help on 18650 choice?

[Red23]

Hi there everyone


I'm looking at getting myself a Solarforce L2P, and running it off a single 18650. Just before rushing off to ebay and buying a battery and charger I thought I'd look here and have a read but now I'm getting confused and concerned that I'm not going to be able to understand the whats and hows of it all.

I'm looking at getting a 400+ lumen pill, and just using a single 18650 battery. I was thinking that getting a 3100mAh would be the go, but now I'm not so sure. I looked for a very basic rundown on battery info and couldn't see anything that made sense to me, so I thought I better ask here.

I will primarily be using this light at 10% and 40%, (50 and 200 lumens) for half hour and up at a time, rarely longer. I live in a cold climate if that helps. I would like long run time and performance, but I don't have a lot of money to throw at chargers and testers etc.
I will be getting a low volt pill as I don't plan on running anything but a single 18650

so does the higher mAh rating = greater run time, or is it the volts, or is it neither?
what I was looking at getting off ebay, was this

1 x NEW Protected Ultrafire 18650 LI-ION 3000mAh 3.7V Rechargeable BATTERY + XTAR MP1 USB Charger

Is this a reasonable battery and charger set up?
I read a review on the charger, and it seemed to have overcharge protection etc, downside was slow charging. I don't mind the slow charging as I would have two batteries on rotation.

What would be the best battery for my application, AW brand? Solarforce batteries or are these Ultrafires just fine? The fully charged battery would sit in my crib bag for maybe a week or two before being changed (well that is a guess, I currently change my batteries every second work week) so I'd like something that can hold its charge.

Is there a setup I can get that is USB charging (because Australian spec power plugs are expensive) as well as a pair of batteries for around 50 bucks? I don't mind spending decent money initially, but I don't want to have to keep getting bits and bobs to keep up with my batteries.

I guess its more of a "recommend me a good, easy to maintain battery and charger for this application" thread more than anything.

I would like to learn the science behind it all, but I don't have the time to fully educate myself at the moment and I'm on the hunt for a light/battery setup now. In a couple of months once I have moved interstate and life has gotten settled again I will make a great effort to learn it all, but right now I could really do with some help.

Thank you all in advance

 

[Shadowww]

Don't buy UltraFire batteries, there are too many fakes around (especially on eBay!), and even genuine ones aren't any good.
For single-cell usage 3100mAh batteries aren't very good either (they have extra capacity compared to 2600mAh ones only when discharged below Vf of single LED).

You'd be good with pair of Xtar 2600mAh batteries (you can get pair for $17 on HKEquipment, for example), and Xtar WP2 II charger (it's $19 at same place). That'd be ~$35 in total, fits right into your budget, in fact if you can go a little over $50 you can even get 2 pairs of batteries.
As of Australian power plug, HKEquipment states "(Please email us if you need adaptor for other country, Batteries not included)".

 

[nfetterly]

USB charger available on market place here
http://www.cpfmarketplace.com/mp/sh...l-Worlds-smallest-Li-ion-charger-with-display

It has the "correct" charging algorithm for long battery life & aside from the basic model comes with a volt meter. Highly recommended.

Apparently most (if not all) batteries that are based on the Panasonic battery are good. I use AW cells myself.

 

[Trevtrain]

Hi Red23

Do a search for ebay seller supersports600 and get yourself some Blazar 3100s. (These are based on the newest Panasonic cells) Yass will look after you - based in Sydney and offers free delivery. Price is comparable to International sellers. He also stocks a Soshine charger which I understand to be a good product if you want safe, simple charging.

For a small and USB powered charger, you couldn't go wrong with a Cottonpickers charger. A basic charger from David is inexpensive and delivery is included in the price. His products are very well regarded. Look in the CPF Marketplace http://www.cpfmarketplace.com/mp/sh...l-Worlds-smallest-Li-ion-charger-with-display (EDIT, beaten to it while typing apparently :))
The magnet leads don't hold very well to the Blazars so I use a holder with the croc leads. If there is any chance of the charger being bumped or disturbed while plugged in I'd recommend you go this way as you will blow the charger if you let the magnet leads slip off and click together for any length of time.

