900 lumen question

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Lightcopoholic

Newly Enlightened
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Jun 23, 2009
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Hi there I'm new to this stuff so be gentle. Anyway I just bought the "Small Sun Zy-C56" from Ebay for under $50.00. It is reported to be 900 lumen. I know that it probably isn't. It is very bright though. I know it has a Cree in it but I don't know which one. It runs on 3 D cells. I put my MagCharger battery in it and the light turned blue. I panicked and turned it off.
I know my 20 year old SureFire 6P with the 290 lum l.e.d conversion is darn near as bright.
Is it possible I fried part of the l.e.d when I put the mag battery in?
If I can figure out how to disasseble it and i.d. the Cree I'll advise.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
Lightcopoholic said:
Hi there I'm new to this stuff so be gentle. Anyway I just bought the "Small Sun Zy-C56" from Ebay for under $50.00. It is reported to be 900 lumen. I know that it probably isn't. It is very bright though. I know it has a Cree in it but I don't know which one. It runs on 3 D cells. I put my MagCharger battery in it and the light turned blue. I panicked and turned it off.
I know my 20 year old SureFire 6P with the 290 lum l.e.d conversion is darn near as bright.
Is it possible I fried part of the l.e.d when I put the mag battery in?
If I can figure out how to disasseble it and i.d. the Cree I'll advise.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

You didn't mention what the output of your magcharger battery pack is supposed to be. A lot of people may know this but others don't keep track of maglight stuff.

Your LED is probably ruined. If you can try it with 3 cells like its supposed to run and see what happens and tell us that it makes white light that would be good.

I can tell you right now it was never going to make 900 lumens and your SureFire 6P with an LED conversion head doesn't make 290 either if its a single Cree LED in the head. If its a quad LED like a P7 then it could make 300 lumens, but I think you were refering to a single die type module.

You need to do a lot of reading to get up to speed if you are going to buy modules and drop them into lights with battery packs that are not the recommended voltages.

Is your light making white light now at normal voltages or not? G.
 
Though it's roughly the same size as 3 D cells, the MagCharger stick is actually 5 smaller NiCad cells - 6 volts, nominally. There's no guarantee the LED is fried, but it's possible. The blue means it definitely overheated.

Don't sweat it. We've all done it.
 
After some research I have discovered that the light is actually rated at 180 lum and is a Cree 4 Unknown which bin. The magcharger battery is a 6V 2500 mAh.
Putting the regular D batteries it is nice and white. Since I figured I screwed it up anyway I put the magcharger battery back in and it never turned blue but is also nice and quite brighter than the D's. I'm alittle mad at myself for not doing more research. The seller claimed it was 900 lumen. Learn by your mistakes.

The SureFire upgrade is a Cree R2. I run it on two ultra Fire 3 880 mAh 3.6v
http://cgi.ebay.com/290Lumens-CREE-...66:2|39:1|72:1205|240:1318|301:0|293:2|294:50

Thanks for all the input I hope I learn more before I waste more money. I work night shift and want the brightest light I can find as my primary light. The SureFire has served me well as a back up for years and I'm very impressed with the led upgrade I did. Maybe I can upgrade that Small Sun with a P7?
 
wapkil said:
Yeah, live and learn. Both the flashlight and the drop-in seem to be available for example at DX (sku.20230 and sku.11836), with more honest descriptions and much lower price...
Click to expand...



But, the 11836 along with most R2's purchased from DX, Ebay, or KD make about 140 lumens. :nana: At under $10 from DX you get what you pay for.:crackup:
 
when I google the name You mentionned for the light, I get the same response as Nitroz ...

in short: if thats the light, You misinterpreted the data.
Thats a Cree XR-E which can give ~200-220 lumen max.
As is typed there - 900 mA current - it should be around these 200.

that it survived the Charger-Battery shows that it is direct drive (a driver would have been fried),
that it got blue showed an overheating (costed a great bunch of overall lifetime, but our eyes are not good enough to notice)

If the increased runtime with the large batts is not Your No.1 concern, any 2*AA, 2*CR123, 1*18650 light offers the same brightness and considerably increased protability.

