Emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

XP-G swap to Nichia 219 Malkoff mag drop-in

This is now the Malkoff Xp_G and XM-L Mag drop-in emitter swaps. Keeping old posts but the posts are as follows,
Nichia 219
XM-L2 S6 7D3 2900K 90+ CRI




Has anyone swapped out the emitter on a Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in?

I got some sample Nichia 219's but on 20mm boards so I was going to try and swap the XP-G mag drop in with one of these. There are two scenarios I can think of.

A) Buy a 10mm board and de-solder the XP-G board and swap it out.

B) De-solder the Nichia 219 from the 20mm board and de-solder the XP-G from the Malkoff drop-in and reflow.

C) Get a bare 10mm MCPCB and desolder the 219 from 20mm board and solder it on the new board.

I don't think B is a good option but I still haven't found anything to do with these 20mm board. I do want a 219 light so I might go with A.

So with option A, what would be the best way to adhere the board to the thermal mass, and what is the best way to get the board off the mass?

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

Option B would be a good option but getting the 219 already on a 10mm board is better. I am also thinking of doing this to mine, it looks very easy comparative to some other lights I've swapped.

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

The part where I'm stuck at is .. well getting the MCPCB unstuck. I can desolder the red and black wires but the MCPCB looks pretty well attached. Heat (tip of soldering iron) doesn't budge it. It looks like arctic silver epoxy so not sure how to get it off other than to chisel it off.

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

the standard trick of boiling the module in a ziplock bag? this softens the eroxy enough to budge

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

kosPap said:

boiling the module in a ziplock bag?

Click to expand...

I don't know if this will work. Usually arctic silver epoxy can take temperatures of above 150 degrees Celsius. I did hear that cold will make the epoxy brittle so maybe zip lock bag in the freezer might do it.

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

if you wanna do cold, grab a can of compressed air for dusting computer equipment off, turn it upside down and spray, it'll get very cold, VERY fast in the local spray area. I recommend wearing gloves and eye protection when you do that.

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

Any updates? I'm now thinking of swapping an XP-G2 onto mine after doing a Quark and Xeno E03 with them. The boost in output would be very nice and tint is good.

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

think2x said:

Any updates?

Click to expand...

None sorry. Still waiting on my 10mm boards. XP-G2 sounds interesting.

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

I have received the 10mm boards now. I will probably do the swap some time in the next fortnight, but first off, some beam shots of the drop-ins. Scuse, the photo quality

Starting off with the XP-G:


This is the XM-L:


The XML hotspot isn't as round in the photo. The bottom bits is where the actually extra spillage from the hotspot as the hotspot is a little more intense towards one side.

Both side by side:


One blue, one green. To the naked eye, you can't really tell at all.

Under-exposed to see the hot spot:


For later comparison, the XP-G without the reflector:


And the XM-L:

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

I swapped the green-tinted xpg emitter on a 2D Malkoff with a nichia 219 high cri from Illumination Supply (on a board). It was easy and took about 5 minutes. Now I have quite a bit of throw with high cri from my old 2D Mag and love it.

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

Maxbelg said:

I swapped the green-tinted xpg emitter on a 2D Malkoff with a nichia 219 high cri from Illumination Supply (on a board). It was easy and took about 5 minutes. Now I have quite a bit of throw with high cri from my old 2D Mag and love it.

Click to expand...

Excellent. How did you remove the XP-G? Just a pair of pliers and twist?

Re: Help with emitter swap on Malkoff XP-G mag drop-in

Maxbelg said:

I swapped the green-tinted xpg emitter on a 2D Malkoff with a nichia 219 high cri from Illumination Supply (on a board). It was easy and took about 5 minutes. Now I have quite a bit of throw with high cri from my old 2D Mag and love it.

Click to expand...

Could you enlighten us to a little more details,

This sounds promising...

The Malkoff Nichia 219 mag drop-in

Ok, well a fortnight (and year and 3 months) later, I finally did the swap.

