XR-U XM-L mod, lots of pics

OK, so I picked up a Sundrop XR-U from the BST section on here a couple weeks ago (my first McGizmo.) I was fortunate, in that it came with 2 LE's, an original McGizmo Nichia 083, and a Sandwhich Shoppe GDuP LE with a cree XR-E emitter. Yes, the tint on the Nichia is as nice as everyone says it is. It looks to me like real sunlight coming out the front. It is pretty amazing really, but I wanted more lumens.

I decided to mod the SS LE. I figured that I should be able to get 200+ lumens out of this little guy, considering it puts out 700ma on high.
So, I ordered a T6 (3C) neutral white and a U2 (2T) cool white XM-L from Inkidu, and some Arctic Alumina thermal adhesive from Newegg. This would be my first time ever using AATA. Needless to say I was a little excited. Well, my XM-L's arrived a few days ago, and the adhesive arrived today! I pondered for a while which XM-L to use, but I decided to go with the T6 neutral in the true spirit of the Sundrop.

I began by unsoldering the leads, and prying the MCPCB out of the SS LE. It came out when I applied a little bit of force.




Also, at this time I cleaned up some of the old adhesive. Then I decided to sand down the MCPCB and use it as a spacer. I figured it would aid in heatsinking, and I felt I needed to keep it in there so the new LED was not sitting down inside the LE quite so far. I also filled in 2 unneeded holes in the MCPCB with solder. If you look on the right side you can see the holes I filled. What was nice about this was that it was already the exact right size to fit in the LE!


Here is what it would have looked like without the spacer thingy.



Here is a height comparison shot. My modded LE on the left (with the spacer thingy,) and a McGizmo Nichia 083 LE on the right.


Now all that is left to do is apply some adhesive inside the SS LE...


Put my spacer thingy in there...


And glue my 14mm neutral white board on! I centered it to the best of my ability.


After soldering...


So at this point it is looking pretty centered, and ready to go.


And it fired right up!



Impressions: The Sundrop XR-U lens seems to have the opposite effect of a reflector on the XM-L. With a reflector, there is typically a little blue in the surrounding spill. In this setup, the blue is now in the middle, and it fades to yellow around the edges. This is only noticed on a white wall. In real life use, it is not noticed very much. It just puts out a wall of useable neutral white light.

It's bright! Not 1000 lumens bright, but it is a definate improvement in output compared to the Nichia, and to the XR-E that I removed.

The beam is square. Not a perfect square like on an aspheric, but a sort of rounded corner, rounded edge, square. It is also only really noticable on a white wall. In real use you do notice it a little, but it is much less apparent.

I ran the light for about 10 minutes continuous on high so far. It does heat up the head, so I assume heatsinking is good. Running at only 700ma, I am not concerned about it overheating.

When I turned it on high it blinked the first few times. I figure this was the GDuP "calibrating," it is not doing it anymore.
It has a little pre-flash when you select the low mode, but it's not too bad. I think the XR-E LED did it also, but I can't say for sure, I don't really remember because I barely used it. Oh yeah, the low on this is REALLY low also.:thumbsup:

Overall I am very happy with the results!
For one, I just plain like the looks of the Sundrop XR-U. I think the head is a very good match to the 1X123 clicky pack. I think it is also great that it is so universal, it can be host to a number of different LED's.

The output is greatly improved. The T6 binned XM-L's produce a minimum luminous flux of 280 lumens at 700 ma. Again, this is running at 700ma on high, so it is a noticeable increase in output, I'm guessing just north of 200 OTF.
The levels on this driver are, 10ma, 180ma, 700ma.
I am very happy with the tint, 3C has a color temperature of 5000K.
Battery life should be good, as I am using a 750mah protected AW cell.

Here is a quick slideshow. It was too cold to do outside shots so I just did a quick indoor L M H comparison. I am no photo master, and the only way I could figure out how to keep all the camera settings the same was to put the camera in "fireworks mode." The shutter speed was 4 seconds or something.

The sequence is: Nichia med, XML med, Nichia high, XML high. The low modes didn't show up on camera.




This is the Nichia on medium.


This is the XM-L on medium. (Note the square shaped beam.)

BOOM. oo:

Very nicely done! I was looking at the initial stages of the LE mod and thinking it looked like it would turn out messy, but the finished product looks great!

It's nice to see what the XM-L emitter looks like in the SunDrop. I never liked the way the Nichia 083 looked, because of the overlapping images from each of the six dies, and the bright ring around the edge. I ended up using a UV light engine in mine. The XM-L looks like it would make an awesome floodlight, though.

Can we get a white-wall beamshot of the XM-L on the lowest setting, to make beam artifacts easier to see?

I can do that! I will have to use a different camera setting because I don't think they will show up with the setting I was using before. I have to warn you though, the beam looks a bit weird, I would compare it with trying to put a square peg in a round hole... HA!

Here is what I ended up with for the artifact pics. This is about 1 foot from the wall.
These are pretty equal to what I see in real life. The emitter seems to be well centered, with just a tiny bit of variation when comparing one corner, or side with another.
I can just barely see rings in real life. They are basically nonexistent, with just a couple of tiny lines showing in 2 of the 4 corners, (probably my centering job.) But it is very minor, nothing you would ever notice in real use.

If you need any more pics just LMK.





I am glad you like it...
I had to write the whole post twice because I timed out and lost it the first time. (Copy and paste didn't work for some reason.):hairpull:

i just bought a Sundrop XML from Don. The quality is amazing, really is a work of art as you guys mention. The beam is squarish. There is a flicker that I hope will go away. Don is great to deal with and he is being patient with me as I give it a try with my day today and seeing how it works for me. The square beam has no hot spot and makes the light very easy on the eyes on high levels. At night using the low low setting it provides a wall of light that makes avoiding left out toys and other obstacles easy.

I can't get used to the clicky though. Are your clicky mechanisms a little tough? Do they need to be broken in?

If it is flickering and the switch is tough, the switch may be faulty. It should NOT flicker...

The switches are easy to replace if you have some small needle nose pliers.

Don might send you one for free if you email him.

LMK if I can be of any further assistance.