Too bad they don't make a matching head with a choice of incandescent or XP-G2 Or Nichia 219C. I suppose an XP-L would work with 16340?
Lumens Factory sells E-compatible single LED heads. There are modders that can swap in any PowerLED you want. I'm not sure how one would make a head with reflector that accepts incandescent lamps and also has a driver and LED for user choice, except to simply produce a head for incandescent use, and if the user wishes, use an LED tower to replace the lamp, that are made and sold by LF, as well as CPF member Tana.
But I have it on good authority that in a few months (with luck and Godspeed to LF) we'll indeed see LF heads for incandescent use that are E-compatible. I hope, like these bodies, the heads are more or less copies of the Elite head, and copies from the era before the superfluous and silly crenellations appeared. Let a flashlight be a flashlight, and nothing else, not a knife, not a weapon, not a bottle opener, just a portable lighting utility.
If reverse engineering the tails, switches and bodies was tough, it only emphasizes how tough it will be to develop and engineer, manufacture in quality in and quantity a replacement for an Elite head. These compound pieces are only deceptively simple. Probably others at CPF know, but I can't imagine how something as common in the industry now as the orange peel reflector is produced. SF did their R&D and LF will need to do no less R&D to match it.
I'm just happy most of SF design is unpatentable, all those patent numbers on their host bodies notwithstanding. I would not really care if SF was continuing to manufacture and sell incan e-series, that would have satisfied me, but IMO, SF was
late to the LED arena, and ended production of most of their incandescent options, which are still unmatched and the best in the industry, too soon and for no great reason, while fumbling the LED and playing catch-up for years. 2017/2018 SF is finally catching up to the rest of the industry in LED, yet still no attention given to spectrum and color rendition. Again, IMO, SF more or less replaced most of their incan options with inferior LED options, inferior to their own incan designs, and inferior to most other industry in LED design, and we gained... runtime. Not a fair trade. Yet SF's durability is still there, and that is no small feat.
The basic size issue is E are head load. So even from scratch, bigger cell = thinner threads. Im working on a body but it will be tail load so threads are stronger. But it will mean that head and tail are about the same size.
Awesome, love to hear that those with the skill are driven to produce such things. Leaf made some hosts like that, but hard to find now, and there is available
Fivemega E Head C tail bodies.
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Hey, CPF, I am deeply sorry for the longwindedness of many of my posts. The best posts are short and sweet here. I assure it is not that I am some out of control narcissist, but instead I think it is that I was dropped on my head quite a bit when I young and first learned English, down many flights of stairs, almost daily, until my perception of the 3D world finally developed quite late. Happy to be on your ignore list, I completely understand.