Ok, I've taken some beamshots. I must say, in real life the new 3.5A Nanjg 105c is definitely brighter. For the first time I see rings in the spill caused by the reflector. Based on the shots, I would say that the Manafont drop-in probably drew close to 2.5-3A's, and the Nanjg 3.5A's. Please bare in mind that all fotos are taken with my automatic Panasonic Lumix ZS3. Settings seems to be Shutter speed is 1/8s, Aperature is f3.3, and ISO400 on all photos.
I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking. Enjoy...
The 6mm include the plastic around the wires, the copper part itself is only about 4mm, but yes, it's nice and thick. I just stripped the ends from the wire, pushed one end into the dmm and the other end to make contact with the flashlight. I'm sure if I solder the wire's ends they'll make better connections and read closer to 3.5A
For the first time the flashlight gets hot on High. With the original Ultrafire driver I could leave the light on high for 10-15mins and it would be bare mildly warm. Now, after 5mins on high it's warm.
My Stock MF UF 3-mode heats the flashlight VERY quickly! On mine, the flashlight will be getting noticable warm after 30 seconds. After 5-10 minutes on high, the entire flashlight body is VERY warm and the head is so hot that you can't hold onto it for more than a few seconds.
I just got this sku 5720 from Manafont. It seems to work fine with all my Trustfire Flame batteries (4 of them). When I use it with my DX Gray Ultrafire batteries, it trips the protection on all of them (8 different ones) within 10 seconds when the drop-in is on HIGH and the batteries are fully charged to 4.20V.
Not sure if this will be useful to anyone but I thought I would mention it.
I have finally put this drop-in to use. Mounted with copper foil (tightly squeezed in) in my fake L2. I like it a lot, but I have one issue with it I don't like. The drive current on medium is too high to be "battery conserving".
With a fully charged Tenergy 2600mAh 18650 I get:
High - 5.15A
med - 1.50A
Low - 0.28A
I was hoping for a medium closer to 0.9A -> 1.0A for longer runtime. Perhaps it's just my battery and on a lower quality cell (ie. a Trustfire flame 2400mAh) I'd get lower numbers.
Yes 5 amps. This was a great drop in a year ago when everyone was using cheaper batteries, now that most people have better batteries it pulls way to many amps because it’s direct drive on high. Plus the PWN on medium and low is horrible if you are sensitive to it you should avoid this drop in.
Well, this is going to be fun for me then. I have one of those drop-ins on the way. It should arrive any day now. And the only 18650’s I have anymore are 3100 mAh Panasonic NCR18650A’s, and protected ones at that. The protection circuit is rated for 6A sustained discharge, so I guess I had just better hope that these cells deliver a little less than that.
Even so, we’re talking insanity here. But, bring it on!
My unprotected NCR18650A (2900) can push 4.7-4.8A on full charge. So you can actually expect that. Just hope the protection circuit give enough resistance to drop it to around 4A, which is from my eye gives the max lumens output. Any further just give more heat, unless of course, you mount the LED directly onto big copper base
I think people get overly paranoid about these direct drive lights. Many of us have this drop in, the 980L and other direct drive lights that have been getting constant use for over a year now without the LED burning out. Typically the battery only delivers these extremely high amperage numbers when they have a fresh charge, once you drop below 4 volts I find the amperage they put out is closer to the mid 3s which is perfect for an XML.
I am concerned about getting some decent heat transfer into the body though. People often talk about using foil and whatnot, but I’m after a more elegant solution. Something like IO use, pictured here: http://www.intl-outdoor.com/xml-u2-p60-dropin-module-p-336.html
It’s some sort of thermal compound obviously. Is it available anywhere?
Aluminium foil or stripes of aluminium cans. Its homemade.. obviously the very best method would be to fill the gap with molted aluminium.. But wrapping it with foil works very well. Of course you can use weird thermal compound or expensive copper tape.. but I dont see a real benefit.