The same concept in diving is what got me interested in lights. I heard about a place called DX and there was a $95 light that had its closest competitor in the dive lights I'd heard of in a $600 light which actually still didn't do quite what the DX light did.
I wasn't going to just throw $95 away so I had to read up on DX, leds, and lighting in general. At $95 I knew that I could make a mistake if necessary and still come out ahead. I still dive with that light and sold my more expensive and bulky HID dive light. A big difference is that LED lights in general (especially DX) can be opened and repaired.
Close but not quite. $8 Skyray, $5 lens(ahorton aspheric), Custom CNCed copper pill, Custom grip rings, Silver coated beryllium copper spring, and about about seven hours of work.
I have that little ol' Sipik Sk68 and my DEFT-edc does over 5 times the lux as that poor little light. There is no way in the world you can make the DEFT with only $20. Not even if you only consider the price of the materials and don't count the time to build it.
Sorry but that is clearly the wrong light.
No it cannot outthrow the Dereelight DBS V3 aspheric. The Dereelight is a much larger light. As you may know size has a huge effect on throw potential. If I made a light the size of the Dereelight I could very easily put that DBS aspheric to shame using the current LE. In fact I plan to. On top of that however, I developed a special LED packaging technology that significantly increases the performance of an LED for use in an aspheric light. This will most likely debut in the not too distant future. Just to give you some perspective on what it is capable of. If I put this technology into the current DEFT-edc which is significantly smaller than the DBS my light would still outthrow the DBS by quite a bit.
Indeed my business model until quite recently has been less than ideal. The problem has always been that I am a flashlight enthusiast first and a businessman second. I think sometimes people forget or just don't even know that I do what I do out of love for the hobby and thoroughly enjoy bringing some flashlight happiness to others. I have done so at great cost to myself. People can complain about the relatively high cost of my lights but I am doing something the other companies either cannot or are not willing to do. Push the boundaries.
How much work do we as enthusiasts put into our lights to make them more and more powerful? You can take any light from any manufacturer and find some way to tweak it for more performance. We kind of pride ourselves for being able to do so. There is no way in this world you can take one of my lights and improve on the performance.
The tweaks that are necessary to push a light to the absolute limit are just not feasible for the average flashaholic to do nor are they doable for the larger manufacturers. That is where I come in. Making a light the enthusiast would if they could. But I have to strike a balance. I am more in line with this site in wanting budget lights myself and have done all I can to keep the cost low for a light like this. Sure I could have made bespoke bodies but then the price of the light would be like a McGizmo. In the $400-$500 range. Instead I choose to find a light that I can make feel premium with minimal cost and make the performance best in the industry. This way one feels they are getting more for their money. Holding this light in hand I can tell you they feel worth every penny. I know some will chalk that up to bias but I say that as an enthusiast. I love my lights.
I suppose many here are not aware of my reputation elsewhere. I don't bull. No point in it as it will all come out in the end anyway. It is sad that we live in a world where we can't trust one another. But it is what it is. Who is your most respected reviewer around here?
Thanks for the welcome. I just stumbled across this site and thread today, strangely, googling something completely unrelated. Seems like you guys have a nice place here. -Michael
Saabluster, welcome to BLF! Let me first start off by commending you on maintaining professionalism despite some critisism. It's a rare quality these days. (Guys, this is why I don't try and sell all the mods/customs I create and post here... I'd be embarrassed to ask for the amount of money it would take for my time/effort to make it worthwhile.)
Having said all that, I too am curious on how well the afformentioned $26 Skyray mod would compare. Looks like the number to hit is 40K lux from the website. I wonder if that is measured at 1m or at a farther distance and calculated?
I've got a small collection of zoomies, fixed aspherics, and bare aspheric lenses gathering dust (understatement.. ). When I get a moment I'll throw one together and see how well it does. It would be interesting to compare them to the little Deft...