De-soldered the leads from the board and with a pair of pliers, small twist and the old XP-G board comes right off, with a bit of the plating. There wasn't much force required to twist it off and I didn't heat or cool the thing first. Looks like there wasn't that much adhesive either.


Sorry for the blurry pics but phone camera. I applied a bit more arctic alumina epoxy but thinly to cover more of the MCPCB. I also accidentally stuck my finger on the wet epoxy so made the arctic alumina even thinner. Anyway, centred by eye and left to dry, stayed on so all good:


Finally soldered on. Thankfully the camera is blurry but you can still make out the shoddy solder blobs. It was hard to solder as the heat just got sucked up by the heat sink. Had to turn the soldering iron up to max. Flux everywhere too but at least it works.


So how does it compare? Well the tint is better for a start. It seems a bit warmer than my Xeno E03 219 and L10 L3 219. I don't mind that at all, in fact, it's a bonus. It is much better than the original XP-G which was a bit blue for my liking.

Output, is around the medium Xeno E03 219 on a 14500. That kind of makes sense as the Xeno supposedly drives the LED at 1A and this does too. Hard to compare it to the XP-G but I think it is just a bit less than the XP-G. Definitely not as bright as the XP-G2. Head barely gets warm, hopefully from the superior Malkoff heatsinking and not my work ...

Smaller LED and with the stock reflector, it makes quite a tight hotspot with quite a typical Mag wide spill too. I think the hotspot is tighter than the XP-G. Not sure how useful the high CRI is at 50 metres.

I don't have the same coloured baby toy to take pictures with (nor the same camera I think) so new shots to come.

I'm also on the market for a Hi-CRI XM-L 7D3 which I will put on the XM-L drop-in. Could be another year ... especially since I need to reflow it myself

edit: only thing now is to find a host for this thing. Either I get another 3D mag or a 2D and use 1/2D's or 18650's or 3 C's

The Malkoff Nichia 219 mag drop-in

Here are some side by side beam shots on a white wall. FCamera reports the Nichia 219 to be 4300K and the XP-G2 to be 5500K. The picture was taken with auto WB, which happened to pick 5000K. Yes, there are two rings on the Nichia and the spot looks nice and round. This is with a camless stock reflector.



I tried to do some CRI images but the Nokia N900 does not take good pictures at all. I'll see if a friend can do them for me.

The Malkoff Nichia 219 mag drop-in

Ok, well had to host the drop-in in something so there was a Mag 2D on special and I bought it. It was one of those bi-pin ones so after removing the plastic thing where the bulb goes, I put this new Nichia 219 in there and proceeded to to use some AA batteries while I decided what power source to use. I had to make my own AA holder out of some 2AA DX D cell adapters and aluminum foil and sticky tape to get 4S but that was easy enough. Then I used the medium orange peel reflector from Kai domain.

What can I say but WOW! Almost artifact free beam and it seemed brighter somehow. I may have lost some throw or gained some flood but it is beautiful. I tried to do some picture of it compared to the XP-G2 but just couldn't get the rings of the XP-G2 to show but I'll try again. The radial pattern of the Nichia 219 works really well with this setup.

Another comment on the 219 in this drop-in, I measured the white balance again on my camera and it is reporting 4100K now with the new reflector. It is warmer than my other Nichia 219 lights. Both the L3 Illumination L10 and Xeno E03 report 4400-4500K. I got the Nichias from Illumination Supply but I don't actually know what tint bin I got. It could be that they mix SW40 with SW45 or the orange peel stippling or I just got lucky.

As for what what power source to use, some tail cap readings of 4AA, 5AA and 6AA gave me 0.85A, 0.74A and 0.6A. It looks like 6AA is the way to go, should get 3 hours runtime using regular eneloops. Getting some KD 3AA to D adapters in series. I imagine they would be better than my foil and sticky tape solution, definitely less resistance. 3AA's by the way get close to 1A. I'll need to compare with XP-G2 again but I think the Nichia draws more current, that or higher internal resistance of the AA battery versus the Tenergy D premiums.

edit: The Kai Domain 3S AA to D adapters with eneloops reduced the resistance from my home made adapters in such a way that with 6 Eneloops, it was pulling 0.53 to 0.55 Amps.