I know you said you don't have time to educate yourself, but I don't know how familiar you are with handling Li-Ion cells. If you are new to this chemistry, MAKE the time to read up - it's not safe and simple like NiCad and NiMH. Charging should be done on a non-flammable surface and never left unattended. A poor charger can damage your cells and there are a lot of poor chargers out there. The Xtar WP2 II got a good write-up here, along with the Pila IBC which are hard to find in Australia. http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...uilt-Review-of-the-Xtar-WP2-II-Li-ion-Charger

There are plenty of good battery threads in here when you get some time.

Best of luck, I hope this helps

 

[qwertyydude]

There's really no such thing as "fake" Ultrafires I wouldn't know why anyone would want to copy Ultrafire as if they had some actual brand name recognition for quality. And there's no way you're getting 3000 mah out of Ultrafires. It's just that with Ultrafire it's really hit and miss. Some are good some are bad and that's within the same lineup of stuff. I had a some 2400 mah Ultrafire cells, identical bought at the same time too. When I tested them for capacity they were all over the place, some had as little as 1500 mah of capacity, some 1900 mah and one of them was actually overspec at 2500 mah. But that's some pretty low quality. Plus they all had a pretty high internal resistance so they would sag under load and the protection circuit's overcurrent would trip at anything over 2 amps, so if you got them and put them on a 400 lumen XM-L module they'd probably trip.

We get questions all the time why people's flashlights only flash on for a brief instant then shut off. That's usually overcurrent on the cells tripping and the Chinese seem to love putting really low overcurrent protection on their cheap cells. I've seen one trip as low as 1.5 amps, that's a pretty useless cell in today's led market when everything seems to have XM-L's driven to max spec.

If you're really hard up for money and need to buy cheap cells, I think the least expensive decent cells are the red flame Trustfire cells. Dealextreme has these. We can't link but just search for the sku in their search box. The red flame trustfire has a pretty decent reputation sku 20392. As for chargers I've had plenty of luck recommending the cheapy "HXY" type to friends and family, they never had a problem and I have three of them I wired together to charge 6 batteries simultaneously. The charger is universal voltage so all you would need is an Australian to Euro adapter plug, SKU 13820. But I do tell everyone this since these cheapy chargers don't terminate properly, they just keep feeding a constant 4.2 volts into the battery. Don't leave them charging all week. Once the light turns green, remove them from the charger, the batteries won't drain themselves like nimh so there's no point leaving them in the charger.

I've got a collection of 44 18650 batteries probably half of them are the Blue Trustfires or Red Flame Trustfires and I've only had one fail in the past 3 years, wouldn't hold a charge, so they've got a pretty good track record in my book and all of them are still measuring at least 2200 mah. This fares better than the few Ultrafires which I bought and then threw away after measuring the horrible consistency and low capacity, I only kept the overspec one but it's still doing good to this day so I guess if you wanna test out all the bad Ultrafires you'll eventually get one that's good.

Also these super bright p60 modules that's all the rage will run very hot and need to be wrapped in aluminum foil and wedged tightly in the flashlight body to conduct heat away from the led. I actually rebuild all of mine and use arctic silver thermal compound between the star and pill, the threads between pill and reflector, and then I wrap aluminum foil carefully around the pill and wedge it so it's completely tight in the body. There are also a few things to watch out for with the L2P. It comes with a gold coating on the bare aluminum, some of it needs to be scraped off the ledge where the bottom spring on the module sits and also sometimes you need to cut a coil of the spring on the module for it to sit completely in the body.

 

[Red23]

awesome information here guys, exactly what I wanted.

I just wanted the info on which batteries and charger to buy, and I'll make sure I'm 100% with safety by the time I get them (everything takes two weeks here, I just want to get the ball rolling)

Thanks again

 

[Phototropin]

Hi Red23
Do a search for ebay seller supersports600 and get yourself some Blazar 3100s. (These are based on the newest Panasonic cells) Yass will look after you - based in Sydney and offers free delivery. Price is comparable to International sellers.

+1

I have also purchased some Blazar cells from that ebayer and they are excellent, and he shipped them quickly too. They seem just as good as my AW's. Much better runtime per stated mAh than some xxxx-fire batteries I have owned.