how many lumen are the 6x with shelf? $60 shipped?
Tempting!
Did you bought or made those driver discs?
Not totally sure what they put out in stock form with the thin wires and have not swapped the wires to see what difference it makes. I am waiting for a diffuser to come for my sphere so I can get a lumen reading.
With stock wires I have no clue, looking at it I would say somewhere around 2500 lumens or so? With upgraded wires it should be somewhere around ~4500 lumens if I had to take a wild guess.
I can upgrade the wires for an extra cost but I figured people would rather save the money and do that themselves. Not hard, just time consuming and tedious.
Sorry, should have put that in the OP, To make things simple I am going to say the priced are shipped in the con USA. Had a few people asking for quote and I figure the time saved from getting quotes is worth just going free shipping.
By driver discs are you talking about the FET+1 drivers? or the Press fit shelves for the new shelf-less skyrays?
I got the driver boards from Richard and assembled them here. I added the copper disc to them myself, I got the disc online, don’t remember where off the top of my head, took me forever to find something that would work though. Soldering it to the driver evenly was interesting at first as well.
The shelves I made from scratch, a 10 minute process on a lathe takes a stinking hour each by hand! They turned out good though (well once I got the process down, the first few prototypes work but didn’t look as pretty lol). They transfer heat way better then the shelves to be honest, never have understood big gaping holes under the shelves when it is not needed for the driver. Might as well fill it with as much metal as possible or make the light shorter IMO.
That said the shelves vs a normal skyray is no comparison at all. Even at half the amps you can feel the heat moving out of the LED’s to the head in seconds. Swap in DTP stars and some good thermal paste and it would be even better.
Hmm nice, SRK’s with screw-in ledboard shelves! Nice work on the heatsinks too!
For people who mod them anyway it is not a big deal, but the leds in the pictures sure look like authentic fake XM-L’s, aka Latticebright.
Thanks, this was fun to get back into this kind of thing after a decade long break.
The pictures are not real good because I was too lazy to pull out the macro lens.
They are real Cree’s to the best of my knowledge though, they have the dimpled base, correct green color base, round bond wires ect.
I can get some pics next to fakes if you would like, just need to dig out the macro lens.
Here are some slightly better pictures, didn’t get the proper lighting or tripod but should be enough. Far as I can see they are real Cree’s. If you know something I don’t please do share:
And here is a Fake from another SRK, yes I know it was blurry, I figured ya’ll know what they look like so no need to retake it lol.
Indeed, I was quite surprised myself! When I pulled off the bezel and then tried shaking out the reflector I was quite puzzled for an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out how to get it apart before I tried unscrewing it lol.
Hmm interesting compare the LEDs to the first pic of the fake Cree awareness thread
Argh insertion pic not working
Check - The Fake-Cree LED Awareness Thread - The new "low" in Budget lights.
I usually check the size of the die first…. And yours look not promising 
Still temped though shipping would kill it
Any chance of just getting a 7led reflector and matching ledboard (with or without the LEDs is the same to me)?
They very well could be fakes, I am not an expert on the subject. I just didn’t see any hard evidence in either design or performance to suggest they are.
I actually did compare it to those pictures and I don’t see any signs of it being a fake? Please do elaborate.
All the things to watch for are ok on the Cree side. The only thing that looks a bit off is the die size seems a bit small but from other pictures I have seen it appears that Cree has changed the production process on the XM-L’s a few times like the XP-G2’s.
I never saw a picture of a fake XM-L with the heavily dimpled base and round bond wires though?
Most notably for me is that even with those hair thin wires they are still as bright at the 8x SRK’s with known fake LED’s pulling 10+ amps.
So you want just the reflector and shelf from one of them? I could part it out I suppose although not sure how you would use the shelf without the body to screw it into?
Or are you talking about one of the other SRK’s I have with the floating boards?
Well idk would be nice to lost it in the thread so the real experts can comment because you are right they could very well have been made different OR we have discovered a much better LaticeBright either way it’s interesting!
Yes I have the srk clones but only with 3 or 4 floating ledboard anf reflector
So just a reflector and one of those ledboards would mean I could mod one into a 7.
Yeah, I would like to get some other opinions as well, I honestly do not know what to make of the LED’s and I don’t want to mislead anyone.
I know I have a spare reflector (might have been an 8x reflector) from a mistake during the prototyping process, not sure about an LED board though. I will have to see what is left, got pieces floating around everywhere lol.
Those pics earlier posted of your LED's I'd say are definitely CREE. It has the side wire, the bumpy coating matching a CREE, etc. I have old LB's from ~1.5-2 years ago, and recent ones, and yours aren't anything like them. can't be 100% sure, but close.
Just finished going through the parts stack and the only spare parts I have are actually from one that I tried to convert the stock MCPCB to DTP, so it is all there except the “working” MCPCB (the thermal pads are gone for the LED’s). IIRC it actually has the threads for a screw in shelf but didn’t come with the actual shelf? I saw all sorts of strange things in this experience lol.
I can part out one of the SRK’s but seeing as the rest of the parts are kinda worthless without the reflector and MCPCB it would basically just save you shipping cost of the whole light.
No worries I just ordered a 7x LED SRK clone for measure things for the Q8.
Could you tell me the screw measuring? (For your SRKs clones)
Sure but what screw are you referring to? The screws that hold the floating MCPCB to the reflector?
They are M3 standard thread screws on most of the SRK’s I got but not all, some are M4 or M5.
Yes those
What is the heart to heart distance?
I think you are talking about the distance between the screws?
The first 7x one I grabbed had a screw spacing at ~14mm but honestly I doubt it will do you much good, they were all different in that aspect, particularly the 7x versions, there were at least 4 different MCPCB/reflector setups on the 7x models.
The 8x models were more consistent, I think mostly because they are still pretty new and only have 1 or 2 runs of them made so far.
Yes!
Thanks for the info!
OK we are not going to take these screw locations into consideration then for the Q8.
Is the purposes of using the screw location so that a SRK reflector could bolt into the Q8?
If so then I think that 14mm hole spacing could work, this was the most common size I got and the vast majority of the 8x+ MCPCB’s seem to use the spacing.
It is the lower number of LED’s that vary more, I am guessing because they have had more runs of them and thus slight changes in design as they cheapened them.
I would say that excluding then 6x and below reflectors 85% of the larger ones use approx this spacing. Slight changes in spacing could be accounted for by modders by simply drilling the holes slightly larger as well. Crude but effective.
Plus there is also the physical size constraints, the screws have to go into the space between LED’s and once you get into the larger number of LED’s that size becomes more consistent.
The issue here is then that the threads need to be in a good location on the Q8 reflector and 2 screws may not have enough meat to really get a good hold.
For my days of computer overclocking we all knew that pressure > thermal compound. The big changes in CPU temp were down to things like how well the heat sink was clamped to the CPU, thermal compound made a very small change by comparison.
So for the Q8 I want to be able to crank that reflector down HARD (and thus press the MCPCB to the pill hard) without stripping anything. This honestly would be best accomplished on the Q8 with a large single screw in the M5/M6 size range with as many threads as possible that are well machined.
The only issue here is that from some other Quads I have built the MCPCB likes to spin when tightening the screw, not usually a problem but annoying if you are trying to line it up the LED’s compared to the outside, also puts some stress on the wires.
A small set screw on the side(s) would fix that though and add more clamping force although also a bit more work.