Surefire LA's, different markings???

BoomerSooner

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jun 4, 2007
Messages
113
Location
Oklahoma
Is there a chart or information available by any of you here about the different numbers on the Surefire P series lamps?

For example, I found six P61 LA's, all with different letter/number markings.
WC-1, WC-4. VL-5, VL-3, VL-1, VJ-3, etc. Keep in mind, there were also duplicates of some of them so not every LA has a different letter/number set.

I have found the same to be true with the P60's, P90's and P91's.

A week ago, I picked up an extra P90, when I got it home at took it out of the package is when I noticed it was a different number than the P90 that came in the 9P when I bought it. It was a frosted bulb and the one that came with it was clear bulb, but both P-90's.

Tonight at Bass Pro Shop is when I noticed all the different P61's. I bought two P61's with different numbers, on purpose, so I could see if there was a difference. I saw two things different, one had a short spring with about 4 coils in it of thinner gauge. The other spring had 3 coils, was longer and a little thicker gauge, I believe.

After trying them in my 6P, the long spring model had an oval shaped beam, the other one had a perfectly round beam, both floods. But the perfectly round beam seemed to have a better throw and appeared a tad brighter. But that could have been because of the beam shape just making it appear that way.

Anyway.....anyone know the difference in all these differently marked lamp assemblies and what the different marking mean?
 

Size15's

Flashaholic
Joined
Aug 29, 2000
Messages
18,415
Location
Kettering, England
Welcome to CPF!

Those "WC-1" (etc) codes are batch codes representing as far as I can tell either batches of Lamp Assemblies produced at a specific time, or by a specific person at a specific time. I believe the Lamp Assembly is manufactured and part assembled at SureFire and sent to the bulb plant where the bulb is potted into the assembly before being returned to SureFire to be focused [for the like of the P60 I guess this means the reflector is secured in place exactly where it needs to be]. My guess is that the bulb plant assigns the batch codes as a page of stickers that arrive with each batch that are then attached to the outside of the reflector by SureFire following focusing.

SureFire have changed to frosted tips on a number of their bulbs. This happened quite a while ago.
 
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