qwertyydude
Flashlight Enthusiast
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2008
- Messages
- 1,115
Ok I just got one of these babies in. As a package it is on a standard 20 mm star. The led itself is similar to an xp-g in shape but it's about 1 mm bigger square, so xp-g reflectors have to be reamed out some. But the more important thing is the wafer it sits on is slightly thicker. About half a millimeter thicker. So sitting in an xp-g specific reflector to get the best focus I shimmed the reflector out with a thin paper gasket, It also has an ESD capacitor which got in the way of mounting the reflector flush so I had to remove it. Also another cool feature is that it has a hard dome, I think it's glass but don't quote me on that. I just know it's not squishy silicone. Probably glass since other plastics might discolor due to the high intensity UV. On an SMO reflector like I've got in one of my spare Uniquefire x8 you end up with a donut hole until you get about 2 feet away then it smooths out. It is very throwy and matches the beam from an xp-g almost perfectly so an xp-g reflector is about ideal for these. I also did my Arctic silver 5 with a few drops of super glue around the edge to hold the emitter, because of the glass dome I could easily use kicker to instantly dry the glue and gently wipe off any residue formed on the led, GENTLY mind you.
As for performance, These have a higher vF because of the higher energy light they emit. I found that a freshly charged 18650 on direct drive gets about 600 ma. It's not driven at it's rated maximum of 1000 but it's close enough, you can barely tell the difference between 600 ma and 1000 ma, I even drove it at 1.5 amps briefly and it seems that it doesn't visibly make much more light or make things glow a lot brighter. And I also found the high vf doesn't play well with a DX xp-g driver. An AMC 7135 should work better but then you have to use 2 CR123 primaries and you'd be dissipating a lot of power wasting it. Direct drive seems to work just about perfectly if you don't mind not driving it 100%, it's more efficient that way and the led will definitely last longer. And it's 100% efficient, I may try a 24 hour burn in at 1 amp to try to lower the vF but that's at a later date.
Beamshots would be difficult as the only thing you see is a very dim whitish purple beam of visible light, everything else either fluoresces or not. Im going to post some glowing stuff soon though. This is definitely not your average 390-450 nm UV in fact the spectrum pretty much matches engineering inspection UV light they use at my colleges engineering department. This is too cool.
As for performance, These have a higher vF because of the higher energy light they emit. I found that a freshly charged 18650 on direct drive gets about 600 ma. It's not driven at it's rated maximum of 1000 but it's close enough, you can barely tell the difference between 600 ma and 1000 ma, I even drove it at 1.5 amps briefly and it seems that it doesn't visibly make much more light or make things glow a lot brighter. And I also found the high vf doesn't play well with a DX xp-g driver. An AMC 7135 should work better but then you have to use 2 CR123 primaries and you'd be dissipating a lot of power wasting it. Direct drive seems to work just about perfectly if you don't mind not driving it 100%, it's more efficient that way and the led will definitely last longer. And it's 100% efficient, I may try a 24 hour burn in at 1 amp to try to lower the vF but that's at a later date.
Beamshots would be difficult as the only thing you see is a very dim whitish purple beam of visible light, everything else either fluoresces or not. Im going to post some glowing stuff soon though. This is definitely not your average 390-450 nm UV in fact the spectrum pretty much matches engineering inspection UV light they use at my colleges engineering department. This is too cool.