Oh, and thanks for the recommendation folks. Michael, I'd definately be interested in performing a full review to post here and on CPF.
I'm glad to see Michael is over here as well. It feels odd asking critical questions about a fellow members handy work on the other hand it does no good to have every post be a fan boy post :) I thought Michael handled the comments fairly. It's easy to take everything personal when you are the builder. However people making the comments are just making comments regarding the light!
Match I think it would be very interesting as well if you could quickly throw together an aspheric of the same size and driven close to the DEFT EDC. It would be interesting to see exactly what the performance premium is of the DEFT EDC over what we could all put together fairly easily.
If I order anything from DX again I've got to get a lux meter!
I have a 38 mm aspheric (actual aspheric size) in a light using a XR-E R2 and a single 18650. The tail cap reading is about 750 mA. If you have anything close (or can guess) I'd be interested to know what the lux would be on that.
Hi, hope you will be successful in pushing out those new lights. I wasn't in the scene when your DEFT happened (I was in CPF since 06 and lurking since 2003 or so)....been playing with other hobbies. Seriously flashlights is quite an affordable hobby, but anyway after the 2008 financial crisis i have been more careful with my spending, well I did not buy shares then but got on the rebound train in 2009, but my pals did got into some Lehman stuff, so it wasn't a pretty sight for them seriouisly and I could only lend them so much to tide over. What I have been hearing in the Audio / HiFi fraternity is that a lot more US guys have been very careful in their spending after the episode, not sure if its true.
Hope you can maintain low prices with your new tech. If biz continues to be "ok" i certainly would want to own a couple of your lights.
I got my Dereelight DBS aspheric for 79 bucks, if your new EDC can push out past 63k cd and be below $120, it'd be great. (the dereelight fit n finish is really good) I think ultimately consumers generally look at the $$ aspect closer than ever, its a tough world out there and basic living stuff are rising at an unprecedented rate. Being top is not enough.....I know from my own 2 business (definitely not website/online Ebay type biz) that being niche and top is not enough. In one of my line - being top = nearly dead.
"It is nice to have and to enjoy, but not necessary, main thing is whether can afford or not".....
PS. The Dereelight XR-E pill is at 1.2A, but now they have 1.5A. Solid under the emitter, think can take the heat. But I think 1.2A - 1.5A is 6% theorectically at best. usd29 to change out, too expensive for me....i'd rather throw it into the $180 shipped TK70.
Saabluster, you know how price sensitive and the demands for good quality + low price nowadays consumer can be? I point you to one of my recent encounters. I am not sure if you have heard of the lightpipe series of flashlights. Supposed to be cheap and powerful, for those looking for the best bang for the buck. HID in PVC pipe - basically yeah PVC starts to soften at about 70 deg C but it does not burn. Li-Co hazard is a concern, but i was prepared to run it off SLA backpack or change it out with a RC hobby pack (safer to charge cells individually and balance them plus good PCB protection etc). It is usd425 for a 7" reflector, 250W metal halide with 5mm gap, testing yielded about 45 mins run time so that's just over 1C which is a safe draw, 20,000 lumens plus estimated throw of about 6-7 million lux or 2.5km (ie 1 lux at that distance, I am not talking about so-called Olight LED throw distance figure LOL!). That's gen II Maxabeam performance with no drinking straw effect!
Lots of hoo-haa after that, coz after I bought it, it suddenly overnight it shot up to usd550. It is not easy, the parts along cost very close to 400 over bucks. And even then after that some of those who received their 70W light complained of lousy quality - ie electrical tapes were used to tie wires, paint job not done properly etc. What the.... That is a Li-Co 70W light which costs 125 bucks only and the performance absolutely blows away even a Varapower SST-90 (from the beamshots). A L70 costs close to 900 bucks at batteryjunction!
