I know you can run them over 3A on aluminum, but you can’t run them like this light plan to do (at least not how i plan to, including low resistance mods), if you don’t want to cook the LED.
I guess you could with a short turbo timeout and with a severely restricted lumens output, but whats the fun in that 
But i am a bit curious what the performance would be, if i would happen against all the best intentions to only be a aluminum mcpcb in this light because we didn’t get to 500 sign ups.
I guess we’d be finding our copper elsewhere.
Got Noctigons? :bigsmile:
I’m not asking for this driver, but was there a similar one sold somewhere?
More neccesarry than the actual material is if the star is DTP. That is necessary in a light with a Fet driver.
What is DTP please?
Thanks for all the answers to my question.
Good point.
Do we know if the original A6 mcpcb is DTP?
DTP is Direct Thermal Path. This is an unobstructed heat path from the bottom of the emitter through the star. Most aluminum stars that are OEM have a layer of dielectric that is essentially a fiberglass like the masking material between the pad and the metal of the star. The good copper star has pure copper between the emitter and the flashlight host, no blockage.
DTP = Direct Thermal Path
(MC)PCB = (Metal Core) Printed Circuit Board / “Star”, on which the LEDs are mounted
No worries Cajampa. I really think that we will get there and get copper. We are over the half way mark and we are not hurrying this anyway :)
Now that I have said that - I started playing around a little bit to find out a few things for no other reason other than curiosity. Bare in mind that I do not have a light meter and I did not take any current measurements due to time.
First - I installed one of my removed XM-L2 U2's (on bare bottom aluminum). I figured since it was a "take-off" that I could sacrifice it if necessary. I expected a blue light and a poof. Nope!! Not even close. I even took it to work and used for a couple of nights - no issues. Perceived brightness was the same but spot was larger than the XPL. In order to gauge brightness, I compared both the XPL and XML2 to my daily triple.
Second - When reinstalling the XPL I found that if you apply too much heat to the star that the damned emitter will dedome itself. That must be an XPL thing because that is the second time that happened to me. Of course the output seemed to drop but the spot did get tighter yet and the tint got warmer.
Third - My constant lights are my EE F30, my S2 Triple, and occasionally my Fenix PD35. Because of the triple i have grown accustomed to heat and even what I think would be dangerous heat (think 10 hours of not steady on but still very constant usage not by just me but also non-flashlight people at work who now sport triples :)). One would think that with the FET and 1500 Lm and over 5A that this would be scalding hot. In my opinion....absolutely not. Do I know that it is warmer that my stock PD35..yes but my F30 runs hotter than my PD35. This A6 just barely runs hotter than my F30 and nowhere near as hot as my S2 Triple.
If Dale is up to it..maybe he can verify what I am saying but til now these are my findings. If I find time maybe I will do some current measurements (after my soldering station comes in). None of this playing around was performed in any scientific manner whatsoever.
Yes, the XP-L de-domes itself particularly easily. When it’s hot, it only takes a gentle nudge to make the dome come cleanly off. It seems to have a new type of easily-separable dome design. It’s common for people to do “hot dedomes” on these instead of the usual “gas dedome” used for older emitters.
Thus why I need the soldering station. LOL.
You want me to put the Al mcpcb back in? Well that’s just wrong! 
I can do that, I’ll run it in the lightbox and time it, hit it with the IR meter with both types and then show the difference. Maybe I can set up my camera and video the lightbox, show how the light is actually performing.
We don’t see it, because our eyes adjust continually, but in the lightbox you can watch the numbers fall and fall and fall… easy comparison between the Al and Cu star.
Now we are talking science !! :) Only if you have time and are up to it but not really that important :)
Do I have to pull the factory XP-L back off this Noctigon or can I just stick a new bare V6 2C on an Aluminum star? I’ve got the 5 minute video made with the Noctigon in place.
I think I’ll go ahead and pull the factory emitter, put it back on the aluminum star so the only change is the star itself. I’ll even charge the same cell back up.
@bugsy
Interesting, so you mean that when you soldered on the copper star it got so hot it just dedomed itself nondestructively 
how do you like the tint after? what was it to start with and what do you think it ended up hue wise?
And i like it hot 
my little Jexree Mini with a Efest 10440 DD driven XP-L V6 get so hot you can almost burn your hand on it but only almost and now in the winter it is very nice to get a little handwarming action besides the huge burst of light.
And i have found the hand to be a surprisingly good heatsink, if i only hold it by the top of 2 fingers it get much hotter than if i really hold it inside the hand with a lot of contact.
Anyway as Dale pointed out, we who like to tune these things ourself would probably switch it out for a Noctigon in a heartbeat if it wouldn’t come with copper, so it is not a deal breaker for me, but it would save some money if it came with copper and a V6 with good tint stock.
@Dale thanks for testing i don’t know if i have seen a test of this in a flashlight with a battery & reflector yet, only djozz & Match tests of the isolated LED on mcpcb’s.
Um. Well. I, uh… sorta kinda fried a brand new V6 2C. Damn aluminum! It melted my centering ring too!
I’ll get the vid together. It didn’t take long at all. Seconds.
Sorry to hear that 
What happened? did it overheat when you reflowed the LED.
Arctic Alumina Thermal paste under it, everything the same as moments before. But it was more juice than the aluminum star could handle, no direct thermal path. The emitter is actually still working, albeit de-domed now. I managed to pull the centering ring off and put it back on the other one, stuck the Noctigon back in and it works fine. Doesn’t look so pretty down in there but hey, my sample lights somehow gets scarred anyway! lol
It was in good contact with the head of the light, it got too hot to hold very quickly.
With the copper star on board, I saw 155º at the head in about 4 minutes. It got close to that in about 30 seconds or so, I will have to check the video but man it was fast! Vid’s are uploading. I was going to tie them together but went ahead and uploaded em as they came out of the camera.
Edit: A quick tail cap amperage reading still shows 6.06A with another freshly charged Samsung 20R. This is the Noctigon back in the light.
EditII: Quick pic
These are really hotrod results, nice! I hope that EE dares to take it in production like this. Finally a production light that is worthy of the 'hot surface' pic, can we have that please? ;-)