Solarforce M3 pill switcheroo - it's easy!

The new Solarforce M3 essentially uses a slightly different P60 style pill and in a fit of pique today, I thought I'd see if a regular P60 dropin pill would fit in and work. Well, it does.

It takes about one minute to unscrew the stainless bezel, pop the lens and O rings out and drop the reflector and pill assembly out. From there the pill with XML-U2 unscrews and you can screw a regular P60 pill into the M3's reflector.

I had a couple of Solarforce dropins handy so just used those.

Here is a P60 pill in the M3 reflector.



The M3's pill uses a pill that's about 5mm deeper immediately behind the reflector - that slack is simply taken up by springs so contact isn't lost. What I did was drop a P60 outer spring into the host, then screw the M3 in on top. I used a regular Solarforce L2 with a single Trustfire 18650.

Here's an XP-G R5.



And an XR-E.



Now, the regular XM-L M3 with a single Trustfire 18650, on high at about 5 feet.



A single mode low volt Solarforce XR-E. It's a bit tighter than in a regular P60 with SMO and there's a spot within the hotspot if you know what I mean.



A three mode low volt Solarforce XP-G R5 on high. This is looking pretty good and is clearly more suited to the M3's reflector than the XR-E is.



A single mode RED XR-E was a spotty mess so I didn't bother with a beamshot.

My next thought is this - how is this light going to go with a hard driven XP-G G2 in it?

Or an aspheric setup of some sort?


Certainly an easy mod and I'll be checking it out when darkness falls.

Interesting to know! Thanks.

Tested it out last night on a hunting trip and when both are running a single 18650 the XP-G out throws the XM-L in the M3.

Do you think the original pill is better for heatsinking?

eg1977 said:

Do you think the original pill is better for heatsinking?

Click to expand...

Well there's a little more brass in it, but there's no more contact with the body of the light so the difference would be marginal. And I think with the XP-G etc heat would be a non-issue.

Just a tip:
I use Fujik thermal glue on the threads of the pill on my P60 setups so that the heat transfer is improved from the pill to the reflector. It also serves another purpose to hold the pill in place firmly (but not permanent) once you have found the ideal focus point when screwing the pill into the reflector.

I drive my XP-G2's at 1.7A (5 X AMC7135 350mA binned chips) and 1.9A (5 X AMC7135 380mA binned chips) and they handle the additional current just fine. However at that drive current things start to get toasty at around 3-5 minutes, and its really uncomfortable/hot to hold at the 10 minute mark. I would imagine a hard-driven XP-G2 should throw quite nicely in the M3 head.

Thanks for the tip.

The XP-G G2 has me wondering. I might have to build up a pill, driven at 2A and see what happens. And an XR-E at maybe 1.5A.

My XP-G2 M3 setup was completed today:

L2N with M3 head fitted with a nailbender built warm XP-G2 dropin, s9 tailcap:

mvrmynd - any chance for some outdoor beamshots of that bad boy?

Quite possibly. I have a ~125m range nearby, but it doesn't get dark till 2100 these days, and by then I usually CBF'ed.

I'll do so at the next opportunity, though.

After some time I completed my mod of M3 head.
Custom copper pill, XM-L2 T6 3C on Sinkpad, 10x AMC.
I'm really impressed how this baby shine.
Mike

Looks good mate.

eg1977 said:

Do you think the original pill is better for heatsinking?

Click to expand...

I am pretty sure that the reflector & massive M3 bezel will have sufficient mass to absorb the heat, given how big it is compared to the regular bezel.

And Blitzwing, thanks for the info.
I was skeptical to try this but I guess I will be spending time at my workstation for a while now.

I am considering doing a red xp-e @ 1.5a for mine.

so if I wanna put anything new in an M3 head, I can't have a potted P60 module right? it needs to be the P60 module minus the reflector, right?

I ahve oen more question...Can a M3 pill be isntalled on a P60 reflector and used in an L2 flashlight?

The pill on the M3 is deeper than regular P60 pills but a good 1/4" or more. If you screw a regular P60 reflector onto the M3 pill it won't let the head on a P60 host screw all the way down. It may or may not function. The newest Solarforce P60 XM-L dropins have a shorter reflector and use the same pill as the M3.

There are other good three mode XM-L P60's out there - the M3 pill and emitter don't offer anything they don't, really.

tobrien said:

so if I wanna put anything new in an M3 head, I can't have a potted P60 module right? it needs to be the P60 module minus the reflector, right?

Click to expand...

You can have the pill and driver potted, but the reflector needs to be removeable.

Blitzwing said:

You can have the pill and driver potted, but the reflector needs to be removeable.

Click to expand...

Thank you!


— Sent from my unreleased, next generation iPad 44 running iOS 'M' (to be released in the year 2036) that Steve Jobs gave me personally using Tapatalk QuadHD 7 posted by TweetDeck 97.5.2.

Man, i took one of my XP-G2 pill running at 3A & screwed it into the M3 reflector...
BAMM! The beam is so tight & intense that I can see the beam even in a 'not so dark' condition.

I will be spending some time to properly align that baby together tomorrow & see if I can come back with something.