Long story short, people misused paypal and my light was already ready but deemed too risky to be sent over (the 5 Li-Co packs also did not pass USPS, the limit for being IN THE LIGHT is 3). So got my refund, with 50 bucks missing due to the crazily falling US dollar. I wasn't trying to be a difficult customer but I had to file a dispute at the 43rd/44th day, and 2 weeks later escalate to a claim, but together with shipping via USPS Express halfway round the world, it's around the cost of 2 x Olight SR90 which is *good money* to me, had to get it back. I purchased the light in the mid May and only got it back last week mid July....2 months! I could accept if there is a small discount and I do up my own pack.
And yes, this happened at CPF, not over here at Budgetlightforum.
A fixed aspheric is going to be mostly a toy light anyway. If we're just talking about aspheric toy lights, gluing the KD 50mm aspheric to the top of a Small Sun c37 which take a few minutes is going to be about 3 times brighter. If I ever get off my lazy ass and finish up the 75mm aspheric, that's about 7 times. The c78 has slightly smaller lens size to a p60 and should offer maybe 70% of the throw.
I think this light (DEFT-EDC) is interesting but I don't see how it can get much more throw than taking any P60 and putting in any XR-E R2 drop-in and using any $2.00 28 mm aspheric.
Let's assume that a DX $8 drop-in is only driven at 700mA and let's assume that the EDC is driven at 1.4A (I think it's only 1.2A but let's go with 1.4A). I don't have the Cree specs in front of me but let's say that results in an increase of 50 lumens So lets say 50/250 so that's a 20% increase in lumens. Given the inverse square law for light that applies to throw 1.2 squared is 1.095 so basically not quite a 10 % increase in throw.
To offset that with an aspheric diameter increase all you would have to do is use an aspheric of 30.8 mm instead of 28 mm and you would get the same increase in throw. Maybe the heat sinking is optimal but this only lets you drive the light just a little harder but each gain from this (resulting in increased lumen) has to be squared whereas the gains from increasing the lens diameter is linear.
I found a light on DX made by Aurora that has more or less the same length and body tube diameter as a P60. The head is 40 mm instead of 30 mm. So basically if the P60 can be considered an EDC then this light (Aurora) could be considered the same yet it should throw 33% further.
You can get it and drop in an aspheric all for less than $30 and as far as I can tell it should throw further than the DEFT EDC. I'm not saying it can since I can't see how you can get the advertised 40,000k from the DEFT EDC driving a XP-C, driven at 1.2 A using a 28 mm aspheric.
I'm not knocking the product or the designer and am just throwing this out for discussion if anyone is interested in discussing aspherics and throw. If any of my figures are incorrect please feel free to correct that as well.
By the way, I do have the light (Aurora) I've described above. I just don't have a lux meter so I don't know how much lux it produces.
I measure at 27'. And yes 40K is the mark to hit. Of course there is a +/- factor there as well but I sided slightly on the conservative side. Most of the lights are between 40 and 43. I am not familiar enough with this site so don't know if I can be PMed so if that is not available you can contact me through my site's contact page so I can get your info and send you a light. Thanks for doing this.
Nice to see a familiar face here. I think you know I have never shied away from being questioned. I have never asked for special treatment in reviews or on the forums. I have to prove myself day in and day out just like everybody else. You are a very wise man to note that any comparison test should be among its peers size wise. I might add to that that he keep track of the amount of time it takes to do the mod along with a full BOM and an assessment of final build quality.
I am trying to keep prices as low as possible. I am not looking to get rich here. And believe me I understand the Chinese lights are cheap and there is just no way to compete with them on price unless I want to get paid pennies per hour as well. The only way to compete is to outdo them technically. To this day noone has beat the larger DEFTs. That is over three years in a fierce and fast changing industry. I should think think the same will hold true of the new lights. That, I think, is worth something. Knowing that the light will not be leapfrogged by a new company every other month.
You do know how badly I would be lambasted by everyone if I just glued an aspheric on top of a light right?
