One thing to remember is that if the copper is getting really really hot, the transfer to air is faster. The larger the difference between ambient and object the faster the transfer rate. The copper is so thermally efficient, it’s spreading that emitter heat nearly instantaneously, so it get’s uncomfortable to touch very fast.
I’ve had a Titanium Ring, a Tungsten Carbide ring, and of course, 14K Gold. If you touch a piece of ice to these different metal rings you can feel the speed of conduction as the cold travels around to the other side. Like Gold, Cu will move it throughout in an instant, surprising when you can feel it in that context. A large Aluminum heat sink will remove heat from a piece of metal in a big hurry, the better the contact between em the faster it goes. I use a 3x3x3 cube at the work table to set a newly re-flowed driver or mcpcb on, it cools enough to pick up within a few seconds.
Just saying it’s all relevant and a sink can take quite a heat dump but it can also fill up while waiting for ambient air to remove excess.
In my S41 the driver is held in by a retainer ring. Pop’s out with a piercer, don’t even have to use needle noose pliers. Small detail: it has a normal thread, so turn it loose in the opposite direction of the tailcap retainer ring.
I had the same problem on my X5 , it was just the pcb of the driver which was a little bigger in the sides . (the place it connects in the panel on the factory)
Nope. Have no intention to remove the driver. But when the retainer ring is loosened, the driver + spring gets “wobbly”. Maybe not the best choice of words, because English is not my first language. Can it be that the remainders of the spots where the driver comes out of the “production-sheet” were not properly filed off. So the driver has to be pushed in its seat with force and gets stuck?
Yep, the first Al X5 prototype got Quadded and sent to Connecticut for field testing. It’s still there, impressing Park Rangers on a regular basis. The second Al Quad I did for JohnnyMac, have made multiples in the copper and Al X5’s since, including the one sent to Neal that inspired this S41. His was the first one I threaded the pill into the head for easy removal, knowing he was going to dissect it.
Pretty sure that first one, with XP-L emitters, did ~3030 lumens. The rest are kind of a blur, too many lights, too many similarities.
Think I’m going to forget trying to save the driver and driver wires and maybe see if I can stick a screwdriver in the lead holes than hammer the back with a hammer. Maybe that will get it out.
Actually, I didn’t bother removing the driver. I had an S41 Nichia that I planned to leave unmodded, and an E14 XPG2, which I’d already emitter swapped to XPL HI and planned to driver swap to H17F.
I noticed that the driver in the S41 wasn’t stuck. With a small pick I was able to remove it pretty easily. So instead of trying to remove the E14’s stuck driver, I simply swapped the stars between the 2 lights. The Nichia star is now in the head with the stuck driver while the XPL HI are in the head with the H17F.
New driver is pretty nice. The head still gets very hot very fast though, even with temp sensor set to 50 degrees C. I might have to reduce temp settings to minimum. I have no doubt that heat is fine inside the head at the emitters and the driver. The real problem is the pill-less design with exposed copper head. The outside of the head will get burning hot to the touch incredibly fast. This is one reason why I think I prefer pills in lights like this… heat doesn’t transfer quite as easily to the outside of the light allowing for more time on turbo before it gets too hot to hold.
“Burning hot” to your hand is not the same thing as “hot enough to cause damage to the internals of the light or battery”.
What you’re forgetting is that the driver and emitter in the head of the light can probably withstand a couple hundred degrees higher temperature than your hand.
The heat needs to get out eventually… otherwise it will build up enough to become a problem. However, I’ve found with my mods that the prime limiting factor for how long I can run a compact overdriven light is always the heat on the outside, not the inside.
For example:
My FET driven triple XPL HI DQG Tiny III gets very hot. To address this I added an external aluminum heatsink. This helped a little, but not enough. I painted the heatsink with acrylic paint and superglue… this helped more, mostly due to the insulating property of the superglue. I then covered a few remaining exposed areas of the head with insulating Sugru (synthetic rubber). This helped a lot.
Do these mods restrict how easy it is for heat to get out? Of course. The inside will get hotter and stay hotter than without the sugru or super-glue coatings. Is this a problem? No.
My goal was to change the balance between the heat inside the light and the heat on the outside where my hand sits. These mods prolong how long the light can be held in the hand before “too-hot-to-hold” kicks in and I turn down the light. This doesn’t affect the interior of the light since the components can all withstand very high heat… much more so than my hand. The most sensitive component, the battery, doesn’t get anywhere near hot enough to do damage.
The result: Without any external mods, the DQG triple becomes too hot to touch within 15 seconds. With these mods I can run it for approximately 2 minutes at turbo… a vast improvement.
Now consider the S41/E14:
no pill
solid copper head for maximum heat conduction
The result is as expected: Run it with a FET driver, triple XPL HI, and a Samsung 30Q and the head becomes too hot to touch within 30 seconds. You can get around this by only holding the body tube, but that sounds risky… what if you accidentally touch the head? What if it turns on in your pocket?
Simply put: Copper head and no pill = head too hot too touch in seconds.
It’s not so much about cranking out absolutely top performance from the LED at all temps… but about running it as high and as long as possible without burning your hand.
Thanks for the description Firelight2. I get what you are saying about the holding a light vs what the light can handle… I get it, even without an engineering background and reliance on book thermodynamics…
I think if you want another Astrolux, you should act fast. It seems the Cometa fracas brought about by hand wringers and p-A trolls has severed the Manker/Banggood/Astrolux relationship. Manker may keep making these at their price, but the Astrolux may be no more…
Figured I would give a heads up on this. I am considering a second one just due to the possible scarcity.
