I think a good approach may be to make or mod a P60 drop-in (making one from scratch is easier and cleaner, and modding one can be a practice for removing thermal pastes or adhesives and desoldering).
It's easy to work with, covers all the basics (choosing parts, de/soldering, fitting, thermal management, etc.), users can choose battery types to their liking, is cheap, and won't ruin a light if the mod doesn't work.
Sounds like a good idea, maybe one you guys with more experience will do a step by step. I don’t even know what a P60 drop in is or what it goes into, so it would be interesting to see.
Hey Chicago X, I feel a little slow on the up-take. I didn't notice the resemblance of a P-60 pill when I removed the screw-in pill from my C8.
I really want to build a couple of pills for both the P60 and C8 format lights. XP-E's, XP-G's, ultra-violet, and maybe a green LED too.
I thought the C8 pill was different than the P60. I haven't seen many suppliers for C8 pills, and the plastic shield that protects the emitter for the C8 pill at all.
As a side-bar, I have a C8 with an XR-E that I'd like to build a series of pills to investigate performances head to head.
KD has the LED isolator disks. You have read this thread too, right? Somewhere around here we discussed P60 vs. C8 pills. They are different except for few (1?) which I think is a Trustfire, if I remember correctly, which uses a P60 pill into a C8 sized screw-in pill - ah! Found it! Trustfire TF-R2.
Thanks for the fast reply. I have been trying to find the link that specifically states C8 lights will work with P60 pills. I haven't found it yet, in fact several of the links that claimed to discuss this issue gave "404 page not found" errors.
From my point of view, P60 compatibility isn't that important to me. I'm more concerned with parts from different sources mating correctly, it wouldn't take much mis-match to wreck the relationship between LED and reflector to ruin the effort of building a flashlight. I don't think that reflectors are the same beyond smooth or OP, within the same family of pills.
I'm most reluctant in assembling parts, (reflectors and led's), into finished work, when we know that very small variances have very significant results. I guess that my desires to experiment aren't that great right now. I am mostly interested in throw with little spill.
So far I'm happiest with custom driver swaps. So-far my meager collection of lights, seem to have led's and reflectors that match.
I'm never going to have 15 - 20 lights, but I have noticed that if I am patient, I can find many of the lights I like at very good sale prices. At that point I don't mind investing in the driver of my choice.