I usually buy mine at Buddyrc, but they were out of 12AWG silicone wire. So I purchased from this seller on ebay, he offers a few different lengths. Super fast shipping and good quality wire. I’am on the east coast and he’s on the west coast. Ordered late on a Friday, showed up at my door on Monday.
Turnigy 12Ga Silicon Insulated wire at Hobby King . Super flexible, almost unbelievably so. I’ve found silicone coated wire is not all the same. Turnigy is very good stuff!
I got these: buddyrc.com red-14awg, buddyrc.com black-14awg, soldered into banana plugs, then soldered up the ends to test with, just enough to keep the wire strands together, stripped back a 1/4 inch or so. Very reliable, very flexible, about 18" each...
PS: I always test my drivers first with a rigged up XML T6 on a simple aluminum star mounted to a big metal piece (scrap bracket I had laying around), 22 gauge leads on the T6. The lower Vf of the XML's is easier to bench test high amp drivers.
This meter works great for high amp measurements: Uni T ut33b. For $13, it's the cheapest I'd go for in a meter, no frills.
I’ve gone and confused myself by reading just about everything I could about upgrading leads… Some posts were saying it’s a great thing to do, but others said it didn’t affect anything or negatively affected readings. :~
My 2800mA C8 from FT is showing 2.7 amps at the tailcap from a few day old full charge protected nitecore 18650 (~2 year old battery) at 4.17v. This seems reasonable to me?
Your readings seem ok for that light, but how does it do at 4+A? I can't recall any posts about upgrading leads being a negative, but it has been confirmed many times over that 12-14 gauge leads vastly improves amp readings over stock leads, but I'm thinking if you are using 22 gauge, I think 22 gauge is thicker than most stock DMM leads. Also it will depend on the quality of the DMM. The UNI-T meters, even the $13 one, I know is good - a very seasoned tech I work with (I call him a super tech) owns several of these and swears by them for this type of usage.
I have an Innova 3320. No idea how it does with 4+.
Highest I’ve measured was around 3.2 iirc, which was a 3400 ncr18650b protected in an hd2010, supposedly direct drive.
Here's the funny thing, I have a Harbor Freight DMM, one of the free ones, and with good leads it gives fairly accurate measurements from what I can tell. I doubled up two 18 AWG silicone wires and soldered them directly to the terminals inside the DMM.
Just a heads up, the silicone wire linked earlier is now 25% off for the next 18 hours. 
I pretty much have to upgrade now.
The seller also has 20ft 12 Gauge Silicone Wire 20 feet - Fine Strand 12 Gauge Silicone Wire 810031019694 | eBay
I purchased 20ft a week ago for $15.29 from this seller, now its $12.74 shipped, that’s a sweat deal.
.
NOTE: The lengths the seller list are total for red and black, meaning you get 10ft of red and 10ft of black for the 20ft listing.
.
I couldn’t hold back :_( I went and ordered some 14AWG 10ft at $6.74 to the door. :bigsmile: If someone needs to upgrade their test leads, that’s about the best price I have seen from a US based seller, this deal wont last long.
Question:
I get 2.6A on regular wires.
With previous Intl-O dropin, I get 3.0A dead with regular wires.
With bad-ass heavy wires and IMR, I get 3.0A from QLite .
When at 4.02V, I get 2.0A+ with heavy wires but 1.6-1.8A with normal wires.
LOW warning kicks at 3.85V when using XTAR battery (new).
Can I assume, that a regular tailcap will do as good job as those 5mm thick (7mm outer dia) heavy duty cables?
It does not seem to be nearly as bright in comparison to previous model. Rip it off and “upgrade” to Nanjg105??
Not sure what exactly your new model is compared to your old model. I do know this:
Light: SolarForce L2T, w/pill of 3.85A Nanjg, XM-L2 U2 1D/SinkPAD, copper penny added inside of pill, AR lens from CNQ, Samsung 20Q fresh cell
- tested at 680 lumens (seemed low)
- removed tailcap, use 12 gauge wire to ground batter neg. to host: 1,020 lumens
- copper braided the tailcap spring, screwed on tailcap: 1,054 lumens
In this case, the stock tailcap is much poorer performing than the heavy wire jumper, but after the copper braiding, the installed tailcap actually performs better than a heavy wire jumper. I've seen this before - probably because the threaded on tailcap is making better contact with the flashlight body than holding the heavy gauge wire against the body.
Also this proves even a supposedly high quality light like the highly touted SolarForce L2T has a very poor performing tailcap spring (35% loss).
Excellent info, thanks!
I have now cleaned the new Solarforce L2T and tested with another new battery. Now it goes below 3.85 just fine. Wohoo!!
I may have overlooked the cleaning, since, well, all parts were new.
Another thing is, that maybe the tailcap is indeed restricting the current too much. I will copper braid it tonight and see if it makes any difference.
Your Welcome! Also when I braided the spring, I also do my normal cleaning up in the tailcap, and used DeoxIT Gold on contact surfaces - threads, where the retainer screws down on the button's PCB, etc. So, maybe all the gain wasn't from just the copper braiding...
The more vdrop the less the current reading and the more the current the more vdrop in the same setup. Around 3 amps is where my false readings started out noticeable with a 87v. The fluke leads on a 87v gave false readings when pushed to read higher currents. With homemade short 14awg wire leads it reads more correct. I noticed the false readings with the fluke factory leads while measuring a 4xml kung. Everyone else was pulling about 1 amp more than me with the same light. Made some leads and checked it again, Then it was reading close to what everyone else was seeing. If you are going to measure current around 3 amps and above you will need to upgrade your factory leads. With the cheaper meters that don’t have thick leads the false reading will start at a early current. Seems like with the HF meter it was above 2 amps is where it became noticeable false for me. Changing the leads to short thick wire makes a lot of difference in tail cap current readings when around 3 amps and above.
I have cheap leads, no doubt about it BUT:
I achieved 3.0A with them no problem. I have to press the QLite driver spring ALL THE WAY against PCB, and hard. Otherwise I get anything between 2.2A -> 2.6A.
This with stock leads.
I was wondering the low amperage because my stock leads have been measuring amps well over 3.0 before. I bought new ones one time but they were worse for some reason…
Should I try to braid the Driver also? Might be a bit trickier.
Did something for that L2T tail...
Don´t do like I did: too much solder makes that braid non-elastic and you have to wiggle it to get that spring working!
BTW:
If you are not so keen about new Solarforce switch (a bit squishy) put something under the rubber boot. I used a small magnet, that happened to be at hand.
Better feel now IMO.
I also braided the driver side now, that I had my iron warm:
Again: use a bit less.
Some pretty good fitting on that P60 with that copper tape, had to push real hard to get it out and tape was straight and intact all the way 8)
All that solder may result in the braid breaking after time. I've been getting better (I think) in doing braiding - test it quite a bit under repeated up/down's - the solder should not go up or down the braid, and you should have a nice S type pattern to give the braid a consistent path to bend, flexibly with no stress points.
Alright, wire arrived, got bananaplugs, soldered a bit of the contact end and retested a couple of lights. Batteries have been sitting/used a bit for a few days.
Stock Leads : New 12gauge leads
HD 2010 + King kong protected - 2.60 : 3.35 Freshly Charged - 2.67 : 3.50
C8 + Nitecore 18650 - 2.60 : 2.75
Very simple and easy upgrade to, at the very least, get closer to what the actually amperage is.
I also noticed, measuring voltage of batteries is now instantaneous with the new leads, instead of a 1-2 second delay before the reading settled on a solid number with the old leads.
Thanks for the help guys.