A big thanks to all the modders on this forum who have inspired me to have a go at making a flashlight. After the little red light build I have fallen for the small form factor of AA sized lights and the amount of light that they can generate. The light itself is not finished yet as I have a couple of reflectors on order that have not turned up yet so the one I made is temporary. I wondered around the shed a for few times looking for something suitable to make a torch out of and all the aluminium I had was either to small or way to big, when it hit me literally. I should of been looking up not down. A bent set of Renthall alloy bars of my dirt bike hanging there looking at me everytime I walked in the door. A quick measure and in no time the bends were cut of and I was left with a few bits of straight high tensile (gotta make it sound impressive) aluminium bar. A couple of days part time machining and here it is.
All the finished parts used in the build. The cap screws in the switch retainer have a 2mm thread. Ezarc should recognise the o'rings and rubber switch cap. I have also borrowed the glass lens from the little red flashlight as the lens on order has also not turned up.
Driver is a KD V2 8 7135.
Tailcap switch came from IOS. The lens o'ring sits in its own groove to stop it squashing out.
The end of the battery tube is recessed to clear the chips on the driver. Its made from a piece of plain Jane 3/4 aluminium bar.
Assembled. This light is in no way a miniature AA size flashlight. All the threads are M20x1mm pitch. On a MF Trustfire 14500 it pulls 2.9 amps at the tailcap on high so gets hot quickly. The home made reflector has a very large hot spot and not a lot of throw. Just a wall of light.
LED is an XM-L U2. This shot is low. I love the firefly light at this current, .04 amps.
C8 left and Solarforce L2M right.
The twins Arnie and Danny Devito.
Silver Light. The windmill to the right is 15 meters away. This is what I was saying earlier about this being a wall of light.
P60 XP-G2 for comparison. This will kill the silver light for throw.
My best effort at a white wall shot. Firstly the silver light. There is no hot spot as such.
And secondly the P60 again.
The LiFePO4 batteries turned up along with a couple of 18mm reflectors. One reflector was horrible and the other was a beauty. The reflector was for an XP-G so it was modified for the XM-L, for those interested here's a couple of shots with firstly, (do not compare with any previous shots as I have changed the iso on the camera from 100 to 200 and changed the aperture and shutter speed to suit),
LiFePO4 at 1.4 amps. High. Edit, corrected battery type
And secondly Li-ion at 3 amps. High. Feel free to do a mouse over as this silly old fool still can't work it out.
Thanks again guys. Cheers.
It will be interesting to see how it performs against the XP-G2 when the reflectors arrive. I was using it last night and like I mentioned earlier with the home made reflector there is just a wall off bright light on high and medium which is .9 amp at the tailcap. If its a good night tonight I will add a couple of fence shots (I fail miserably at taking white wall shots). The reflector angle is 20 degrees machined in a straight line to the LED hole.