PS: to identify the led, a simple pic from the front is enough
 
Last edited:
looking at the beam, you definitely have some type of R2.
Click to expand...
looking at the beam one can only say its a thrower - as You mentionned.
And from looking at the pic, one can say its a Cree XR-E (the metal ring is shown),

but one can not say what bin it is
(and it will most likely not be the best one, like R2)


(but, with good quality light and nice tint, it barely makes a difference between a Q or R bin)
 
yellow said:
looking at the beam one can only say its a thrower - as You mentionned.
And from looking at the pic, one can say its a Cree XR-E (the metal ring is shown),

but one can not say what bin it is
(and it will most likely not be the best one, like R2)


(but, with good quality light and nice tint, it barely makes a difference between a Q or R bin)
Click to expand...


No--I can't say it is a R2 bin, but if you purchased this light thinking it had 900 lumens you are likely not aware of bins and for the sake of simplicity I :poof: and said R2 like/type.

I should have said it is a sinlge emitter type LED. The beam looks like a Tiablo A10 as does the reflector.
 
One more question, if I put in ssc-p7 led in that Small Sun replacing the existing led, how do you think it would work? That is running the 6v 2800 mAh MagCharger battery?

Or if you were me what would you do to mod this light? Like I said before I want a big full size light for work. My issued Mag just doesn't cut it.

You guys have been great and really patient. I really thank you for taking the time to help a new flashlight nut find the right work light. I have learned alot but there is so much to absorb so much.

My idea includes adding 5 cr123a 3.6v totallying 14.4 v. I have a way of stacking the cells thru the big tube using a houshold item than can be cut down to the opening of the tube to fit it. The cr123 will go down th middle almost perfect. so is the ssc-p7 cabaple of handling the 14.4 volts?
 
Lightcopoholic said:
One more question, if I put in ssc-p7 led in that Small Sun replacing the existing led, how do you think it would work? That is running the 6v 2800 mAh MagCharger battery?

Or if you were me what would you do to mod this light? Like I said before I want a big full size light for work. My issued Mag just doesn't cut it.

You guys have been great and really patient. I really thank you for taking the time to help a new flashlight nut find the right work light. I have learned alot but there is so much to absorb so much.

My idea includes adding 5 cr123a 3.6v totallying 14.4 v. I have a way of stacking the cells thru the big tube using a houshold item than can be cut down to the opening of the tube to fit it. The cr123 will go down th middle almost perfect. so is the ssc-p7 cabaple of handling the 14.4 volts?
Click to expand...
The characteristics of a diode, in this case an LED, mean there is a very small window of voltages it can directly handle. See this graph from the Cree XR-E datasheet:

81543300.jpg


Too little voltage and no current flows, but slightly too much leads to a massive increase in current. I think the charateristics of the SSC P7 are similar, so a forward voltage of about 3.7v is typical.

I think the best thing to do is stick with the 3 D cells, because using 5 CR123A will accomplish nothing other than destroying the driver, and mostly likely reduce capacity massively. You may be able to do a straight swap of the LED for the P7, it depends on how the stock driver works.
 
the P7 is - in fact - four of the single led You have in the light by now.
So just changing the led wont make anything "better".

When it is direct drive, You might have some luck and the emitter swap works (the voltage is ok) but current will get four times higher, reducing runtime.
BUT
You have to change everything for the new led then, a real direct drive (just the three batteries and switch and connection to led) thats a no-no.

When You find a driver that is built to power the P7 and runs with these three cells (= input voltage of ~3.6-4 V) You have to open the light, get the led assembly out, remove driver and led, mount new driver and P7, test check, then put everything in + work with the reflector to improve beam (if necessary).
imho thats doable and it is relatively easy.

For starting search led and driver at dealextreme, if You happen to get "special needs" with some time of use, You still can order better (and way more expensive) parts then.
 
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