Digging through my box of parts a couple of nights ago, I found this LED:
This is the first high-power emitter I ever purchased/owned. It’s a P4-bin Cree XR-E. For a very short while, it was used as an emitter in a very early 3D Mag mod as a mule. I wasn’t happy with the floody beam, and moved on shortly, but have kept the emitter.
It was likely purchased from DX, sometime between 2009 and 2011. Not sure of the exact date as I had an older email address and password, so I can’t look up ancient order history from there.
Ah Cree’s XRE P4, that was the LED that changed the flashlight world late 2006 as I remember.
Most every light prior to that used Lumileds with their Luxeon line of LEDs then Cree comes out with their XRE and the first bin to be used was the P4.
The Fenix P1D-CE was one of the first flashlights to use it. I remember when I first turned it ON it made all my other lights obsolete.
The XRE P4 had probably doubled the brightness of previous LEDs used in flashlights.
Imagine every new LED bin gives us about 10% increase then an LED comes out that almost doubles the brightness.
Cree is synonymous with flashlights all because of that LED!
Thanks for sharing the memories!
I have at least a half-dozen P60 drop-ins w/ XRE emitters and any of them can out-throw any XPG/XML/N219 emitter in a P60. Had an XRE in a M@Gmod w/ a deep reflector and 1.5A buck driver. It could send a laser-like beam out nearly 1/2 mile to pick out folks walking along lake-side path across from my home.
Unfortunately, the XR-E set the standard for a throw-capable LED early in the life of emitters, and newer LEDs designed for throw, have progressed surprisingly little. The XR-E is still a great emitter for throwers. My brother-in-law’s HS-802 is still an impressive light, and is one of the few we own that can light up a hay-barn 1/3 mile away. Even my more recently built HS-802 using a hard-driven XP-E2 has a hard time beating the gently-driven XR-E.
My first real high-power LED flashlight purchased was an Ultrafire 501b with a EZ-900 XR-E. I still have that light. The driver died unexpectedly relatively early in that light. I replaced it, in my newbness, with an AK-47 driver I had in my kit, not realizing how perfect this unit was for the light. Much later, I discovered that the driver actually had user-selectable mode groups, and subsequently enabled the 2-mode high/low option. The light has been in that configuration ever since. Being an early Ultrafire, it is actually a very nice high quality host. It has been replaced as my go-to light long ago, but I still love it for the tight/throwy beam, with narrow hotspot and minimal spill.
I have a few stashed in my parts bins…
Also, five in excellent condition, in my old TrustFire TR-1200. Shipped with 5x “Q5” emitters, all EZ-900. Now, making me wonder… Can the driver be resistor-modded to kick up the brightness a bit? 0:)
It actually was (still is) a really nice light, with decent throw. About 25k IIRC.
I’ve got a couple of SSC P4s in my inventory, I don’t remember what I bought them for but they must have been for some project or other that never got started! The SSC P4 used an XR-E die from Cree but Seoul Semiconductor made their own phosphor and packaged the LEDs.
The XR-E does in fact have a centre thermal pad and it’s electrically isolated from the other two.
Yup… I thought that was unusual, but Google Image Search for Cree P4 and you will see photos of others done the same way. Maybe an early-gen model and they didn’t have their process refined yet? Lacking a phosphor mask during the application process?
This is really crazy. Now crazy ideas are coming to my mind like mixing phosphor with transparent epoxy to make something like that :) This in combination with precolimator lens could be really cool in aspheric flashlights.
I can not find a XR-E like that either in my led junk box.
The XR-E indeed fits a MT-Noctigon, see https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/20082 , but there's not much gain going to DTP-copper: with its giant thermal pad the heat path bottleneck is elsewhere inside the led, see post 17 of that thread.
I still have all my XR-E emitters of various tints & bins, (warm white, neutral white and cool white both EZ900 & EZ1000) and i have one like yours with the full phosphor coating. I believe those were the earliest XR-E types from Cree.
They still have an ability to throw a hell of a beam on a good focused light. (one reason why the Jacobs A60 was such a champ thrower as it came with an XR-E.
