I am searching for pictures of the Nightwatch IRA from Enogear. The one with the pressfit copper pill. If someone can help me out i would be very thankfull!
I want to show it to Wildtrail as a example how to get very good heat handling without making a brick that nowbody wants to use in the real world.
I really like copper. But machining it will make a light expensive (because of the high scrap rate) and heavy. Do not get me wrong Copper lights make beautifull shelf queens but if i go out fishing . . . i do not have a 2 pound copper light in my backpack.
Also i build a lot of cooler for pcs in the past and modded a lot. And i can say for sure that most of the time it is not worth the extra weight to build a cooler out of full copper (except watercooler).
It helps to use copper near the heatsource to use the extremly good thermal conductivity of the copper to spred the heat fast. But a bit further away it is more sensible to use Aluminium for structural items and the finns. . . They are stronger and way less prone to damage this way. Also the factory will have less lights to scrap during production.
I do not know if they still want to build the full copper head light when we are a bit further down the road. But i hope i can at least stop them from filling up their for now small product lineup with mediocre fast produced lights. That would not help anyone. But i can understand that they want to get a few more light to their lineup. And maybe they will go for both options. Will have to wait for the factorys answere.
It would really help if i could show them a few detail pics from the copper press fit pill in the Enogear Nightwatch IRA.
Pretty sure he’s saying he modded the IRA by adding a copper heat sink, Nightwatch doesn’t build them that way. I have an IRA and a Stalker from Nightwatch, what they DO is build them robust with deep thin fins at a high count and well placed.
They also somehow manage a clean de-dome of the SST-40. Makes for a really nice punchy light with excellent power.
If i remember right a few weeks before Enogear closed their site (when they sold the AA SS light) they had a Nightwatch IRA with a copper pill pressfit to the head.
But because the site no longer is available. And other IRA models made complete out of Aluminium are available i can not find the review on BLF.
The only thing i remember is that the light ws much more heavy (with battery arround 450g).
It was this one but he never showed a picture:
Thanks contactcr. I was starting to think that i had dreamed it. To bad he did not make some better internal pics!
In the past a review was not really complete when the light was not disassembled completly and some measurements were taken.
I miss this. Especially interesting if you want to mod a light. Today you can be happy if you find the MCPCB size and driver size.
If somebody is having the Nightwatch IRA with copper pill at home please make some pics! I also contacted casi and asked if he still is having this light at home.
I like copper too but not practical to EDC for larger lights. I think the best practical combo is copper core with aluminum fins. That’s the most efficient use of copper. Won’t add much noticeable weight but you get the max benefit from copper’s thermal properties. If they make a full copper, it should be a separate version like the E07 and Olight R50. I will buy a full copper D80v2 if it’s ever made 
Here is a screenshot of the description that was on the Enogear website.
Yeah.
Designing it like a heatsink would be our best bet: copper core with aluminium fins, like you said.
That said, to get optimal heat transfer, there would need to have the copper pill filled with thermal paste, or soldered.
Vertical finning would also make a lot of sense, along with a connected lower body, like how the Amutorch VG10 21700 does it.
Yea thermal paste and preferably soldered should make a big difference in thermal conductivity through the aluminum/copper interface. Why do you prefer vertical finning? Do you get more surface area that way?
Not exactly. You get the same surface area, but better heat shedding that way.
It’s actually because vertical finning is quite a bit better than horizontal finning when passive cooling is in
That is because of a concept called unrestricted convection airflow.
When the fins are placed in a vertical manner, the air flows throughout the entire surface area of the fins exposed to ambient air, and heat convection allows for a very small air current to flow, which is good, since the air is completely unrestricted vs horizontal finning.
This is extremely useful.
But this is only in the case with passive cooling. Active cooling is always better with horizontal finning.
TLDR: We should see more flashlights with vertical fins for better heat dissipation.
There’s a good reason why I absolutely love the VG10 21700 design.
There’s vertical finning, a large head connected directly to the battery tube for additional surface area.
If it had an e-switch buck converter driver along with an LH351D 4000k 90CRI, it would be my absolute favorite light.
But that is only when you are tail standing right? When holding it in the horizontal position, circular finning should be better.
Yes, but there isn’t much difference in this case, since vertical fins are usually thinner and are more spaced apart, so the benefit isn’t as large as people might expect.
This is one of the reasons why I would’ve loved a BLF Lantern Ex with vertical finning, an 8x18650 battery tube, and 1500-2000 lumens of continuous output.
Would be awesome!
In that manner however, Amutorch did a very smart thing about the VG10.
Vertical finning on the head, and horizontal finning on the battery tube.
It’s a very efficient design, and one I would like for the D80 V3 to implement for maximum heat dissipation.
Mounted on a car bumper perhaps, but otherwise the longitudinal fins are wasted in a handheld flashlight. It wouldn’t roll off the table though, in theory…
And just so it isn’t simply an opinion, we have to look at the heat itself, it radiates away from the bottom of the emitter in an almost identical cone as the light out the top… we block it and it backs up, saturating the metal and clogging up until the fins can release it into the air. The longitudinal fins aligned with the reflector are far from the heat source, with narrow lanes or paths to the fins making this inefficient. Fin the area below the emitter, elongate it and make it deeply and numerously finned, much like the Eagle Eye X6, and you’re on your way to an efficient light.
It’s too unique a light and not a reflector but the kiriba-ru C8TT head milled out with copper spacer and 6 LEDs will get hot all the way to the bezel. The wide deep fins really keep that bottom section cooler to the touch. Way under appreciated mod light.
I took this apart and washed the tube and tail cap with detergent. Also wiped all contacts in the head with isopropyl alcohol. I saw a slight bump in lumen. Turn-on lumens is now 1,724 with P26A.
We don’t want too much thermal paste, because it is a worse conductor than the Copper. If we have a Copper core pill and a Copper MCPCB, then the closer we can get those surfaces to each other, the better.
Why can’t they have a triple thickness MCPCB made? Put sll the copper in direct contact with the emitter. Just wondering…
I’ve seen several thorough testing online of perfectly lapped cpu heatsinks tested with and without heat paste. No matter how smooth the surface, with thermal paste always cools the CPU MUCH better than without thermal paste. If there’s a way to solder the joint together it would be even better.