need a small UV ultraviolet light

what small UV lights are out there with solid build quality and decently bright leds.
i'd prefer something with a single AA or single AAA that can be put on a keychain.

Look up the Arc AAA UV. It is one of the best on the market.

I have one of the Arc AAA UVs. It is a great light, but...

Customer service from the manufacturer was a major bummer. The first one "shipped" but never arrived. The second one arrived with a cut o-ring. A request for a replacement o-ring never arrived. The second request did arrive, but the o-rings were the wrong size. Total elapsed time for a product that still isn't right was more than two months. Do a search here before you commit any money to Arc products.

Photon used to make a couple of UV and near-UV keychain lights that have worked well for me.

In the 1aaa size, personally I'm partial to the brass UV Peaks. However, I'm not so much a fan of their 1AAA HAIII lights (the action wasn't as smooth for me:shrug:.)

If you can find them, I agree with JNewell & do think that the UV Protons would be a good choice (even the cheap knockoffs would be a suitable choice for your use.)

-AZ

I wasn't aware of the Arc CS issues. I bought my UV a long time ago, before I was a member here. Anyways I will say this, depending on what it's intended use the UV spectrum of the light may matter more. For ID's the Arc is the best I've found, but if you just want to spot animal pee then anything for 390 and up will be fine.

RyanA said:

... I bought my UV a long time ago, before I was a member here. Anyways I will say this, depending on what it's intended use the UV spectrum of the light may matter more. For ID's the Arc is the best I've found, but if you just want to spot animal pee then anything for 390 and up will be fine.

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x2... The Arc I played around with was very wavelength specific, great for spotting fake IDs and currency... but if you just want to light up an area and make a bunch of stuff glow, there might be better options. To my surprise, it could not illuminate the GITD paint on my watch at all.

Also... FWIW, many blue emitters have a fair amount of light near the blacklight part of the spectrum, and can make some colors and surface textures glow.

i'll need it check to check fake DLs

I have a brass Peak LED Solutions AA, works well.

I also got burned trying to order an arc AAA uv,
What about a nichia nspu510cs in a fenix e01.
has anybody else done that, and if so how easy was it to do.

You could also order an UV drop-in from Nailbender. A C2 bored for 18650 with a Nailbender UV P60 drop-in. Quite a bit more money than the other suggestions here, but it does give you the ability to just switch the drop-in and give you a multi-use/multi-format light. If you already have a p60 style light, you'll only need to buy the Nailbender drop-in and you're good to go.

bulbman said:

I also got burned trying to order an arc AAA uv,

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what happened?

Waited 2 weeks never shipped, called customer service got run around.
Finally had enough so I canceled my order and got a refund

Need around 365~375NM for detecting mold as I am deathly allergicX_X

My Arc UV AAA has excellent color "tint". It is very dim however. In total darkness or low light situations works fine. I also have an Inova x5. It is MUCH brighter (it has FIVE LEDs on a CR123) with decent color.
Recently I bought a UV drop in from Batt Junction added a UF 6P clone powered on 18650 and that sems to be the best of all with great power and excellent color.

Its a bit odd, there are a lot of powerful UV lights on the market but not many of them operate at a wavelength appropriate for their most practical use (spotting fakes). If you're apprehensive about buying from Arc there are two Streamlight lights that should do the trick. The stylus UV and the Twin Task 3 c UV (make sure to get the black one) both operate at a wavelength that should be practical for checking IDs. The batteries for the stylus can be found at radioshack. I suppose you could also find a 5mm 365-365nm UV led and pop it in a mini-mag, just drill out the reflector a bit. The voltage to the LED might be too low though. Sunlite also makes a nice 365nm high power setup but it's a bit pricey. It does look pretty sweet though. Supposedly Snap-on carry's Sunlite products.

TerraLux makes a drop-in for the mini-mag. I know its not a keychain light but its a suggestion.

There were at least 2 iterations of the Arc AAA-UV. The earlier ones had 365nm leds that weren't very bright. The most recent has a Nichia 375nm led, longer wavelength but apparently much more efficient and brighter. I've sort of wanted to get one but I have the impression Arc is having rather horrible production and CS issues so I'm reluctant to buy anything from them these days. This is unfortunate since I've always liked their stuff in the past.

For GITD stuff I have a $1.00 UV Fauxton-style light from Deal Extreme, that is probably 395nm at rather lousy efficiency, but it works fine for casual use lighting up the anti-counterfeit strip and so forth. It's probably better for my eyes that I don't mess with UV lights very much anyway.

Interestingly I see there is a version of the LRI Proton Pro with a rather powerful 120 mW UV led instead of the normal white led. Wavelength is not specified.

If you want something more upscale, McGizmo has some expensive UV builds with fairly exotic powerful leds.

There was a single 375nm UV led penlight, that uses 1xAAA battery that I bought off amazon. It's just some generic thing, but the body is solid aluminum and it has decent output for it's rather cheap price. While the output seems to be in the 375ish range, there appears to be some visible pale white-violet light, not sure if that's due to the quality or if it's normal with leds in that output range.

bulbman said:

Waited 2 weeks never shipped, called customer service got run around.
Finally had enough so I canceled my order and got a refund

Need around 365~375NM for detecting mold as I am deathly allergicX_X

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Well, can't guarantee you that you'll not have to wait at least 2 weeks or even more for shipping, but I once a time bought a bunch of these ones and they're probably really 365nm as they show up marks on documents no other UV-lights I've found would:

http://www.kaidomain.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductId=2102


MiniLux

I have tried a number of different uv lights and the best by a long way is the Proton pro custom UV. It has a very bright uv and a secondary white LED both of which can be programmed. I too have had difficulties with Arc in the past, although these were eventually resolved, and this precluded me from ordering a uv AAA. The only light which comes close to the Proton is a 12 led uv light I bought cheaply some time ago from ebay but the build quality does not compare.

+1 for the LRI Proton Pro UV