LED or drop-in recommendation needed for Aspheric Maglite Mod

[Scattergun]

If going with a single 18650 the GD1000 is a bit overkill! Just buy an AMC7135 and run it at 1000 or 1400 mA! A lot cheaper, and very robust solution!

 

[Rezolution]

Allrighty, I finally have most of the parts and I'm just waiting on the heatsync now. So anyone care to comment on the LED? I have an XR-E R2 and an XM-L T6. I know the XM-L is brighter, but will it make a better thrower than the R2? If it's going to be comparable because of the surface brightness of the R2, then I would probably go with the R2 because I'd be running it at 1400mA instead of 3000mA (with the XM-L).

Whichever one is the better thrower is the one I want to go with...

 

[Techjunkie]

Allrighty, I finally have most of the parts and I'm just waiting on the heatsync now. So anyone care to comment on the LED? I have an XR-E R2 and an XM-L T6. I know the XM-L is brighter, but will it make a better thrower than the R2? If it's going to be comparable because of the surface brightness of the R2, then I would probably go with the R2 because I'd be running it at 1400mA instead of 3000mA (with the XM-L).

Whichever one is the better thrower is the one I want to go with...

It depends on how hard you drive the XM-L. I have three Mag 2D lights, all with the same DX 12834 aspheric lenses and the LEDs recessed into the neck for perfect focus. One is an XM-L overdriven to 5.0A, one is an SST-90 driven to 7.5A and the last is an XR-E slightly over driven by the old KD drop-in. The XM-L is the champ of the three. Compared side-by-side, it's die image is brighter (and bigger) than the XR-E. The SST-90 is the largest and casts the most light, but it's not the brightest of them. As far as throw goes, if I could find a distance great enough to test, I'm sure the XM-L would win, however, I've never travelled with them and the furthest tree top that I have line of sight to from my house is only ~500 ft. away and they all do an excellent job of lighting up the foliage.

Based solely on your 3*NiMH power supply, I recommend the XM-L because it has the lowest Vf and will be very easy to regulate to a very high current for a long time. I recommend beginning with a 2.8A 8*7135 regulator and once you're satisfied that your heatsinking is good enough, you can slave an additional 1.4A regulator for a total of 4.2A. You will NOT be disappointed.

 

[Rezolution]

It depends on how hard you drive the XM-L. I have three Mag 2D lights, all with the same DX 12834 aspheric lenses and the LEDs recessed into the neck for perfect focus. One is an XM-L overdriven to 5.0A, one is an SST-90 driven to 7.5A and the last is an XR-E slightly over driven by the old KD drop-in. The XM-L is the champ of the three. Compared side-by-side, it's die image is brighter (and bigger) than the XR-E. The SST-90 is the largest and casts the most light, but it's not the brightest of them. As far as throw goes, if I could find a distance great enough to test, I'm sure the XM-L would win, however, I've never travelled with them and the furthest tree top that I have line of sight to from my house is only ~500 ft. away and they all do an excellent job of lighting up the foliage.

Based solely on your 3*NiMH power supply, I recommend the XM-L because it has the lowest Vf and will be very easy to regulate to a very high current for a long time. I recommend beginning with a 2.8A 8*7135 regulator and once you're satisfied that your heatsinking is good enough, you can slave an additional 1.4A regulator for a total of 4.2A. You will NOT be disappointed.

I actually wound up buying a Grey 2D krypton mag for the host. I made up a (2)D to (1) 18650 battery convertor, so that's what I'll be using. I have (1) 5-Mode 2.8A driver, (3) 1.4A drivers, and (1) 1A driver.

I think I should be able to use the (3) 1.4A drivers as you suggest. Do you just wire them in Parallel to the XM-L (or do you put them in series, I don't know anything about driver sandwiching)? Do they all need to be potted together? I guess I need to put insulative material in between all of them? If I'm going to be running at 4.2A, I'm probably going to need to make it (2) 18650 in parallel.

 

[Techjunkie]

I actually wound up buying a Grey 2D krypton mag for the host. I made up a (2)D to (1) 18650 battery convertor, so that's what I'll be using. I have (1) 5-Mode 2.8A driver, (3) 1.4A drivers, and (1) 1A driver.

I think I should be able to use the (3) 1.4A drivers as you suggest. Do you just wire them in Parallel to the XM-L (or do you put them in series, I don't know anything about driver sandwiching)? Do they all need to be potted together? I guess I need to put insulative material in between all of them? If I'm going to be running at 4.2A, I'm probably going to need to make it (2) 18650 in parallel.

