Hi, I am a relative newbie to flashlights but do own a couple of budget LED flashlights including an Xtar SSC P7 C driven by a single ICR 18650 Battery.
I have just ordered a Skyray from Manafont and intend trying out as a substitute to to the pityfull headlights on our Quad bike. If it is successful I then intend building a regulated power supply driven from the quad's 12 volt battery and wonder if any one would care to provide comment or advice on whether the Skyray would survive operating under these conditions for up to 90 minutes continuous use?
They're brittle enough that long continuous operation on Max is suspect. Might work ok on medium (like 50% power) mode. W/ a 12v battery it's tricky because it's right at the crossover point between buck and boost driver (latter of which this light has). If you'r running over 10v, it'll be running direct drive into the emitters which is really not good for long operation. There's a similar 3x XML like (the SCZOM?) that uses a buck driver which might be safer for such a build.
I intend to build a regulated power supply (my original trade is induatrial electronics) to replicate the output of two 18650 batteries connected in series. If I make the output of the power supply adjustable I can probably adjust it for optimal performance of the light.
I also intend to investigate attaching a suitable auxillary heatsink as part of the mounting of the head of the flashlight as I wont need the battery tube.
Hmm... if you're going to build the PS anyway, why connect to the DC-DC (ie, the driver)? The emitters are in series so you just need something capable of passing up to 2-3A @ ~10v. Unfortunately the best rev of this light which had the emitters right on the body is no longer available. If you're not going to need the driver anyway, you might want to look into https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/3212, which still has the setup w/o a pill (direct to host).
Those HID lights are amazing. They seem to start at 4000 lumens and go up. I saw a youtube video of a 100,000 lumen HID light where the guy had to wear safety goggles! He lit paper on fire with it. Dunno about the real big stuff, but if you want pure lumens, I guess HID is the way to go. A bit too expensive for my tastes though.
I suspect that whilst they may be OK for cars they would probably not last long with the shock and vibrations with a quad.
The main reason for choosing the Skyray is that from the beamshots it appears to provide a mix of flood and sufficient throw which would suit quad that can cruise at speeds up to 80 Km/hour (50M/hour.
It is possible to run these flashlights from an external 12-14v supply but you need to add at least one component in the supply to avoid causing the leds to burn out. The maximum rated current for these leds is 3000 mA (3 amps) but their forward voltage drop (i.e. when they are producing light) varies from 3.5 to 3.6 volts. with the 3 leds in series this averages out to around 10.6 V across the 3 leds so that for a 14 volt supply you need to drop 14-10.6=3.4v.
At 3 amps the value of resistor would be R=E/I ( Ohms Law) =3.4/3 =1.133 ohms. The power dissapated over the resistor would be 3 amps X 3.4 Volts = 10.2 Watts so to be conservative you would probably need a 20 Watt wirewound resistor to avoid excessive heat. Since this arrangement doesn't provide any voltage regulation the output of the leds would be slightly less when the supply dropped to 12 volts but the difference in light output would not be easily noticed.
A far better arrangement is to look for a suitable regulator such as the Lflex led drivers at http://www.cutter.com.au/products.php?cat=Taskled+Drivers however you would probably need some help in programming the led driver before use.
I'd been holding back on buying one of these lights, waiting for a sealed head 3-mode when I saw the "4000 Lumen" Sky Ray on Manafont. The one with the stainless bezel ring... The machining looked way less generic and the head appeared sealed instead of being a drop-in arrangement. I ordered it the day it came out so I'll let everyone know how it is when it comes in... Has anyone else ordered this version?
Thankyou Ralph, the supply voltage wont actually run down below 14volt till im finished using the light as I dont intend switching the engine off till then (im actually intending to use it as a landing light in microlight/ultralight ) a simple resistor should suit me fine then…cheers mate
My drop-in version just died. I was using it for light duty looking under my computer desk. One minute it was working the next minute I go to turn it on and nothing. I put new batteries in it and it still didn't work. I bypassed the switch with a paper clip and got a little arc of spark, but no light. I ohmed out the drop-in and measured no resistance(direct short).
Is it worth the trouble to return these budget lights to China? Is Manafont pretty easy to deal with on warranty returns?
I really like the 2x18650/3xm-l form factor. I guess it is time to do some more homework to get a more reliable light in this category.
fnsooner, it should be ok to deal with manafont for warranty return. Just that it is quite expensive. Over here it costs usd12 to send it back with tracking via Express Mail (3 days), no other option, plus $2 for a box. If yours is rev 0 then you could just buy a driver for usd5 or something, much faster as well.
Maybe you can consider the DRY, they have CW, NW, WW. Better form factor as well, and you can buy additional drivers (usd4.50 ea) for your long term usage. So far so good, but then i have not tortured the DRY. Also much more powerful too, as in the Sky Ray does 260 lux measured at 8.17m and DRY is 390. That's like an additional 1/2 of of Sky Ray heh heh....
Lets see usd51 is the current SR3800 price, so it scales to $76.50. Not too bad.
For me I am slightly better, I have the rev 0 (non drop in non-screw) so i ripped the driver out and wired it directly for direct drive. I have the Trustfire 3T6 so i used that 3 x 18650 tube for DD operation while the Trustfire operates in 2 x 18500 shorty mode.
Another option for you is to get 4 x 18350 IMR (you can only get in pairs) from bestinone.net and do a short pocket rocket direct drive that is 180mm long. You just use the current tube without the extension. 3 x 35mm = 100mm, so it will fit. Can you rip the driver out of the drop in? Hey that gives me an idea, i should try that.
Your new light would be able to hang around with this dragster, in fact the 18350 fully charged would pump it with 3.9A or something so when it is pretty cold like 0 deg in the USA, you'd see a heck lot of light. :D https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/2853 I have tried with the same IMR from BIO but 18500, the 18500 are just about 110mAh higher in discharge capacity as measured. The 18350 are good.