Is it possible to increase the Lumen output of a budget flashlight?

I bought a $30 flashlight in hopes of seeing if I can increase the amount of lumen it outputs. I've been reading various articles on cpf and there is a lot of great information available. My problem lies in the lack in information on this flashlight, it's brand is "Police Security" with 500 lumen, a five hour run time, 280 meter beam distance with four D cell batteries for power. My thought is this, if I swapped the four 1.5V D cell batteries out for four 3.6V D cell lithium batteries it would hypothetically increase the lumen output of this cheap flashlight. I like messing with electronics and seeing what I can make them do if I modify them. Would someone please let me know if they think this will work, I realize that speculation is most likely the only outcome I can get. The picture provided is the only information I could glean from taking the flashlight apart.

LED looks like a CREE XPE or maybe a Latticebright knockoff. Putting in 4x3.6v li-ion cells in series would make 14.4v through the driver (if there is one) and the emitter. My guess is the emitter would burnout instantly from excessive voltage.

Fireclaw18 said:

LED looks like a CREE XPE or maybe a Latticebright knockoff. Putting in 4x3.6v li-ion cells in series would make 14.4v through the driver (if there is one) and the emitter. My guess is the emitter would burnout instantly from excessive voltage.

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well poopy! how about 2 instead of 4 3.6 volt batteries? here is another shot of it

LED isn't like incan where you can just ramp up the juice and it gets brighter. LEDs need current restriction. In your light, there might be a driver (electronic regulation of currant) or a resistor (most likely) and perhaps direct drive but the alkalines internal resistance is high enough to keep the LED from burning.
Adding voltage and current without a driver will cause the LED to go into thermal runaway and will destroy itself.
That "pill" looks like you may be able to easily find a compatible driver for the voltages you want to run however heatsinking may quickly become an issue.

If it's a single mode flashlight you might find that it's a direct drive with limiting resistor. A lower value resistor will bump up the output. In addition you could replace the led and star with a better combination.

Rob

thank you all for the information, much appreciated

You could reflow an XP-G2 S4 and use NiMh cells.

You may end up spendings on another led, driver, better heat-sink maybe half what you paid for the light or more. It could be a fun project but for the money you could also buy a newer generation Maglite. Just saying.

tim_d said:

if I swapped the four 1.5V D cell batteries out for four 3.6V D cell lithium batteries it would hypothetically increase the lumen output of this cheap flashlight.

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Hi Tim, welcome and I hope you get to learn about modding.

That aside, it does really irk me when people post up things like you have. It just shows a complete lack of understanding and a total ignorance to have even been bothered to go and look up the very basics.

It's like someone saying, I've bought a diesel car, if I put petrol (gas) in it, will it make more horse power.

tim_d said:

I like messing with electronics and seeing what I can make them do if I modify them. Would someone please let me know if they think this will work, I realize that speculation is most likely the only outcome I can get. The picture provided is the only information I could glean from taking the flashlight apart.

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That looks like a regular star and LED. This means it should be easy to either re-flow another LED to that star, or better yet buy another star with a LED mounted on it. A copper direct thermal path star is what you need and a nice tint LED of the current generation.

I'm guessing as this pill was removable, that it also contains the driver. You'll want to replace this with something with higher output and modes. The diameter and fitting of the driver will dictate direct drop in choices, or you'll need to fabricate a plate to hold a smaller driver.

In theory yes you should be able to get more lumens from this. And 4 x D cell is sufficient to do this. However if the torch is pretty big with a big reflector, you may want to consider the beam profile. An XP-G2 won't give the most lumens, but might throw a lot better. Or a Nichia219C, not a lumen monster, but very good tint and CRI.

Chicken Drumstick said:

Hi Tim, welcome and I hope you get to learn about modding.

That aside, it does really irk me when people post up things like you have. It just shows a complete lack of understanding and a total ignorance to have even been bothered to go and look up the very basics.

It's like someone saying, I've bought a diesel car, if I put petrol (gas) in it, will it make more horse power.

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Bit harsh.
It's always good to encourage those who are new to the field (which you also did), but never good to mock those trying to learn, even if their initial step maybe a little misguided. Have patience and people may surprise you (though sometimes in both ways (not a comment on the OP BTW, just on some of my students))

Anyways,:welcome:

Buy a better led. The xm-l hi is a good replacement for a old xp-g. Then you ned to buy a driver. Around 3 amp will be good. To make a led shine you dont give it more volt like the old halogen stuff. You give it more Amps, and keep the volt unchanged.

It looks like an XP-E and modding with an XM-L2 or XP-L HI might prove difficult to focus the LED in the reflector. I have personally experienced this when upgrading old or budget lights.

This is why I have suggested the XP-G2 S4 as there will be no problems with the beam profile.

Both my liteflux lf2xt and nitecore d10 was originally with a xp-e. Had no problems at all getting 100% focus with a xp-l hi. The only light i had some small problems with was the solarforce masterpice pro-1 (uses a xr-e). Just had to drill a bigger hole in the bottom of the reflector. The reflector on the solarforce is flat at the bottom, so the xp-l hi did not get into the reflector far enogh get past the flat bottom. So the light emiited sideways did not hit the sides of the reflector, but hit the sides for hole for the led. Once the flat part of the reflector was drilled out, it was really good, and makes a super tight beam and a huge corona, and perfect spill. The domeless xp-l hi will emit more light sideways than a led with dome on (more light will hit the reflector, and you get more thorw), so the trick is to stuff it a little bit deeper into some reflectors (depending on design), and thats easy.

tim_d said:

I bought a $30 flashlight in hopes of seeing if I can increase the amount of lumen it outputs. I've been reading various articles on cpf and there is a lot of great information available. My problem lies in the lack in information on this flashlight, it's brand is "Police Security" with 500 lumen, a five hour run time, 280 meter beam distance with four D cell batteries for power. My thought is this, if I swapped the four 1.5V D cell batteries out for four 3.6V D cell lithium batteries it would hypothetically increase the lumen output of this cheap flashlight. I like messing with electronics and seeing what I can make them do if I modify them. Would someone please let me know if they think this will work, I realize that speculation is most likely the only outcome I can get. The picture provided is the only information I could glean from taking the flashlight apart.

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I recently put a pair of 3.2 volt batteries in a 2 C light. Well I got away with it long enough to know it did not get any brighter (probably due to built in regulation), but when I tried to read the draw at the tail cap it went dark before the meter got to read it....

Now if said light is direct drive, then yeah it'll be brighter until the zzzzzt...poof happens.

It's kinda like adding petrol to a diesal engine without either buffering all that extra explosion in the combustion chamber, or replacing things like piston rings to handle all the extra power.

It would likely be more cost effective to buy a light built around higher voltage.
But folks like Vihn, FiveMega and Vesture of blood have ways of turning ordinary vanilla flashlights into 2x the output of the typical automobile headlight. So yeah it can be done. But not by simply applying a set of whopping output batteries.

There are better lights to begin modding on for sure.

LeBig said:

There are better lights to begin modding on for sure.

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For sure!