Any ideas for a Makita LXT 18 volt flashlight?

The Makita LXT light is a "nice" light with an old incandescent bulb. I don't know how powerful it is (bulb says 18 volts/.8 amps) but it's a little brighter than a 3 D cell Mag light.

What I like about it and want to take advantage of are the batteries. It has an 18 volt, 3 amp hour, light weight battery that charges in 15 minutes. I actually have a ton of these batteries for my cordless tools. As is, the incan light lasts about 4 1/2 hours. The reflector is cheap and about 3 1/8" in diameter.

Any ideas of what I could make with this light that is more powerful?

Thanks!




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Bulb swap. You won't want to cut it up enough for superbright LEDs, although you could put an XP-G in, CC drive it at 1 watt, and get about 2 days worth of light from a charge. Slightly overdrive an incan bulb and it'll be a real scorcher.

Does it use a maglite style PR2 bulb? If so, then you just need to find one that will work up to 18v.

It's a Xenon bulb - Part # A90261... I really don't know what type it is.

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I don't necessarily want it to run longer ... 45 minutes would be fine with me as I have several batteries and they only take 15 minutes to charge. When I compare the light of it to my Eagletac TC012 Mk II w 300 OTF lumens, I think the eagletac is brighter, but the Makita lets me see farther ... without lighting everything up so bright in the middle. The Makita may only be 60 lumens for all I know but it does enable me to see farther than the 300 lumen eagletac. I guess what I want is to be able to see even more!
The other problem with the Makita is it goes thru a bulb every 2 hours (I'm on my 4th bulb and guess I've only used it 8 hours total).

That is a PR style bulb.
If you want an incan, try the Incan forum and see if there is an 18V 1+ Amp bulb listed anywhere. IIRC, somebody maintain(ed) a list of bulbs.

The only thing I found so far that can take 18V is the PR2-1WHP LED at superbrightleds.com. It can take up to 30V and claims 100Lumens. It still won't hav ethe throw of your incan bulb due to the 110degree emission pattern compared to your 300+ degree incan bulb and a reflector designed for it. I'd guess you will get more spill and a little less throw. But with a 3 1/8" reflector, it still may throw very well. Mag LEDs throw very well with smaller reflectors than that. It's only $12 give it a try! I have an 18V Kawasaki probably the same as yours that I might get this for.
http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-...ction=DispPage&Page2Disp=/specs/pr2-1whp.html

Important tip for an LED upgrade: Check your polarity first! Incans can reverse it without problem, but it could blow your LED if not correct.

Bumping an old thread;

I have the same Makita LXT and was wondering if there are any worthwhile drop in conversions available?

TIA.

Tipsy

TipsyMcStagger said:

Bumping an old thread;

I have the same Makita LXT and was wondering if there are any worthwhile drop in conversions available?

TIA.

Tipsy

Click to expand...

TTT

I too would like to get this light (much) brighter.

Slightly off topic, but has anyone ever opened these battery packs? I wonder if you can replace the cells inside. I have a cordless drill with these cells and a colleague of mine recently gave me a 'dead' battery pack. He used it for over 4 years which is a long time for intensive use of these li-ion cells. So I was wondering whether you can easily open the battery pack to just put new cells in it and use it again for my job.

On topic : be careful with drop ins, before you buy one make sure there's enough material to provide proper heatsinking. I'd rather make a custom mod out of this, just takes a few hours to put something together that would fit in there. If you don't need a trillion lumens output, you could have a runtime of days with the provided battery pack. If I had a light like this I'd make it for you, but sadly I don't even know any of my colleagues who has this light.

You can replace the cells in the pack but you have to put in the correct high drain cells. The packs usually have 18650s in them. I would wait for someone that knows which batteries are best to chime in or just start a new thread. They definately need to be high drain cells not your average 18650

I am considering developing drop in kits for various brands of worklight such as this, featuring Nichia 219's. I am sure I could hit a $30 price point or better. The drop in would be machined and anodized and look mostly stock, except for the LED's and optics. I don't know how much interest there is in this yet though.

Makita battreries

Hey Erasmus,

I've opened up a couple of dead makita packs, and it's not quite so straightforward to get them working.

Once they show up as "faulty" I think the chip inside the battery is permanently altered. The extra contacts on the battery are not for balance charging of cells as I expected, but allow the battery circuit to talk to the charger. From memory, there is a temp sensor, a mid-pack voltage line (for cell unbalance detection I guess) and some data lines.

I had two dead ones, and made up a single good pack from them but the fixed battery still would not charge - the charger reporting it was faulty. So I jury rigged an extra lead from the charger to charge the recovered battery direct to it's +- terminals when ANOTHER good battery was on charge to fool it.

This has worked fine for me for now, but I would suggest you carefully monitor charging this way and not leave it on unattended since lithiums can explode if the cells are faulty! Do at own risk.

If anyone finds a way around this problem, perhaps it could start a new thread.

Sorry if a bit off topic, just trying to share experiences...

Richard

Erasmus said:

Slightly off topic, but has anyone ever opened these battery packs? I wonder if you can replace the cells inside. I have a cordless drill with these cells and a colleague of mine recently gave me a 'dead' battery pack. He used it for over 4 years which is a long time for intensive use of these li-ion cells. So I was wondering whether you can easily open the battery pack to just put new cells in it and use it again for my job.

On topic : be careful with drop ins, before you buy one make sure there's enough material to provide proper heatsinking. I'd rather make a custom mod out of this, just takes a few hours to put something together that would fit in there. If you don't need a trillion lumens output, you could have a runtime of days with the provided battery pack. If I had a light like this I'd make it for you, but sadly I don't even know any of my colleagues who has this light.

Click to expand...