It’s 108mm x 25mm x 25mm, which makes it shorter and considerably thinner than a Sipik 98. I have 1xAA sized lights in the same style and am pretty impressed with its small size.
Has anyone found an 18650 zoom light that’s smaller than the one I linked above? If not, does anyone know where I can buy an 18650 version of the light I linked above in Black instead of Gold?
Thanks!
I plan to use the light as a mod host, probably with a FET driver from Mountain Electronics combined with a dedomed XP-G2.
If you are going for many amps, I suggest this Cofly light I did a small review on. It is 125 x 25 x 25 mm. It can handle more heat than many other 18650 lights that are build flimsier and has probably a better lens (same lens as sk98) than what you have found (for what I can see on the picture).
That used to be my thought also, but there is a lot happening at the same time upon dedoming (like: especially the light going to the side and would have been lost in a zoomie, does not make it out of the die and gets recycled), the light loss I usually find a bit less than I had expected.
I think that black one is actually 14500/AA with a mislabeled title.
On the title it says 18650, but in the descriptive text it says 14500/AA. Also, it looks EXACTLY like the AA one I have now, right down to the clip and interior battery compartment switch.
The gold 18650 one I linked has some structural differences visible in the picture, including more cooling fins and the XML emitter.
I didn’t look very closely at that one because the outer body styling looks the same as the 1xAA Ultrafire 10w I purchased a couple years ago. I didn’t like the 10w because it had a very thick lens retaining ring. I like modifying zoomies so the LED can get very close to the back of the lens. A retaining ring gets in the way and prevents that. It also didn’t help that the Ultrafire 10w had pretty shoddy construction including dirty internal components and a thin hollow pill.
I see from your Cofly review that the pill is quite thick and well made, and the lens retaining ring is quite minimal.
I was experimenting this week with my Rustu XL-03 (actually, I linked the wrong one… it’s really a Cree 803 that looks exactly the same). I filed off the top of the pill and the bottom of the sliding bezel. The lens now retracts so far back in flood mode that the back of the lens is nearly touching the insulation on the emitter bond wires - just 1-2mm above the top of the dedomed XP-G2. It wouldn’t be possible to get this much retraction in a domed LED … the dome would be inside the lens!
In full flood mode I measured the beam angled out the front of the light at approximately 85 degrees. At a range of 16 cm from a wall, the circle of light is 32-33 cm wide. Compare to an unmodded Sipik 68 that produces a circle only 14-15cm wide at the same distance. This flood is HUGE… it’s wider than the flood of many reflector flashlights I own, including my Zebralight SC52. It’s almost like having a mule flashlight, that just happens to retain the capability to zoom to an extremely tight spot.
For my next mod, I want to do the same thing with an 18650 light.
Agreed. Dedoming an XP-G2 seems to result in a 15-20% loss in lumens, while increasing lux 70-100%.
The relatively small lumen loss is a small price to pay for such a huge increase in throw. Especially for a small zoom flashlight that’s intended to able to be used for close range flood and for throw.
Removing the dome shrinks the apparent die size. The dome is no longer there to magnify the die. The result is the light is coming from a much smaller point-source and luminance (think of luminance as lumens per square mm) is much higher, even though the total amount of lumens is lower.
Since throw is all about having high luminance, dedoming is the way to go to maximize it.
Note that overall lumens go down because with the dome removed, more light reflects back into the die crystal rather than being emitted out the front. Dedoming an LED also results in a considerable tint shift.
I like what you are trying to do :-) . But what I really would want in this 18650 zoomie is a shorter focal length lens, the shape of the lens of the sk68, or the UF-T20, but in 23mm diameter. It is not for sale anywhere :-(
I know!
I have a sk68 clone with that stronger lens.
Quite a bit more light projected than with the ‘normal 24mm lens’ everyone uses.
But, the projection is larger than with a wider lens…
Indeed, nowhere to be found for sale.
(That is, I didn’t find ’em anywhere…)
Personally I like a zoomer that can (almost) have the lens touch the LED, for a big wide spot.
So I file down the rear of the head, so the lens can get closest to the LED.
I tried buying a better lens for a zoomie a month ago. Went to Thorlabs.com and bought an 18mm condensing aspheric lens with 15mm focal length. It was glass and AR coated…… very pricy. I was hoping the AR coating would make my light brighter than the stock lens on my modded Sipik 58.
Unfortunately, looks like I got the wrong lens. The one I received has 2 focal points making it useless for a zoom flashlight. It’s brighter in flood mode due to the high quality and coating, but much dimmer in spot because I can only select one of the 2 focal points. Guess I shoulda called them before ordering to make sure I was getting the right thing.
Agreed that short focal length is better… preferably with a glass lens. However, I think if the right lens were found it shouldn’t be too hard to fit it in any of these cheap zoomies. Might need a little Norland to glue it in place and the new lens might protrude, but shouldn’t be too hard.
Sorry to hear that.
Must have been pricey indeed…
I had a similar thing with a glass replacement for a weak PMMA aspheric.
This lens is not so sure where exactly the focal point is, it seems…
It was not an expensive lens, and I may use it some day for some fixed focus simple torch or whatever, but I’m usually quite impressed with the modern PMMA lenses.
They’re good, I think.
Usually better shaped than glass too, for a lower price.
I didn’t measure anything, but they also look very transmittant for light, don’t they?
measured it, it’s 120mm in the shortest zoom position, and about 131mm with zoom fully extended. Relatively small for my collection, but it looks like there are a couple shorter zooms with 18650s out there.
Yeah. The gold one I got on Ebay for $10 is 108 mm long and 24 mm wide.
I’m in the process of modding it. I’ve got it down to 102 mm using the stock tailcap switch. If my plan to install a momentary sideswitch for a FET electronic switch driver works then I could remove the switch from the tailcap. This would let me shorten the entire light to around 95 mm.
I don’t really care about the length of the light with the bezel extended. The length only really matters for pocket carry and for that the bezel would always be retracted.
If black ones show up, I’d like to try one. The SK73 is also nice and shorter than mine, but I like the diameter, and shortness of it. Don’t need it, but if they were to come up under $10 in black with real XMLs, it would be hard to pass up.
