As mentioned on another thread by Chevy-SS......I want a max output "Nuke" mode that is good for about 5-10 seconds. After that it will drop to it's normal sustainable output. I'm not talking about a hard time limit, just give me whatever it will survive for that time frame. A temp sensor would work best, but that's probably too much trouble to incorporate. The manufacturer of the light could determine what output the light can handle for that time and program it into the driver, along with a cool-down time before it can be used again. Should not be that difficult to accomplish.
A manufacturer could do this, but they wouldn't. They wouldn't make a separate mode to "impress" friends, because that has no practical application.
And while some have sold lights as a "defensive" tool, using the blinding effect as a selling point, there are a few bumps as to the actual "tactical" part of it. Firstly, you would more than likely want it to be the first mode accessible, as your attacker will likely laugh at you if you try to switch over to the "nuke" mode while he's punching your face into your skull. But then again, if you also want to USE the light in a practical sense, it would be unnecessarily annoying to switch out of nuke mode to a lower level every time you use it, draining power and potentially blinding someone unintentionally(could be avoided with precautions, but that just makes it all the more unnecessarily tedious).
This is just my own assumptions, but if we're discussing "nuke" mode for the purposes of self-defense, I would assume that you would want:
A) A small and pocketable size so that you have it with you wherever you go.
B) Enough output to overwhelm those even in ambient lighting.(makes it more useful in different times of the day and under street lighting).
I'll simply refer to my own testing with my Surefire 6P running an SST-90 drop-in in Direct Drive.
Now requirement A would severely limit the available heatsinking of the light. When I drove my light at 7-8 amps, the emitter started turning blue within 3-5 seconds. That severely limits the practical runtime of the light.
Requirement A also cuts off any regulation. As I understand it, 2.8A is more or less the limit of current regulation for lights of this size. The light will have to be direct drive, and I believe direct drive with multiple modes will also have limitations on the maximum current you can put through the driver.
Requirement B would be, in my opinion, more than the currently available 650 OTF lumens from Nailbender's SST-90 drop-in. I assume this because you want a "nuke" mode despite its availability in such a small size format. I'm guessing about 1,000 OTF lumens sounds about right, which is personally what I would want as well. To get that output OTF, the light would have to be driven hard, meaning high current, possibly over 5A.
When running that high of an output, my McClicky switch became damaged. The spring would warp, and over time, the plastic components would melt. A stock switch won't even handle current over 3 amps. And it only takes 10 seconds for the spring to warp.
Resistance needs to be lowered(usually with a wire spring mod) to draw more than 5A from an IMR 18650 battery, or more than 4A from an AW 18650 2600mAh cell.
All-in-all, too much custom work for a manufacturer.
I would suggest saving up $500 and paying someone to make you a custom pocketlight with a Triple XP-G with a 4-4.5A current draw, high/low mode with no mode memory, running off a 18650 2600mAh cell, and a crenellated bezel. Or wait for VanIsleDSM to finish his Quad XP-G drop-in and just buy that.
