Bake one of the black ones, increase the variety! 
good idea to make a brownish colored one
They look great in copper imo (there’s an awesome picture of one floating around somewhere), but yellow gold might be neat on an sk68 (even though I don’t like it on other lights). I dunno if you can get their particular anodization brown though.
Trick is just to not over bake it ..pull it as soon as it starts to turn brown.Mine was lovely dark brown ...
Next time I make a pizzia I may bake another .. I leave the bezel and tail black because It looks good and it's too much of a pain to tear it all the way down ..My newer ultra fire ones do have the tail screwed in instead of just pressed in ..but I still like them black anyway .
Huh, I figured it was different anodizing that made brown when heated. My light from from black to dark red to orange and proceeded to slowly lighten up to a copperish color. I never saw brown and I checked about every minute.
What happens if you over bake it ? do it go into a grey ?
Tricky to bake to brown colour, because the remaining heat after removal from oven/stove will still shift the tint towards lighter colour. The region for brown is very small, from dark brown to light brown goes pretty quick, afterwards it’s orange all the way.
I did it once with a $2 police light, it came up beautiful dark brown - similar like oak. I just held it over a gas stove, once turned to that particular colour I quickly doused it in running tap water. Really liked it.
Nice that there is something to do about so many lights being black. Wonder how the color affects the radiation cooling. There may be a correlation between absorbing visible light and emitting infra-red.
I ordered another SK58. They fit in pockets more neatly but clearly have less cooling. I think it is an Osram and it may be a three mode. I wonder if the pills are interchangeable? I can’t find XR-E “Q5” 58s any more. The 3 mode XR-E 58 that I already have was too stiff on the zoom, so I sanded the spring and straightened the kinks at the ends. It was then too loose until I put heat sink compound on it. The groove is too small for an o-ring.
I got IMRs but they doesn’t seem to make much difference.
Is this the kind of flashlight you’re looking for ?
Size; SK68, SK58 and that AA light with no name found on another thread.
Edit; third light ; Slick looking 1-AA Q5 Zoom, price Drop, $4.24 from $5.99 shipped
Thanks. I ordered one from Banggood.
Yes. The middle one is an SK58. I have seen that other thread and ordered the one on the right, $2. if I recall.
Anyway the others don’t have as much cooling area as the 68, so they would not take increased power as well. I don’t have the already upgraded XM-L yet. As far as modding them myself, I think I should try with something larger, even though I have made small model airplanes and jewelry.
So many lights I see, mostly in pictures, have square or rectangular fins. Perhaps they do that to avoid a military look? Square fins are harder to machine and don’t cool as well as trapezoidal fins, as on a 68. The wider metal at the base conducts the heat out better and the wider gap near the outside lets more air circulate. To figure the optimal width for a given height, I would need to look things up and calculate, but it is clear that tapered is better than square, just from thinking about it.
I took apart a $3.50 clone that I gave up on because of the tail threads. The pill is hollow and only contacts the star at its very edge. From pictures, the UltraOk pill is solid and contacts the star’s whole rear face. The Sipik pill is solid but appears to have a ledge so that it contacts the star only in a wider ring at its edge.
If upgraded to a copper star, this would make less difference.
I got my Jenny Zeng / AliExpress pre-upgraded XM-L SK68 just now, and this morning I finished upgrading my own to XM-L. The one I did is a bit brighter and much warmer white, but it cost me more money as well as time. They are not noticeably brighter than a stock Sipik with the same (IMR) cell, but of course the leds run cooler. Looking for drivers. Mine has a thick copper star but a hollow pill. I don’t know about the Jenny Zeng one’s insides.
What is the tail draw on each of the XML lights with which fully charged IMR cell?
Thanks for the link! I was looking for an all black 3 mode with U2 led so this was perfect. Thanks!
And I buy a TON of stuff from Aliexpress. Only one time in 100 orders did a seller try and screw me, but once I reported it to Aliexpress they refunded all my money literally 10 mins later! No questions asked.
-Jamie M.
I charged up the IMRs to 4.2 V and made some measurements, with my cheap meter with maybe half an ohm in the leads. There is not much order in them, so I repeated the measurements and compared warming. The current measurements are consistent and warming comparisons support them. I also compared brightness of similar size spots:
Blue one (UltraFire) like the copper star one, XR-E — 2.1 A, same
Red one (UltraFire) modified with copper star, XM-L — 1.6 A, brightest and warmer white
Sipik SK68, unmodified, XR-E — 1.5 A, reference
Jenny Zeng pre-modified (UltraFire) XM-L — 0.8 A, same
Other UltraFire from different source, XP-E — 0.8 A, slightly dimmer
The brightness comparisons, the currents and the led types don’t correlate in any noticeable way, and the range in current is much larger than expected.
I also have had good experience with AliExpress. I got a different brand of SK68 than I expected once. I thought I got a bad led bulb, got a partial refund for it and then found it was the dimmer’s fault and not the bulb’s. I trust it more than EBay.