ill probably use arctic alumina adhesive though so i dont have to be concerned with pressure holding the led down.
