Got my FET driver this weekend and everything went together great.
Tailcap current draw is 4A from an efest purple IMR 26650 with an XPL-HI V3… is this about right? Host gets warm but not alarmingly hot or fast.
The emitter is a little off center relative to the black retainer-ring as you can see in the last pic. How do I tell if the LED is geometrically centered beneath the LENS… thats the important factor right? Still out throws ANY of my lights by a factor of ~50 at least… so I have no real baseline for comparison.
FWIW… the retainer ring part surrounding the LED is somewhat poorly made. Lose fitting threads. I can bias it over and skew it with a little push-pressure. Heres a better pic, after pushing on it a little…
It’s not critical that the LED be exactly centered with respect to the lens. What you have looks fine to me.
In my experience, an XPL HI direct drive with a good cell and springs bypassed will do 5-5.5A. Depending on how you measured the current it’s possible this could have introduced some extra resistance, which would lower the current draw.
OK thanks gents. I was able to just push on the side of the emitter and keep it centered with a wooden BBQ skewer, tighten the ring and its all centered now much better. The host didn’t include a small plastic centering ring though.
Yeah I am not using the best probes on my Fluke 179.
I also used some copper braid wire to bypass the thin spring in the tailcap. Its really running good now. I cant wait for it to get dark tonight.
Turns out it was raining somewhat hard tonight. I did get out to a local park 15 minutes away and it easily hit a tree line at 237 meters away. I could easily make out and track birds above and around the tree. That was the farthest and darkest thing I could find, without hiking out and getting soaked. I am not sure how much farther out the beam will remain concentrated. I would be surprised if the beam remained concentrated to 1000m.
I had a hard time just keeping rain water off the aspheric.
Thats pretty good for a quad-die. How did you step all the way up to 12Vf ?
Does the XHP35 have a brighter die surface than the XPL-HI V3 I am using?
Does the aspheric add up or quadruple-up all the die images into one summed up focus?
Overall I am impressed with this build, for the $$ spent on parts. Pretty good Lux / dollar using off the shelf parts. I think the next step up from here would be a de-domed XP-G2.
You should definitely go for dedomed XP-G2 if you’re looking for laser-like beam.
I replaced the stock XP-L HI in my Brinyte B158B with a dedomed XP-G2 and made it a DD (no driver)… Man, does thi throw !
I should make a beamshot side by side with my FET driven XP-L HI C8…
The hot spot of my C8 disappear when you throw the B158B spot in it, that’s impressive !
The XP-L HI should be a bit brighter in theory but I have an L2 with XHP35 hi and another with XP-L hi, the XHP35 throws slightly further, almost twice the lumens and a much larger hotspot. I am not sure what the bin of the XP-L HI is though.
The XHP35 doesn’t have a cross to start with since the dies touch each other.
It is an impressive light. The funny thing is I built a D01 with an XP-L HI and it makes almost exactly the same throw numbers, both are right around 250kcd.
The 1504 is like a light saber, very fun to point at the sky and see the beam.
The D01 is more usable and much prettier beam and tint. The 1504 has a bit of a rainbow effect on the edge of the die.
Oh yeah, that is the other reason I don’t like XP-G2’s, to really make them better then the XP-L or XHP35 you have to dedome them and I hate the green/yellow color you get. I will gladly give up some throw for the better tine and output.
But that is just me. I would not mind one super thrower at some point but it would just be a toy for me.
The dedomed XP-G2 in my lightcanon is pure white.
The other XP-G2 dedomed that I had was yellow, but not this one.
It depends on the tint you get before dedoming.
I ordered the wrong tint, that’s why I ended up with a yellow beam…
But a replacement should be here in a week or two, that will be more white
This zoomie IS a toy and have zero real use for me, that’s why it doesn’t even have a driver
It’s a direct drive, from 30Q to LED with thick wires and bypassed springs…
I didn’t take any current or beam intensity measurement, but I’m sure of one thing : it would have out throw my M3X and SR52 (which are sold for long ago) !