I know it all just seems so easy to buy a cheapy 28mm lens and "drop it in" along with an XR-E module and expect to get top notch performance. First off I have those cheap 28mm lenses and they don't drop in. They would have to be sanded down to fit. Second the focal range is way too far to fit inside the light. You would have to "glue it to the front" like agenthex said. That would look nasty, be prone to damage, and cause annoying back reflections. Third the actual performance falls short of the ones I use by a fair bit. The idea that someone could make a "contender" out of that lens just doesn't strike me as doable.
Those XR-E drop-ins just do not have good enough heatsinking to make something that has the performance of the DEFT-edc. I say that in two areas. They use mcpcbs which are less than desirable in my opinion due to their poor heat conductance relative to my setup. In fact there almost isn't any way to improve on my setup. The LED is soldered directly to copper. And not just any copper. It is 99.99% pure. I know to most people they would think that copper is copper and they all transfer heat the same if they are called copper. This is just not the case. Very small amounts of impurities can lower the conductance 20-30%. On top of that the temper of the metal affects the conductance with annealed copper being the best. That is why I spec highly pure annealed copper for my lights.
There are exactly two thermal interfaces between the LED and ambient with my light. The first is the aforementioned soldered joint to copper and the next is the next best thing. An interference fit between the copper and the body. Just two interfaces and both are as good as you can get.
Now compare the drop-in that has at least three with all three of them being very poor in design and function assuming we ignore the first and inconsequential solder joint as right below it is a heat insulator. Moving on from the first heat insulator you move to the mcpcb to pill interface which is usually a dab of some really cheap and relatively ineffective thermal epoxy. If they used good paste and some screws then they get a slightly better score but this is still a far cry from the, single piece, solid annealed pure copper that we are at on mine at this point.
Going out from there heat has to move down to a thin ring of metal and jump a very poor interface or go up through another interface just to get to the aluminum reflector where it can then make it to another extremely poor spot to transfer heat. You can always wrap it with copper tape but each layer of tape doubles the interfaces. As you can probably tell I am not a fan of the P60 drop-ins although I will say they have a place in the market in lights that are not being driven very hard. They don't not have a place in my lights however.
So now we have addressed two reasons why my light and the holistic design can out-perform some cheap light someone threw together. But we are not done. There is of course the emitter to discuss.
The XR-C was chosen for my light, not because it was the popular choice, but because it was the best suited for the job. Good system design means taking into consideration the whole. In a thrower when matching your LED components to body size you have to take into consideration two main things. Surface brightness and the maximum amount of heat allowed to be produced by the LED. A light as small as the edc can only shed so much heat. To reach similar throw with an XR-E as can be achieved with the XP-C you would have to run it right around 2A vs the XP-C's 1.4A. 2A is just too much to run in a light this small. On top of that the battery life would suffer as well and there would be greater wear on the switch.
Your assumed $8 drop-in running at 700mA with the cheap 28mm lens will probably net you a lux value of about 10K vs the DEFT-edc's 40K. It is precisely because I did not just throw a bunch of cheap things together that I can get the performance I do and is also the reason why my lights are worth the price I ask for them. Of course the finished piece looks simple enough but there is a lot of design and execution that went into these lights.
As to increasing the size of the light to beat the DEFT-edc? It is kind of a slippery slope to head down that direction as one could continue that line of reasoning adinfinitum. The fact is that there is nothing P60 sized that can beat the DEFT-edc. But I'll oneup you on that. The edc truly fights above it's weight class. I would imagine that even if you went up to that 40mm light the edc would be at least equal if not win. You will have to go up to 50mm to beat the edc and that really is in another class. I can take my light in my suit pocket to church without having a big bulging pocket. That cannot be said of the size light that it will take to beat the DEFT-edc.
By the way, if any of you out there have one of those hastily thrown together P60 aspherics and you have a lux meter post your figure just so that we have a base mark in this discussion.
