Back in October last year I decided that I really needed some better lights on the ChimpCycle. I’m a daily user of a fantastic cycle trail which is completely unlit and with trees running down either side. Despite being through an urban area it’s completely dark over much of its length. Having looked at the market and also my bank balance I took the plunge and ordered a MagicShine clone from a UK eBay vendor for £24inc shipping. A few days later this arrived:
It’s a 3 modes unit with the standard 2s2p 18650 pack and charger. Modes are presently H~~L~~>Strobe. I’ve run it for a few months of commuting with a wide angle lens. I recently took delivery of a second even cheaper unit which is better made and brighter. This has prompted me to pluck up the courage to take this unit to bits and look on it as a platform for modification. With that in mind I wanted to have a look and see what might make it into a better light. I’ll define better at the end of the post.
Right, lets have a look inside. Remove the bezel and the lens and reflector pop straight out:
The reflector is smooth and made out of alloy. It certainly has some mass to it. Having removed the front we can now see the emitter and front of the pill:
The pill is held in place with a lock ring, here it is on top of the body:
The pill unit then just slides out, although it did take a bit of wiggling of the wires:
Here’s a close-up of the whole pill assembly:
The star is attached to the alloy pill body with thermal gunk. The wires then feed through this into the central section which is hollow. At the back in a brass ring is the actual driver, this is mounted with thermal paste into the brass ring and press fitted into the pill body:
And with the driver removed:
I’ve only managed to measure the current on full power, it drew 1.86A measured direct off the wires on the star, strangely I was seeing stars for a couple of hours after my Heath Robinson shield moved whilst testing.
So, that’s the light as it stands. What I’m interested in doing is using this light just for throw to light up the trails well ahead, floody throw would be great. I use my other light with the wide lens and am happy with that for near flood. In use the body of this unit does not get warn, even after an hour of use on high. This might just be the bad pill to body interface but I think it would be more than capable of handling higher temps. As this is a throw light it’s never really likely to see more than a couple of half hour sessions between charging opportunities on the bike. I can get some brass milled to add mass to the pill easily enough.
I could really use some suggestions on ways to go with this. I’m sure I could get a lot more out of it for replacing the driver with something that could push 2.4A - 2.8A, all be it at the cost of run time. I would have use for lower power modes including something nice and low but strobe is not wanted. I’ve looked at the bFlex type options but the drivers cost 1.5x the cost of this whole light. I’d consider doing the emitter at the same time if I could keep the costs reasonable but think the XML is probably quite a good base for a floody throw.