Need help with building first P60 type drop in.

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
21

grantman:

Well, looks like I’ll have yet another project before too long.

I’m still trying to figure out what to do with this D18 host sitting here :quest:

22

Ha, well… Another problem with which I’m familiar. Unfortunately for me the answer was to put the L2 extension tubes in the toolbox and run it in shorty mode.

Or you could see what becomes of the led4power driver being developed by one of the members here who’s a lot smarter than I am.

I’d guess that buying a drop in from solarforce is probably the cheapest route to get a P60 that’ll comfortably run two cells in series. I haven’t bought any dropins from them so I can’t speak to the quality. Hopefully they’re made to a similar standard as the hosts.

23

I guess there is always the K3 head, that thing looks pretty nice. Read about a member here juicing it up to something around 2k lumens. This stuff is just as addicting as AR’s, albeit significantly cheaper lol.

24

Amen to that. Took me over a year to finally finish my AR build with all the parts I wanted (and chambered in 6.8 ).

25

The first one I built has about $1600 in it, now I just finished an 11.5” SBR and if you count the cost of the lawyer (used a trust) and tax stamp this one has around $1700 in it and I still need an optic. Now, I’m by no means a rich man, which is why it took about 3 years to build both lol.

26

I don’t think there is anything truly useful I can add as far as building the light. You’ve had good help already and you seem to be moving along fine with that. But, I just noticed in reading again that you asked “How do you know what mAh to run any given LED at to get the output you want?” In your OP. Although you can find lots of information on BLF about running LED’s over their spec (some guys, like DBCstm, are regularly pushing the limits), there is also a handy online tool that Cree has for their LED emitters. It will only give you guidance within specs, but it’s still very useful. I’ve used it a lot to help decide which LED is best for various builds. Here is the link.

27

DavidEF:

Thank you for posting that link, it’s a big help!

Well, I’ve decided that I’m going to use a K3 head on the D18. That seems to be the most feasible way to utilize a 2x18650 host, not to mention the K3 seems to be a pretty awesome head.