While at a particular light shop I was eyeing this particular light from Olight, the M18 Striker, based on the original M18 Maverick, it has a very nice user interface ,click once for 100, 2 quick clicks for 15 and 3 quick clicks for strobe, the light takes in a standard 18650, and outputs about 600-800 lumens, pretty impressive for a light this size.
Since it has that distinctive aggressive strike bezel, the light outputs this “star shaped” spot on the wall (a little annoying for me)
This light is small, barely thicker then a 18650 (its smaller then a SK98, probably smaller in diameter then a SK68 even)
I liked the light so much i bought 2 of them, I happened to have a spare MT-G2 4000K at home, so i thought, why not?
A quick strip of the light reveals that the pill is removable, it is a solid aluminium pill thats probably about 16-17mm in diameter, with the XM-L2 emitter on a 16mm base wired to the driver at the bottom
After stripping out the driver and emitter, I put in a 3a 105c driver, soldered 100–15 modes star and replaced the wire leads with thicker ones, both the tail cap spring and driver spring have been copper braided as well to reduce resistance (who knows? May add more 7135s in the future)
I originally wanted to enlarge the smooth reflector to fit the MT-G2, but this presented 2 problems, first, the “star shaped” spot would come out again, and it would be even more obvious due the MT-G2’s humongous flood, second and most importantly, there isn’t enough mass to sink all that heat from the LED, it would be bright, but would emit too much heat to be usable on a day-to-day basis, I wanted to make an EDC light thats actually usable
The solution was to lose the reflector and use an aspheric, with the space for the reflector gone, the LED could be placed much closer to the lens. And with that extra space behind the LED and the pill, I shoved in 8 copper discs in between them :bigsmile:
Being 6v, the light is powered by 2 Ifest IMR 18350s, and its a very tight fit
After putting everything together, the light worked on the first try, I was expecting much lumens loss due to the aspheric but it still turns out BRIGHT, NO star shaped spot! It totally blows away the stock XM-L2 in comparison (see the beamshots)
The best part? There is no star shape spot anymore, and at 15% it can actually run for a long time without heating up the light (probably due to all that copper in there), the flood is HUGE and bright, but it doesn’t go very far, hence the name “Shotgun”
I actually made another variant of it, a triple Nichia 219 with narrow carclo optics, but its only about 500-600 lumens, still, usable!
Pictures below
Next to the it’s triple Nichia 219 variant
Powered by 2 x AW IMR 18350s, its one small light
XM-L2 (from a nitecore SRT5 @ 750 lumens)
MT-G2 (M18 Striker Shotgun @ 1500 lumens?)
Thanks for reading!!
