Well, Im' certainly not worthy of nitpicking your modding skills, so I won't do it!
Thanks for your answer, that's what I was thinking as most probable to do.
My guess is that it’s due to him modifying a red version and me modifying a white one, either that or they changed their design slightly since the batch they sold to Fasttech that I got one from.
One suggestion on this - after you’ve trimmed as much as is comfortable from the leads and soldered it all together, give it all a twist as you seat the driver. This winds the two leads around each other like a helix, takes up that slack and holds everything down tight. Of course you don’t want to do it so tightly that you tear something loose; just enough to put some tension on the wires and keep them out of the way.
This is why I prefer to seat my driver last, after soldering the leads to the mcpcb. I just feed the wires through the holes and leave the driver itself dangling underneath the pill while I solder it to the emitter board. Then I twist the wires together and seat the driver.
Or course that’s just one way to do it. No reason it has to be done that way.
This is what I usually do. For some reason I put the driver in first which is a bit backwards. And once it goes in it ain’t coming back out, which is why I had to trim it. The way you mentioned is certainly better.
Trimming the wires is good, don’t be afraid to have just enough to reach the solder pads on the MCPCB. The only time it would ever be an issue is if you take the light apart in the future and needed to trim the wires back for some reason. Otherwise only good things come from shorter wires.
That is it :) Thanks for telling that.
Now I know it is at least 200kcd capable with xpl hi or even more with dedomed xpl.
Bypass tailcap spring and expect at least 10-20% lux grow. Please do that. It is easy. Lot of info about that here on BLF. Shorter driver wires also helps a bit.
I wonder if a spring bypass is worth it, with that brass stud covering the spring?b I don’thave any copper braid lying around either, so I may need to get some.
Not copper braid friend.
Use 22AWG wire.
Disassemble tailcap, Strip one end of 22 awg wire, tin it, solder it at bottom of switch mcpcb(direct on any solder contact of tailcap spring), now put up some solder paste on top of the spring, turn it upside down, and touch that solder paste with generous tip of solder, now when you have tinned top of the spring just cut needed length of 22awg wire, strip and tin it, and then solder at top of the spring.
Easy peasy :)
Forget the copper braid, go straight for silicone wire for the bypass. And you can solder right to the brass cap
With the bypass done is there a need for the brass cap?
Are the stock red / green LED’s useful at all? Can they be driven harder with a better driver, or would a better red LED be recommended for that?
I feel like it is. The spring is kind of flimsy and it acts as kind of a sleeve that goes through a nylon washer. As to your next question about the XP-E emitters. I personally don’t know how hard they can be driven.
The top bin available XP-E2's would do much better, the ones Richard sells for example, and his rating is 1.9A max. Looks like the stock ones are XP-E's on a typical cheap low end aluminum MCPCB. I have top or near top bin AMBER and GREEN XP-E2's on Noctigons in two UF-1504's, and they are outstanding. The green looks like a wide laser beam while the amber doesn't show the beam as much, but lights up objects at a good distance as well as the green, it seems like. We use AMBER instead of RED because the specs are much better, and really can't tell the difference much in beams outdoors. Comparing RED to AMBER, I can see the difference as in the picture below (RED in triple "nut light" on left), but hard to tell outdoors:
Lots of red emitters are very orangey, like you noted, but you can find 660nm deep red emitters if you search for them. I’ve got a 660nm XP-E driven at 1.9 amps in a convoy host. That thing is very red. Not as much output as an XP-E2 emitter though, but it suits my purposes.
I’ve got one of those photo red emitters too. I wish they would make them in xp-e2
My status says it is still processing. Anybody got shipped status yet?
One of the same for me, despite the fact I was reassured that my order was going to be shipped by the end of the week...
Who reassured you this? Did Gear Best? I got a shipping notice last night for my pills. I mentioned many times in this thread Gear Best only ordered a portion of the whole quantity desired and the other portion was still yet to be ordered. So you may not have been in that first group of people. I got an email from my contact at Brinyte about the second quantity ordered in the middle of Friday night.
I guess I should make it more clear. I don’t have any idea how many people have ordered lights, now that the Group Buy has public codes. I made some guesses as to when some initial orders would be shipped out- but it was that- a guess. Gear Best in no way has told me when what order ships out, or when they order new stock from Brinyte. Brinyte has been more communicative about the whole process than Gear Best. I know early last week Gear Best had stock in. And that’s basically it. Gear Best is often slow to ship things, even if they have things in stock. I am going to assume some people had stuff shipped last week and others may have stuff shipped late next week. I have no control over how long it takes Gear Best to ship things they have in stock.
I am not an agent of Gear Best, I don’t work for them, and am getting zero kickback from this sale. The people who are making out good on this are Gear Best, Brinyte, and people buying this light at $7 less shipped than the nearest competitor.
Most of the stuff I order from Gear Best ships within 3 days- 2 weeks. For all you or I know, Gear Best sold out of all their initial stock in 24 hours. I know now that they’ve ordered a second group of lights that are still in transit to them. We also have no idea how many people have ordered the lights. I told Gear Best several times they underestimated the quantity, and they should have ordered more. There’s nothing else I can do.
Really you just need to be patient on this.
Mine too, order status is still processing. Maybe they don’t have it yet on stock?
I waited for a while and made my order today, if the lights were shipped to them friday night, I expect my order to be shipped within a week or so :D!