Will get to writing a review, but here are some pics.
The important bit
The crinkly stuff round the edges of the reflector is aluminium foil used to improve the heatsinking into the body. While it's messy and fragile, it works well. The bond wires look strange to me.
With the foil peeled off
As you can see, I use quite a lot of it - enough to make the module stiff enough in the tube that you need to use the head to push it down into place as you screw it on.
The back end - pretty typical - but not very pretty at all
Will get measurements and beamshots done at some point - but by eye it is brighter than either the DX or KD MC-E dropins.
I used aluminum tin from a redbull can.....it was you and brted that mentioned doing that for better heatsinking. What host are you using, how many cells, and whats the voltage of the emitter.
At the moment it is in a black Ultrafire WF-504B which is identical to the Uniquefire L2 which is a clone of the Solarforce L2 but with a plain bezel.
It isn't all that cheap at $17.35 but is looking good so far. It is being powered by an 18650 as it is a 4.2V max part. Current draw is around 2.4A on high so it ought to be driven pretty hard. For comparison, the DX MC-E is pulling 1.55A from the same cell. At that current draw I'd even not be keen on an IMR 16340 - that is a heavy current draw for an RCR123.
It does have a bit of a hole in the centre, though not as bad as either of the MC-E dropins I have. It doesn't show much on these two 2' from the ceiling beamhots below.
Round about an hour of runtime on high with a typical Chinese 18650 of recent vintage. Probably over an hour on an AW 2600mAh cell. About ten minutes on an IMR 16340
I doubt that it'd light with any protected RCR123 and the cheap purple ones at those sorts of currents are just asking for trouble - will stick an IMR in it and see.
At 5 minutes, the whole light is warm/hot - it is the sole source of illumination in here apart from this screen (Which i don't think the meter's sensor can see as it is behind the screen) and there is plenty of light from the ceiling bounce to work in here. Output is down to about 85% will stop the test at 65% since the IMRs are unprotected cells. Have my lux meter pointing at the ceiling and am keeping an eye on the output. At 8 minutes down to 80%. 9 minutes, light too hot to hold. Ow! This is pretty brutal abuse of the cell, especially as it must be pretty hot in there now. 65% at 12 minutes and that's as low as I'm keen on discharging the cell. The cell is far too hot to recharge yet, I'll leave it overnight to cool before I recharge it
These currents and temperatures are up there in the "going boom" territory for the usual cheap unprotected RCR123 cells - don't try this one at home kids.
Should be able to do some in half an hour. It isn't fully dark yet, but is getting there. Actually at this time of year it is only really fully dark between midnight and 2am - it''s 10:30pm just now, I'll give it a try around 11pm.
Well by judging the hotspot on that emitter it looks like it would make a good thrower as well, do you by any chance have any smooth reflectors that you can throw the pill in.
Afraid I don't own any smooth reflectors on any of my P60's. Just checked all of them and most are a light orange-peel finish and some are a medium orange-peel. The smoothest one I have is on a KD MC-E reflector and it is still LOP.
Have lined up my 3 quad-die dropins. In approximate order of brightness they are the DX MC-E, the KD MC-E and the DX P7. Peak lux at 1m on high. Same cell for all 3
DX 5120
KD 8580
DX P7 6350
Lightbox numbers since the throw numbers surprised me.
DX MC-E 1840
KD MC-E 2540
DX P7 2410
I'm surprised by these numbers as I'd have said the P7 was easily the brightest of the three. Could actually do with more range than my backyard offers for these guys but I'll see what comes out.
Lined up most of the multi-die lights I own. DX MC-E dropin, KD MC-E dropin, DX P7 dropin, and a Piritlight SG-L8 Raidfire Spear clone with an MC-E in it. Forgot about another P7 light i own. The settings for these pics are NOT the ones I usually use - I've dropped the ISO from 200 to 80 and the exposure from 4 seconds to 2. Please do not compare any of these pictures to any of my others as the exposure is less than a quarter of what i normally use on this test range.
The tripod was still in the usual place and the tree is still fifty feet away. However, by way of an experiment I nailed a sheet of A3 paper (much the same area as US 11x17 paper) to the tree as a target. All of these lights have holes in their beams and I aimed the holes at the paper. Sadly, the holes did not show up. The KD MC-E has the ugliest beam of this lot, it is very ringy, even with the OP reflector.
Control
DX MC-E Low
DX MC-E High
KD MC-E Low
KD MC-E Medium
KD MC-E High
DX P7 Low
DX P7 High
Another control
Piritlight SG-L8 MC-E Low
Piritlight SG-L8 MC-E High
I left all of these light on on my desk for the last 30 minutes as it's time I dropped the voltage on the cells to storage levels. All of them were uncomfortably hot to hold, but the DX P7 and the Piritlight were the hottest. The DX P7 in a Solarforce L2 body is painful to hold and is too hot to take apart just yet. The aluminium foil is obviously doing its job.
It is that. About 70C - 160F at a guess by the way my fingers hurt - and I have pretty heatproof hands because in one lab job the best that could have happened if I dropped hot stuff was the loss of both feet. I once managed to hold onto a beaker full of boiling pure sulphuric acid (310C 584F) for long enough to put it down safely. Just about everyone within ten miles knew I wasn't happy though. I'd no fingerprints for a couple of months after that. the smell of burning fingers is not nice
But the air temperature isn't. By my standards it is shorts and T shirt weather - it hit 15 centigrade - 59F today - Currently, just after midnight, it is about 7C - call it 45F
That was with as much aluminium foil as I could stuff into it. I had to use the head screwing in to force the dropin into place. It is as well heat sinked as a P60 dropin can be. I could try coating everything in heatsink goo but i doubt it'd do any better. If it wasn't for the foil it probably wouldn't get that hot and it'd cook the driver and LED instead. It isn't a problem how hot the light got - that just shows that the heat was getting away from the LED and driver. I'd far rather that the body got overheated than the LED