With a 3.6-4.2v power supply like you're planning, you could parallel all three 1.4A drivers before the XML (potting them or insulating them with kapton tape to avoid shorts), or you could slave one or two of them from the 2.8A multimode driver, as described in this pic:

The only difference in your case being that all the green lines would go to the single XM-L. By slaving the single mode regulators from the multimode regulator as shown above, you would maintain the mode features provided by the first regulator instead of only having the single (full blast) mode.

Now that I've said that, I urge you to reconsider. Building a 2P 18650 battery carrier is very tricky business and a short could be disasterous enough to mame you. For just a few dollars, you could tuck the 7135 based regulators away for another project and run your 2*18650 in series with an inexpensive buck driver, like DX sku 20330, or 57779, or 50025. Those drivers would accept the 8.4V input of the 2 in series Li-Ion batteries and instead of burning off the excess voltage, they DC-DC down-convert the Vin at low amp to Vout at higher amps, with >82% efficiency. In the order I listed them, their output (without modifying sense resistors) is 2.5A, 3A, 3.5A respectively. The last has typical mode memory (returns to last mode used), while the middle one has rather annoying "next mode" memory (always goes to next mode in sequence on next power-on). (The first is single mode.)

 

[Rezolution]

Well, no one wants to get mamed LoL. I'll stick with the single 18650 or I"ll get a single d-sized lithium (I forget the number convention for it but I know DX doesn't sell them). Then I'll just put the three 1.4A in parallel as you suggest. That should do it

 

[Slasher42]

I am very interested in modding a Mag into Aspheric... But am not able to do any machining, soldering, or buying the small parts like driver/star/heatsink and combining them....

Is there a pre-made drop-in that would go into a D or C cell mag and then just need to add the lens and change/remove the reflector to do this? I was reading Lux Luthers thread about Aspheric mags from like 3 years ago and apparently Kaidomain used to sell a kit that was basically drop in module+lens for mag but they dont see it anymore that I can find.. http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...s-Up)-Mac-vs.-KD-vs.-Ledean-vs.-Mag66-amp-625

 

[Rezolution]

Well I finally got around to doing the aspheric mod that I've been planning for almost 4 months now. I got two H22A heatsyncs from Setapong. The first LED i tried was the XR-E R2. I was very dissappointed with it, even when i ran it at 2 amps. It wasn't very impressive at all past 50 feet (I'm probably spoiled though with all my high power lights).

After another person in the thread suggested trying the XM-L T6, I decided to give it a shot. Well, let me tell you, the T6 put the R2 to shame! Shame, I say, shame!!!

I thought this light was going to be for play/show only but i found an intersting side effect of the aspheric lens. When I screw the mag head all the way in, it actually gives a giant round (usable) flood light!. It slowly decreases in size and gets to be "squarer" by the time it hits the o-ring. It focuses perfectly a little bit past the o-ring.

I was going to grind the lip off of the H22A heatsync but I was so impressed with the floodyness of the light when the head is screwed all the way in, I didn't want to mess with it.

So after 4 months of planning, changing the LED out, and going with a direct drive instead of a board, I actually wound up with a very usable (and cool) light that can be focused into a massive throw monster! When you shine the light in the dark on a rainy night, it actually looks like a laser beam coming out of the end of the mag LoL!

 

[Rezolution]

I was really enjoying the aspheric XM-L T6 mod but something didn't seem right with it...

It would run for a full hour and be very cool to the touch. The first battery setup I was using was a single 18650 with PVC spacers and a dummy AA. I noticed that it would only supply about 2 amps at 4.2V and dropped all the way down to 1 amp when the battery reached about 3.3V.

I decided to try 4 Eneloops instead of the single 18650. These Eneloops push the direct drive current to 4.4 amps when the batteries are fully charged. After about 30 minutes of use (3 rounds of 10 minutes) the batteries are still supplying about 3.3 amps. The light is drastically brighter with the Eneloops and gets very warm after about 10 minutes... At least now I know I'm pushing the diode to it's max potential (or maybe a little bit past it LoL).

Much more impressive now!!!

 

[willieschmidt]

I made a direct drive 2D Mag using 2 D cell Tenergy permiums. It powers a Phatlight PT-54 red led using the DX aspherical lens. Just the thang for critters. The vf is just about perfect and pulls 8a+. Made my own heat sink out of copper & aluminium and the stock switch is used. Simple and it works.