Recognize this? (Ebay 'Luxeon 1W' 3xAAA)

Ebay's 'free postage' promotion caught my eye; several sellers are offering one-LED "1 watt" "Luxeon" lights that have sold for around $6, possibly worthwhile for the case and switch. I've seen two different lights pictured. I got one of them.

The picture shows a labeled Luxeon star emitter (on the table beside the light), but I figured that wasn't any kind of promise about what was _in_ the light (heh). http://img.inkfrog.com/pix/ez2bid/1_WATT_BIG_01.jpg

This is what's actually in the light I got -- anyone recognize this emitter?
In the light:
http://static.flickr.com/100/265219146_f7a3ce6abe_m.jpg

Retaining ring unscrewed, emitter and heatsink out (better picture)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124371575@N01/265272465/

The emitter is a white board with the LED a little bump in the middle; it's pressure-fit with tabs to a thin little brass-looking heatsink, messy, one cold-soldered wire on the emitter, one that looks like good solder but a mess of insulation melted into it. No surprise, can't complain, just curious. Might be a decent metal case to mod.

(Case: "anodized" -- a black coating, gloss enamel paint I think, is flaking off. I'll test the paint for lead. Of course the case could be anodized under the paint. Heh.)

looks something like this....
http://www.flashlightreviews.com/reviews/ypl_1w3aaa.htm

That's it, sure enough. Someone in China must've made a huge number of them. If you want one search Ebay as noted above. Just don't believe they're real Luxeon brand.

get what you pay for sometimes. Looks like a case of false advertising, thanks for the warning though.

Ryan

S0 -- what can I put in this case to replace the LED they came with?
A couple of these are OK as cheap lights; the others have messy purple-yellow output, well worth tearing out and replacing.

The inner barrel diameter is about 1-1/4" -- one has a threaded ring holding the LED in place, and the LED crimped into a round brass heatsink of sorts (as photographed).

Another cheap fake Luxeon I got couple of for $4/each (rounder shape, smaller, with a tail switch -- lots and lots of those on Ebay still) has the same LED -- loose in the barrel, held against a lip only by the pressure of the reflector.

The reflectors are a deep conic section -- does OK taking the illumination from the little flat blob of phosphor and putting out a focused spot.

(Aside -- these reflectors probably are good fire starters in direct sunlight --- I recall a Scientific American article about this sort of curve years ago, a very deep conic section with its focal point at or past the deepest point of the curve, so it would gather sunlight and focus it through the hole at the center to make a tiny very hot spot. This looks like that curve, perfect for a flat blob of phospor. I suspect if I left one of these lights pointed at the sun, it'd melt the phosphor fairly fast. Worth trying (grin) once I know I'm going to replace the LED.)

If these are the same size as a real Luxeon -- I don't know -- should a real Luxeon star drop in okay, maybe with a heatsink? I know if I used an orange or amber Luxeon I'd need to add at least a resistor, since these are 3xAAA lights.

I wish I'd gotten to the modders BBQ, I was (still am) patching my old tar roof.
But I've got the itch to start doing some of this with throw-away lights to start with.

I have bought one of these through ebay, it's a Lux clone, its my loaner light

Here's what looks likely to be the same light as the more commonly available one, at an even lower price -- though read the reviews.

1W light for $4.25 from FifthUnit.com.
Reviewed:
http://contents.fifthunit.com/html/reviews.5th/review.001_2.html

Cross reference, something similar here (maybe the same LED with the phosphor bump missing, not sure): https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/139824

Question --- I pulled the LED pictured in first post above out of the light, and sent it to Craig for his museum collection.

The flashlight is direct drive from 3xAAA (4.5v), with a resistor:
green-black-silver------gold

The resistor is soldered into a carrier (heatsink) that has a lip into which a star will fit; that whole thing threads into the flashlight.

Looking for a simplest brain-dead shaky-hands mod I can do to this, to get an amber light --- using NiMH ----3.6v maximum, assuming I rest them after charging.

What should I look for? can I get away without replacing the resistor if I find a bin code voltage?

Basically, I'm not sure if a white LED at 4.5v (alkaline) can be replaced by any amber LED at 3.6v (NiMH) without changing the resistor.

I know, this is like banging rocks together to make light .... haven't had time to focus on doing this myself, just starting to play.

I wrote a long writeup, but tired of posting such long stuff....
Keep the 0.5ohm resistor (from the color codes you listed), it won't significantly affect the NiMH batteries (wasting 0.07 watts as heat, TINY), and offers a little protection from alkalines (the voltage sag under load, plus an LED with a V(nominal) around 3.5V and a Vf(max) near 4.0V (assuming that's what you are looking at) combined means you might hit 400-500mA for a very short time, but alkalines can't keep that up long.

Just don't use Lithium primary 1.5V AAs... they won't sag under the load, and it'll be a race (about 10-seconds long I figure) to see whether the resistor (assuming 1/4 watt version trying to dissipate nearly 1watt) or LED (at resistor limited 1.4amps) burns up first. If you want to consider Li primaries, use a 1.5ohm resistor and should be safely overdriven (but other batteries output will be dimmer)

I'm hoping to use an amber Luxeon; I found an 'H' bin available; guess I want to look for a K or L, or else change the resistor? Or am I worrying too much?
I found these listed minimum and maximum voltages on the Lumileds site -- but maybe this isn't the same as nominal V and maximum V, these voltages are awful close together. Well, it's going to rain, I'm going to read up.

H 3.07 3.21
J 3.27 3.51
K 3.51 3.75
L 3.75 3.99

I can't figure how they calculate their "Standing time" unless the led is under powered.
3xAAA = 4v rechargeable 750mAh
1W Luxeon: Approximatly 40hours? Come on..

Here's the resistor that was under the LED:
http://static.flickr.com/106/294122058_e679c930ec_m.jpg