Illuminaria, my bad, I thought they were diodes. Ah well. Cool to hear that you got that power jump, but without any kind of pill behind the star the possibility of cooking the emitter concerns me.
I don’t see why the tailcap wouldn’t hold-up. Albeit it’s painfully primitive but not totally unworkable as long as current stays relatively low. The pill is loose because it’s supposed to be tightened up against the reflector. And I tested 1.4A with the battery carrier wired-u with copper braid and all soldered together.
I was at Lowes and bought one of their 65 lumen and 120 lumen 3xAAA LED lights. Guess what? The 120 lumen light puts out 65 lumens and the 65 lumen light puts out 120 lumens (but is down to 90 lumens after 2 minutes). Looks like they have a packaging error…
Bought another of the 65 lumen 3xAAA lights (Lowes #0494829 - $3) just to be sure… sure enough it starts out at 120 lumens, drops like a rock… down to 65 lumens after 5 minutes. It has a 5400K Cree MLE led on a 20mm-ish star sitting on a hollow pill. Direct drive. So I mod’d it with a Nichia 119 (Nichia 119's for cheap (also Cree XLAMP-7090's) - Want to Sell - BudgetLightForum.com) on a Noctigon… had to grind a smidge off the Noctigon to fit) About the same light level out, but the light is much better quality and color temp…
The $6 “120 lumen” has a 5400K Cree XB-D in it. Puts out less light than the 65 lumens light. It put out more after I plucked a big black booger off the LED. Started at 95 lumens and drops like a rock. With the booger it started out at around 65 lumens.
The 4AA lights are supposedly in my area stores, tried one last night, no luck finding it. Had a sales person walk the whole store until after closing.
Lowe's and HD corporate HQ's probably wonder why they don't sell more flashlights.
Got one! Found two dumped in a Maglite display box and one was ripped open. Rang up $9.97. Feels solid, though I haven't even opened up the carton yet!
It looks like by honing out the inside of the pill a 3/4” copper plug or bushing might be made to press fit and shortening the pill might allow a larger cell. 4x 10440 has more power than 14650 so need to get up to 17650 or 18650 TP make it worthwhile. Maybe shorten the pill and mod the tail? Several different 35mm tir optics available though.
You don’t need to shorten the pill, just remove the driver spring. You may need to file the tail plunger a little but there should be just enough room longitudinally to fit an unprotected 18650 in there. And as OL said, get a 1/2” ID copper pipe end-cap. Put a bead of solder around the base and it fits so perfectly in there. Driver is 20mm, mtnelectronics has contact boards and 105C’s, though in this light you might want to remove two or four of the 7135s.
Yep and the 500lm 3C light bumped up 10$ as well. Won’t touch them at that price.
I found that the front rubber collar allows 18650 to fit just fine with additional collar around the battery. I de-domed the led so it’s my beater thrower until something better (cheap) comes along. On bench supply I ran the head at 4.1v @ 2.5 amps for ten minutes after applying heat sink compound to star and aluminum pill. Using thermal gun, rear of head, near spring was running 158F! Shame the light went up 10$, can’t afford leather gloves now;)
Home depot sells their version of this light in a 2x pack. Theirs is a 3 mode, H-L-Strobe, next mode memory. Its definitely an XPG2. It most definitely will host an 18650, with some rolled up computer paper. FWIW I am using unprotected cells (shorter than protected cells), and they fit fine.
In stock form it will draw 1.55A from 4x eneloops and 1.25A from a panasonic CGR18650. It drives the LED harder with Eneloops, I am not sure exactly how much… but the host body gets warmer (but not alarmingly hot) with eneloop cells than the CGR panasonic.
Anyways, $14 for the pair is a good deal. For the XPG2, 18650, and the 4aaa cell format blows away any 3aaa… IMHO
