700+ LED Lumens for SF M4 / 12ZM MC-E drop-in

[cpfmember]

Hi everyody

Just wanted to share some information and pictures about my latest project.
As I have quite a few SF models with filament that are not so much in use anymore (as I prefer the LED light) I was looking quite a while for a LED conversion especially for my high power lights (M6, M4, 12ZM) with more than 200 Lumens. And another condition was that it had to be a drop-in without modding anything at the light itself (who would try to mess up with a SRTH or 3" turbo head…)
And than the MC-E came on the market… from the spec sheets it should need just a bit of modding (cutting of the corners) to fit it on a turbo head adapter.
And that's what came out:

The drop in itself

how it looks when inserted in a SF 12ZM

Beamshot against a 12ZM with 3" turbohead

The light is very good focused and very bright.
Right now I am running it direct driven with one bored out 6P and one 18650 at about 3.3 amps. This gives around 12W and well over 700 Lumens. A little bit over the specs but as I don't use it continuously it shouldn't be a problem.

The only thing I would like to improve is a proper driver so that I can use it with multiple battery conficuration. So if anybody has an idea let me know.

 

[cmacclel]

Very cool mod!

Though I would think at 3.3amps without a good heatsink any LED would have a short lived life

How hot does that heatsink get?

Mac

 

[cpfmember]

Thanks Mac,

To be honest I haven't tried the drop-in outside of the head. But the head gets warm quite fast. I take this as a good sign as the heat is transferred away from the LED the body.

But I agree with you that this LED would not have a long life if used longer time continuously. Therefore I basically use is just for short bursts on full power. And for less power I still have the 2-stage switch...

 

[Sgt. LED]

:thumbsup: Keep up the good work! I like seeing MC-E's being used.

 

[Justin Case]

I just assembled an AW tower kit (Seoul focus) using a 2S2P MC-E and an SOB 1000. To raise up the MC-E by about 0.94mm nominal to get the right focus height, I used an 0.03" (about 0.76mm) thick copper shim from The Sandwich Shoppe. The two AA thermal epoxy glue layers (tower/shim and shim/MC-E) added the remaining amount of height needed.

Tower is in a T-62 12ZM TH.

Focus seems good, though not as nice as my SOB/SSC P4 tower (which has a really tight, bright, clean hot spot). The MC-E hot spot has some slight "texture" beyond about 2-3 feet from a white wall. From 2-3 feet and in, there is a clear MC-E "cross". However, at realistic operating distances and against realistic backgrounds, I doubt you will ever notice the slight hot spot texture. The spill is wide, bright, and smooth.

The P4's small hot spot measures about 13,000 lux at 1 meter using my Mastech light meter. The N62 lamp from my stock 12ZM measures about 18,000 lux (but doesn't hold that peak value for very long). The MC-E's fairly large (about as big as the P4's hot spot plus corona) hot spot measures about 7500 lux. Not bad, but not a huge thrower. A Cree R2 P60 drop-in will beat that. But its the MC-E spill that's really impressive. I measured about 350 lux halfway between the center of the beam and the outer edge. In contrast, my old SureFire KL4 head measures about 500 lux at the hot spot, and that head is considered to produce a "wall of light". Even the SOB/P4 puts out only about 100 lux at the 1/2 way point in the side spill.

When I use ceiling bounce to illuminate a roughly 20'Lx15'Wx10'H room, the entire room lights up.

I've tested the tower for up to a 17 min continuous run and the tower gets only moderately warm and it holds its hot spot lux measurement. I did pot the SOB driver in the tower's driver cavity using Deal Extreme's Fujik thermal compound.

The tower runs well on a variety of batteries. I tested it with 4xDuracell123A, 2xAW16340, 2xIMR16340, and 2xAW17670.

No photos yet. Dead digital camera.