The TK70 has few peers as a thrower, and those lights that do out throw it mostly have no spill to speak of. It's a beautifully balanced light. Many of you are happy carrying this mace, but most of us would rather carry something smaller. I've seen lots of posts about using different types of batteries. Does that mean you've also replaced the body of the flashlight with something smaller?
Take off the tail extension, make up a sleeve to adapt diameter of four sub-C cells, and go to town! I use the Tenergy 5000maH cells. Cuts down on length and quite a bit lighter in weight.
Rich
Thanks dorpmuller,
Now that's an interesting idea, and it uses NIMHs and the original tubing so it's very economical. You'll probably laugh, but I had envisioned either stepping down to a smaller tube diameter for a smaller Lithium cell or else using a stubby little body with 26650s. It would probably look outrageous to have such a big head on such a small body.
Thanks again,
Daniel
Im just awakening an old thread for other TK70 owners.
I swapped out the stock nasty green tinted XM-L’s to some XM-L2 1A I had kicking around and was duly impressed. While the lux only increased by about 20%, the best part is in the nice white beam I gained. The old stock green tinted emitters were just awful, which made the light completely unusable for me. So there it sat in my closet for several years… until now.
Notes:
- There were no thread locking adhesives used on my example.
- There was no thermal paste under the triangular LED MCPCB.
- The LED MCPCB was a copper direct thermal design with no dialectric layer obstructing the thermal pad.
- It still took some brute force with large strap wrenches to crack the bezel threads lose.
- I removed the D cell extender tube and now power it from a pair of TF32650 unprotected cells (8.4V total). It picked up about 15 minutes run time, lost a good amount of weight (versus 4 x NIMH cells) and shortened the flashlight considerably. To take up the difference in total cell length, I used a maglite D cell spring (old gen with a cross bar on the big end) and soldered a 2mm x 20mm round polished copper disk to the small end. A copper wire bypass keeps resistance low. The modded mag spring is dropped in after the cells. The stock tailcap & spring compress perfectly against the mag spring 20mm copper disk. This is important because it is critical to maintain the stock resistance for the boost driver to function properly.
- Before the mod when testing in the field, the stock TK70 kept up with my stock XM-L2 BTU Shocker. Now it beats it with less current. Probably because the TK70 has a higher quality/more efficient reflector.
- FAR more friendly grip with the D cell sized tube than the fat BTU shocker tube, and also a lot less weight to carry.
- Only 2 cells to recharge now, instead of 4.
After the small mods, its a much nicer & updated package to handle. The boost driver still kicks down from max to the next lower setting when the cells have been depleted (with the usual sound of the inductor screaming for about 10 seconds as it switches). If you haven’t heard a TK70 switch down when the cells have become depleted, its quite entertaining because the sound pitch decreases as the driver switches into the next lower mode. Upon depletion, I quickly removed and tested the cells and each measured 3.2V resting (and rising). Since its a boost driver, its hard to guess just how deeply the cells are being discharged while under load (as voltage drops, amp load is increased with the boost driver to maintain CC at the emitters). This is very demanding on cells, although the TF32650’s have proven to perform well under sustained heavy loads. I might have to rig some heavy wires from my DMM and have a look… but maybe I wont. :laughing:
All in all, Im very pleased with how well this turned out.