An experiment with Malkoff M31WL

I misunderstood the info on the Malkoff site and ordered an M31WL head thinking that I could drop it into my old E2E Surefire. I still needed the VME head but forget that, 2 CR123 batteries would fry the M31 anyways, I'm just going to get the 2AA little Twisty body instead.

Anyhow, in the mean time I've got nothing to do but play with the M31WL and pretend that I've got a working flashlight, using the empty husk of my old CMG Infinity to hold a single AA.

So I took a 10 Ohm resistor and coiled it up like a spring, dropped it in the bottom of the old CMG body and the result is an M31WLLLLLL, I got about 14 hours out of a single Eneloop AA before the light started flashing dimly.
Pretty neat. When I get a Little Twisty body I'm going to hack together a high/low ring or spring.
I thought that some of you engineers out there might come up with a more streamlined design by the time I get a Twisty body ordered. ;-)

Mmmm, maybe this thread should go over in "Flashlight Electronics, batteries included"?

Pretty cool. How many lumens do you think it puts out?

eh4 said:

....the result is an M31WLLLLLL....

Click to expand...

Someone was just asking for this in another thread :devil:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...tput-drop-in&p=3839134&viewfull=1#post3839134

Vesper I'm just guessing 8-16 lumens. the M31WL head was reading about 70ma when I started it and around 37ma the next afternoon a little while before it started flashing.
sorry to be vague but if you saw my setup you'd be amazed that I pulled any numbers out of it at all. duct taped on an old minimag lens to keep dust out of the reflector, some random wires, more duct tape to pin the resistor to the head assembly (for the overnight test), it's not pretty.
holding the light arms length above my head to spread the hotspot wide enough for comfortable reading, it's quite a usable level of light for me. Comparing it a few inches from a wall with a floody Zebralight, again reinforces my guess of somewhere between 8-15 lumens, it's a bit hard for me to tell because of the M31's spot/spill compared with the ZL's floody beam.
I'm very optimistic about ending up with a two stage Little Twisty before this is all over, with around 20-24 hours of newspaper reading or 2-3 hours of full output.

archimedes, I remember reading that thread, made me want to find something simple, ideally a two stage ring for the Little Twisty.

hmmm. this delicate thread did not survive the stress of forum transplant.