The new XM-L2 90+ CRI 7D3 S6 2900K Malkoff drop-in

OK, so I finally was able to mod the XM-L drop-in as well. I wanted warm so I got a couple of Cree XM-L2, Bare, S6, 7D3 Tint (~2900K) 90+ CRI emitters from Illumination Supply. I purchased some MCPCBs from fasttech but I wasn't happy with the thickness of them so I decided to re-flow the emitter to the original sink pad.

So first things first, de-soldered the wires off. They just popped off nice and clean. Good stiff wire used by Gene Malkoff can I just say.


Got the pliers out to wrench the MCPCB off, took a bit more anodising off than I did with the XP-G/Nichia 219 swap. Looks like Gene used more epoxy on this sink pad too as it took a bit of force to twist it off.


As you can see, the MCPCB was bit damaged from the pliers but it still was OK. In position to de-flow the emitter, I used a hot air blower tip from a butane soldering iron I bought from Aldi. It was cheap tool but it did the job quite quickly I have to say. I place the MCPCB on an angle and when hot enough (maybe 5 secs), prodded it with a pick and the emitter dropped off.


After de-flowing, there was still a bit of solder left on the pads. That's a bonus. I applied some solder paste to the back of the new LED, some good advice from Vinh.


Back with the hot air tip and about 5 seconds later voila! First re-flow ever and it worked first time, a rarity!


Quick test using the diode check setting on my multimeter to make sure I got the polarity right. Blurry picture, holding probes and trying to take a shot with the camera.


Here we go, stable hand, less ambient light, looking good on the tint front!


Some arctic alumina epoxy ... well too much this time. Should have stuck a finger on it to remove some of the epoxy like last time. Anyway, at least I can be sure there wont be any air gaps.


I really need to brush up on my soldering skills. Not as bad as the Nichia 219 swap though.


Ahh, the warmth. The tint is so reminiscent of the old incandescent mag, but the brightness and smoothness is so much better. That is about the only similarity I guess.


I had this in a mag 3D but it was only pulling 0.9A from fairly used batteries, about 20-40% (which is what is seen at the emitter for this version of the Malkoff drop-in). I had issues with this 3D, mainly that the switch added a fair bit of resistance. I'll see how it goes with fully charged cells but I think I need to get another 4D. I was thinking about getting 4 C cells but I would prefer the run-time of D.

In the 4D, this thing was pulling the full 2.6A from 20-40% used batteries. The newer Malkoff XM-L2 drop-in was pulling just below that at 2.58 but it will pull 2.7A on fresh batteries. I know the driver has changed between the two drop-ins. The newer one has two modes, I think was 2.1A on 3 cells, but after a bit of time the added resistance in the Mag cause a larger voltage drop and in turn affects the current. In my opinion, these drop-ins need the 4 cells to overcome the resistance inherent in the Maglites.

Re: The new XM-L2 90+ CRI 7D3 S6 2900K Malkoff drop-in

hmmmmmm good job...it takes some nerve to do yuor first LED reflo soldering.

But, is the LED centered well? i did not like the beam shape

Re: The new XM-L2 90+ CRI 7D3 S6 2900K Malkoff drop-in

kosPap said:

But, is the LED centered well? i did not like the beam shape

Click to expand...

I centred the LED by eye but when I measured it after the epoxy had hardened it was pretty good. All sides were the same mm but varied by 0.21 to 0.87. Not too bad by eye, the Nichia 219 wasn't that good.

The off centred beam comes from the reflector though. It is just the stock reflector but using the Kai Domain MOP reflector makes the beam really nice.