+1
I’d put forward the Big Head side switch aka Courui 1600 for a candidate that would benefit hugely form a custom designed copper pill.
I suspect this light will become fairly popular with the modders here and has great potential for some serious output, but the stock pill/emitter shelf really sucks!
I was thinking of contacting VOB and some other guys who have done custom copper pill runs in the past to see if someone would be up for designing and manufacturing a replacement heatsink/pill for the light.
Frankly I think it would a lot simpler to machine than a HD2010 pill as well, I envisage basically a two stage copper slug with wire holes and a threaded section that mates with the thread in the light body. No need to mount a driver or worry about extra steps to fit a battery tube either. Would require some R&D work though since it’s not a direct copy of an existing pill in a different material.
The light is very new so not too many people have one, but I suspect the vast majority of those who do have one/are getting one on this forum would be interested in a copper pill upgrade for it. I certainly would be down for at least one if not more.
Good point, but that section is fully threaded. If the copper pill is threaded nearly full length instead of being needlessly cut down in diameter the way the stock pill was (idiotic manufacturers ), then copper will be right up against a lot of the fins.
There's no reason I can see to have reduced to diameter at the driver end of the pill. It just makes an air space between the pill and the body directly under the fins.
(Playing with extensions and sleeve to use 4AA Duraloops. )
Gj, thanks for such great details and photos. Sure, the stock pill sucks in a huge way and anything would be an improvement. But I thought the largest limitation was in the thin metal used in the head and wouldnt conduct heat throughout. Conducting heat to the base will heat the base, not the entire head to the same extent due to the thin metal used. What do you think?
I build around 10-15 custom C8’s every week for resale/gifts. The only hosts I use conducts heat throughout the entire head due to the thicker metal in the head. The cheaper C8’s are just that… cheap and dont evenly conduct heat throughout the head, so they become heat soaked and overheat very quickly. A sold sterling silver 1” threaded pill wouldnt circumvent the problem because the heat would still be locked in the base and not spread evenly throughout the entire head. Heat needs surface area to transfer to the air and the metal must be of sufficient thickness to do its job. I had my eye on the C12 when it was first introduced because of the appearance of useful additional surface area for cooling. Across several threads, most people complained that the head was to thin to conduct heat throughout the entire head, which circumvented its usefulness. Also, the lightmalls C8 was said to be considerably brighter and better built than their C12.
Maybe VOB could build a C12 copper prototype and compare it to a similarly equipped C8, since he already makes copper C8 pills.
You know much more about this than I do but it seems to me if you can get most of the length of the pill separated from those large fins (for this size light) by less than ~2mm, you're doing pretty well. If you want to draw heat further forward into the head, why not put a few strips of adhesive copper tape inside? Take a piece of copper pipe, slit it open, expand and AA it to the wall?
Do we know if the C12s from Lightmall, KD, Bestofferbuy etc… are all exactly the same? Are these things built in the same factories and simply rebranded by the vendor (perhaps with a driver change as well?)?
I measured the total thread and flange contact area a while back and found that it’s the clearance between threads creating the bottleneck in my C12. The difference in diameter between the male and female threads shows how little contact is being made. Despite having a smaller diameter, my C8 with less sloppy threads, has more total surface contact. Even with copper, more thread engagement would be needed to continue the transfer on to the fins once the pill becomes saturated. Make a copper pill with more, tighter threads and I’m in. I’d even go for a tighter fitting aluminum one.
My C12 host and a VOB modded a Quite 7135 driver he added 4 more chips, for a total of 12
Chips and topped with x.l2-u21a (l know a terrible tint for some) on a 20 mm copper noctigon and I fired it up and compared to modded KD C8 with 8 350 mAH chips same emitter set up as C12 on aluminum pill and I know they C8 and C12 have the same reflector but now the C12 can throw! Thanks VOB.for all the extra work you put in.