Do any intl-outdoor.com reps post here? v. they shipped the wrong parts.

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

I ordered a pair of CREE XM-L T6 0D LED’s with a color temperature: 7000-7500K

And this is their own pic of the part:

But the ones they shipped me don’t say XML on the part, instead they say CREE with a letter J in the lower right corner.

Going by their pics, they only have two like that, neither one which has the same color temp range.
http://www.intl-outdoor.com/cree-xml-t6-3b-led-16mm-mcpcb-p-652.html
http://www.intl-outdoor.com/cree-xpg-q2-8a-led-16mm-mcpcb-p-654.html

This is unacceptable to me. I spent a lot of time deciding on these parts.

2

Hank is a member here, and will look after you - probably in a couple of weeks, after the holidays, I’m afraid.

3

Email them direct, thanks very very helpful, they are shut till after Chinese New year though.

4

figures.

:frowning:

5

hmm… their website says they’re running until the 15th.

6

Hank will straighten it out.

7

I linked the two that are visually similar. The dark one looks identical, and it is in fact listed as an XML.

I have no idea how many rows are in the leds. How do I check that?

And at any rate, I expect the product to match what I ordered top to bottom. When there’s a change it takes seconds for them to reflect that in the posted image.

8

I found another one that looks like the same pcb, and is also an XML that only says CREE.

http://www.intl-outdoor.com/cree-xml-u2-2b-led-16mm-mcpcb-p-637.html

9

Almost all sites have a ‘picture for illustrative purposes’ line somewhere in the T&C’s. It’s very hard to keep on top of images when you are a reseller as suppliers can change specs without telling you. From everything I read your issue will get sorted out, IntOut have a good rep with other users. I know it’s frustrating as hell when you just want to play with your new toys but it’s a risk with any purchase.

10

If it’s the same part, then all’s well that ends well.

But there’s enough reason to think this is wrong.

Wrong color. Wrong wording on the part. And a couple of matches that are not what this is supposed to be.

Those rows are really tiny, and I can barely make them out with my el-cheapo magnifying glass.

As far as the listing pic goes, whatever. This is obviously not the correct part.

11

Oh, and it’s the brightness that matters.

There’s big differences between some of this stuff.

12

Yeah, the difference is so big that you cant see it by eye. Also, the error margin is pretty much as big as the difference between flux bins. :D

13

I bought about 8 or so of the 18650 XML lights in the past few months, and there’s pretty big differences between the brightness of them. Obviously the driver plays a big part in this as well, but there’s a heck of a lot of posts on this forum about the differences between parts.

14

There sure is, I'm just saying that a good T6 binned LED can be as bright as a bad U2 binned LED.

Also, if you take a look at this chart:

a 0D tint can sometimes be very close to 1A, 1B or 0C. I just wanted to say that this isnt all that exact, there are error margins and you wont notice it unless you can compare side by side, sometimes not even then.

15

I hear ya. The color tint could vary and it wouldn’t make much of a difference either way. I just like the bright white versions.

But i’m just worried that this one doesn’t even say XML on it. Too easy for that to be an entire batch that was wrong.

This is going to an LED light I bought from DX that arrived doa. The one I pulled out of that, says CREE XML right on the pcb.

I bought a pair of them and the other one is REALLY bright.
So I thought i’d swap out not only the LED but also the driver, to see if I could improve on the one that works.

16

“Try measuring it then. The substrate (square board) for the XM-L is a lot bigger than for XP-G.

XM-L: 5mm x 5mm

XP-G: 3.45mm x 3.45mm

If you can get someone else with better eyes to look at it, here’s what they look like.

http://www.shoptronica.com/img/images/Comparativa%20CREE.jpg

I agree with Nightcrawl that the brightness will be virtually indistinguishable by eye. How it’s driven and the optics are the big factors. You might be able to tell the difference in tint if you have something to compare it with.

If brightness was what you wanted, why did you go with a T6 instead of a U2 or U3?”
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Funny you should ask that. I just happened to see some posts about the U2, right before I made my order for this.
The posters were saying that yes, the U2 is technically brighter, but that it takes more amperage to reach that apparent brightness. Which if true, is effectively a limiting factor since this is for a single 18650 battery style light.

And as I just mentioned in the post previous to this, the XML T6 light this is replacing was REALLY bright. I have no problem being in that range.
In fact to state it more correctly, the issue here is not that the T6 isn’t bright enough. It’s that I don’t want less than that.

17

PCBs are built by many people. LEDs themselves are only by Cree. It really doesn’t matter what writes on the PCB as they don’t resemble a family or a series or a manufacturing batch. XML is a six core emitter, XPG is a four core, XPE is a three core. Newer type 2 emitters don’t show you their cores so you can measure their sizes if you’re not familiar with them already.

I have many XMLs with black PCBs. The white ones look better but I’ve never had a problem with the black ones either. They are both aluminum. If you were promised a copper PCB that’s all another story.

18

Just FYI, a U2/U3 XM-L will be brighter than a T6 when driven at the same amperage. The higher binned emitters are more efficient, meaning more lumens/watt.

19

1. The PCB is what the writing is on and the fact that that is different has almost no bearing on whether or not the LED is an XM-L T6 0D as you ordered. That’s like ordering a chocolate muffin and complaining that it isn’t chocolate because the paper case is a different colour to the one you saw in the advert. I’m not saying that it definitely is the same one you ordered, (as the muffin may still not be chocolate) just that the reasons you have given are not a good reason to think that it isn’t (to find out you should really ‘taste the muffin’ i.e. test the LED).

2. T6 and U2 are ‘flux bins’, they reflect the brightness of an LED at a given current (for XM-L 700ma) all XM-Ls will have a very similar current to brightness slope, but the bin reflects the overall efficiency. An average U2 will be roughly 7% brighter that an average T6 binned XM-L at any given current.

3. The problem with your light from DX probably is not the LED, but the driver circuit, LEDs are much harder to break than cheap circuitry and are much less often the problem when a light stops working.