When I put my smaller light (P60) together I happened to have a plastic aspheric from another light so it really was just a drop-in for me. I have some of the 28 mm glass aspherics from DX but haven't had to use them yet.
I did have to grind the 38 mm aspheric that I currently have. It started out life as a 42 mm I seem to recall.The other set-up I can't put back together as I gave it away (and I don't have a lux meter anyway).
Yes, I realize (and agree) that increasing the head size is a slippery slope :) I hesitated to mention my 38 mm as an edc when you are talking about a 28 mm edc. I threw it out there just for discussion and actually came up with that 38 mm number for myself when I put that light together as the largest head that went well with a smaller body and could be easily carried around. A lot of the work in that one was searching through many lights for just the right host. It's not a drop-in host and already came with a screwed in pill using the XR-E R2.
It's true the aspheric is exposed in my light so it can't "head stand" :)
I put it together at the same time I purchased the Uniquefire HS-802 and to me that is too large to consider in the edc category (and it's a reflectored thrower) and that's small compared to some of the other hardcore throwers.
I don use mine a lot when hiking (in addition to another light source) as a spotter so I actually think the concept of an "EDC Thrower" is more practical than the larger "Ultimate Throwers". I wish your project well!
I'm in the DIY/HiFi/even Pro-Audio world. Also from the PC side of things, i am aware that impure copper takes quite a thermal conductance and may not be that better than well designed aluminum. Copper that pure is pretty expensive. (Some crazy people are prepared to spend > 10k on cables alone on a setup....some even 50k)
CREE themselves use alum mcpcb. I would think they know what they're doing. Running a XP-C at 1.4A is also way above spec of 500ma, and the rel efficacy graph is not exactly flat.
Unfortunately the audio world is full of crackpot ideas. Conductance of aluminum can vary far more any reasonably pure variety of copper. There's no real difference between performance of OF vs regular ETP copper.
No, there really isn't on applications that related to audio. The frequencies are too low and temperatures too high. It's one of those things that enthusiasts obsess over that end up mattering much less than moving a speaker a few mm to the left or right, which also isn't all that important.
You are talking about Hifi, but there are many specific applications in Pro-audio (Studio and Sound Reinforcement) and DIY Audio. The latter 2 do not buy snake oil. There is nothing glorious/fun about Pro Audio. I have been seeing such discussions since newsgroups for the past 18 years or so? You into Audio as well, remember the basslist?
Since you are excited by the Sky Ray 3xT6, what do you think of this?
mcpcbs are fine as long as the current is kept low. If however you use one of those and run the LED at a 300% overdrive like I am you will end up with one dead LED. If you look up the chip specs you will notice that the maximum current is 1A so from that standpoint it is a 50% overdrive. Regardless I have done the tests in my integrating sphere and found that with exceptional heatsinking these LEDs are still increasing in output up to about 1.6A. With my ceramic ablation technique I can even take the LED farther than that.
Well as you might imagine I have a few of those lights and I have that lens and they don't fit in mine. The lens won't make it past the threads in the head. So it appears it may be a crap-shoot of sorts.
Sometimes things are used just because the cost difference isn't significant for the application, but electrically it's identical in environments generally inhabited by human beings.
I tend to think most audio (and lot of video) is very much diminishing returns. A db higher volume trumps any amount of equipment over a couple K easily and I don’t think anybody normalizes volume that precisely. The equivalent for us would be spending a few times the price of the light to increase efficacy by a couple percent at half of max drive current. In a lot of ways, audio’s become a solved problem, esp on the electronics side. Like a traditional musical instrument, nobody goes out and makes their own until they’re just doing it for the hell of it.
The giant subwoofer is pretty cool, but when you go off the end like that, the problem is that there’s no source material for it.
-Michael
). When I get a moment I'll throw one together and see how well it does. It would be interesting to compare them to the little Deft...
If biz continues to be "ok" i certainly would want to own a couple of your lights. 
