*PICS* Innards of Coleman Tri Cree 540 Lumen spotlight

AlexGT

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Jan 15, 2001
Messages
3,651
Location
Houston, Texas
Hi all!

I purchased a Coleman Tri Cree 540 Lumen Spotlight to dissect it and see what's inside.

There is a comparison beamshot at the end between this light and a custom P7 DSXOJ led FM-11 with a throwmaster reflector.

Here you see a picture right before I started, there are 8 "+" screws you got to take out so get a long screwdriver to do it.

Then take apart the 2 rubber handles below the trigger, they snap in place on the inside, you got to pull apart.


After you do this, open it up! The trigger will fall off, but don't worry its not hard to put it back in place when you are ready to assemble it again.


Once apart the solid feeling plastic now seems fragile!

Picture of the battery, a 2.8 AH 12V SLA, there is enough space for a lipo pack with more capacity and less weight.


Now for the interesting parts, the heatsink is made out of aluminum, it has fins like the OEM heatsinks for intel processors, its about 1cm or 1/2 inch thick, I guess its enough to keep the Crees happy.


It is held in place by a plastic base that screws to one side of the body, this setup tends to make the leds not center in the reflectors. they move around with the slightest push, I think if the spotlight is dropped the leds will loose alignment in the reflector.

Here is a picture of the back plastic plate


Picture of the electronics, a big board! Don't know much about it but if you have knowledge of what you see here, share! Maybe the resistors could be changed to make this light brighter!




This is the space the battery takes up, I think a LIPO or a NiMh pack could fit in there.


The leds are bare emmiters sitting on what appears to be a "T" shaped base, don't know if the base is soldered to the finned heatsink or does it have AA or Thermal compound applied.


Picture of charging port on the bottom of the handle



I initially tought that this light might throw farther than my 2.5" Throwmaster FM-11 DSXOJ led driven by a tri flupic, so I took some pictures of the beam at different exposure settings.

Distance is about 15 feet in all the pictures the custom P7 is on the left and the coleman Tri-Cree is on the right

As you can see the Throwmaster's beam is brighter and smaller than the Tri-Cree,

The P7 is a XO tint, and the Tri-Cree seems to be WO tint (WH in Cree?) all three leds have the same tint


Lower exposure, clearly 900+ lumens at 3.6 amps overpowers the Tri-Cree and the light is more focused



Even lower exposure


Thats all for now, hope you like it!

AlexGT
lovecpf
 

BlueBeam22

*Super Flashaholic*
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
1,518
Awesome pictures and great work AlexGT, thank you for posting this!
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I have this Coleman LED spotlight and love it. IMO it is excellent for the price and has both great light output and throw combined with good runtime.
 

PhantomPhoton

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Jan 15, 2007
Messages
3,116
Location
NV
Replace that SLA with a lighter weight and more than double capacity LiFePo4 pack and you're in business. I'd bet with that monster of a heatsink we could drive those crees much harder too.
Curious, since you have easy access to the LEDs, how much current is driving an individual LED?
 
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