thanks. …
I think i need to study the switch nomenclature page on wikipedia lol
IMO, just about every headlamp switch is too hard to operate, so too easy sounds just right 
I found almost exactly what I need for this headlamp, and for 3 switches on my sunforce spotlight
the price isn’t bad either (2.99 ea plus shipping)
but it doesn’t have center off 
cherry does make a water resistant switch w/ on1, off, on2, but it is too big
This light would be nice with a dual parallel 18650 battery pack. I am considering picking up one of these lights though.
-Garry
Looks great, how well does it handle rain? I’ve been through lots of headlights and most of them conked out when wet.
I haven’t had this light out in the rain yet. It appears to have decent weatherproofing on the headlight part. The battery compartment has no protection around the door. The door is pressed against your head so it may be OK. I’d say it might hold up to a light rain, but a heavy downpour could get into the battery area.
First mod finished - I took the switch apart. It has a very stiff spring inside. I looked through my parts and found a similar looking switch, and put swapped the springs. 5 minutes and it is greatly improved (at least imho).
Next, swap both emitters and 24ga wiring.
Nice, I might do the spring thing. The switch is too stiff. I already swapped the mule flood LED to a warm white. Much better. You thinking XP-G2 for the left side?
I was thinking xpg2.
It finally arrived and I fudged the reflow.
So, I took an xml2 5k, trimmed a 16mm pcb to fit, widened the reflector hole and stuck that in there. It didn’t have quite enough throw for what I’d like to use this for, so I de-domed it.
I also trimmed a pt-54 (red) to fit the generic LED side. The PT54 came in some sort of assembly (for a projector?) - heatsink and two glass aspherics. The smaller aspheric is a perfect fit for the hole in the bezel. It sits directly on the PT54. The lens has a very short focal length, and sitting on the emitter it still focuses the beam, which is just slightly narrower than the reflector side - akin to a zoomie pushed 1/3 forward from full flood.
To help radiate heat, I sanded and painted the outside of both aluminum pieces (black), and I cut out the sections of the housing that are slotted, and the section dotted with holes.
Finally, I installed a kaidomain coated lens on the reflector side. At some point I will spray the driver with plastidip just for peace of mind if I get caught using it in heavy rain. I also plan to wedge a piece of aluminum or copper between the two aluminum heads, effectively doubling the heatsink mass/area available to each emitter.
And, here’s some GREAT news on this light. Soft switch presses change modes!
ie, if you have the reflector side on, a soft press goes to a ~medium mode, another soft press goes to strobe. The other side has just high and medium.
This light is awesome!!! 5 modes, two emitters, wide voltage range, easy to adjust angle, budget price…
I will definitely end up buying more.
I may even end up buying one just to rob the driver for something else…
I think next time I’ll put xml2 with dome on reflector side and dedomed xpg2 on the other side, with another tiny aspheric and spacer for some serious throw (for headlamp size anyway ).
That’s one cool mod, dthrckt! I thought I mentioned the mode changing… yeah just checked, it’s there. Maybe it’s hard to notice mixed in with the other text.
Anyway, I agree these are nice lights, especially after modding them.
I have been running them with unprotected cells; not recommended. Because of the wide operating voltage range, it’s real easy to over-discharge your cells. I’ve done it twice already. You will not notice the light output drop until the cell is well below 2V. At least if you are running protected, you get the cutoff before going TOO far.
My next FT order will include a few protected cells just for these.
Ah, it’s been so long since I read it I must have forgotten.
Glad you reminded me about protection. I often use unprotected cgr18650ch. I might add a protection circuit to the battery holder since I don’t plant to use anything but 18650s
Just checked out the added pictures, very nice! The red side would be perfect for stargazing, or any other use where keeping your night vision is important. I like my WW mule too much to change it though.
Edit, oh, look at that post #999 
thanks
yeah, that’s what it is for - star gazing and night fishing. Since there’s no hotspot, it hurts night vision even less than my other headlamp that has red 5mm leds.
Look great, thank you. One question - what small issues do you mean?
Hi, most of the minor issues are mentioned in the text of the review. This was one of my first reviews and the format is not ideal. Some of the minor issues are the mule LED has a hollow pill, the switch is very stiff, the battery compartment door is difficult to close, battery compartment has no waterproofing, and the strap is a simple headband with nontop strap.
It’s good review, especially for the first time Good price but a lot of “surprises”
I bought this headlamp after reading this review.
The generic LED provides a good enough floody light to work with and the XP-E throws more than enough for me. I really liked it but….
The lamp was dying on after being left on OFF overnight. I thought it were the contacts - fixed that. Maybe the batteries were rubbish - but it did this to 3 batteries, one of them newish.
After doing a little reading and youtubing, I decided to check for parasitic drain. The drain is 8-9 microamp.
Can someone tell me if this is a big enough parasitic drain to kill the batteries and if so, how do I fix it?
My batteries are all protected BTW.
TIA.
I didn’t think to test for that, as I thought the switch would be a complete disconnect.
Under 10 microAmps is a tiny drain, it would take years to deplete a good 18650. There might be something wrong with your light. I’ll check mine for drain and update it here shortly.
Edit: on my first light it’s 1.1uA. When the light is first turned off it’s a little higher at 4uA, but it slowly drifts back down (probably several minutes) to 1.1uA.
That’s not enough to be concerned about. You should check your light to make sure the drain isn’t a lot more. Draining a cell overnight indicates something is wrong.
Now my second light did something different. When I first connected the power, it registered a drain of 104uA! OK, that’s different. Then I turned the light on and off. Now it’s 3-4uA and I cannot get it to return to 100uA. There may be something quirky about this light. I so not know why it needs power all the time. There’s no memory and the switch itself controls which emitter comes on next.
Strange.
Hi guys,
I just ordered one of these, so now it will be hard to wait till it arrives:) So I’m a little bit digging some more informations about this light.
I have one big question - does the light from XP-E have warm white color or cold white? Because the main reason why I wanted to buy it was that on photos it looked that the color is warm white, but now I’m not so sure…
The wide-angle led has cold white light which is obvious from pictures, but i will change it - I have some generic warm white 3W led in my desk, which has exactly the same look as the one, which is in the headlight.
Maybe another good idea is to check if there are good heat transfer between led stars and aluminium tubes. And I will definitely try to add some copper to enlarge the heat radiation area (connect both aluminium tubes together with copper to more than double the cooling area…)
I would call, the XP-E emitter a cool white. Heat transfer to the pill is adequate, but thermal mass and surface area are issues. Outdoor active use should be OK. I find it gets hot with desk use.
I changed the flood LED to WW and it is a big improvement. I have seen XP-E and XP-G in warmer tints, either would be easy emitter swaps.
Well that is a little bit shame that it is cool white, but yeah there is always the possibility to change it to some warmer led in the future, maybe some XP-G (or XP-G2…).
The heat spread area is in my opinion much bigger issue. I agree that during movement (running, cycling) the airflow around the heatsink tubes will be sufficient, but in steady state and especially on Hi setting it won’t be enough. Because as is said in review on Hi there is really too big current (1.37 Amps which with 4.2V gives almost 6 Watts and due to specifications the led is only 3W and its maximum current is 1A). I think it’s a big overkill which causes unnecessary overheating of the emitter…
Yeah, and in my case, I killed the flood emitter. Changing to a better quality emitter seems to have fixed that, no more burnout on high at a desk.
I think simply using a Sharpie to blacken the heatsink could help a little. I did this to just the front of the flood heat sink and it throws off more heat now, due to the increased emmissivity. Blackening the entire tube might help more. Easy to try.