Best Affordable UV LED bulb replacement or Flashlight?

Looking for a good but affordable UV flashlight or bulb replacement. As much as I would love to have one of those Cree xLamp based UV lights I can't justify that much cost... I am looking for something decent in the under $40 range!

I am looking for a general use UV (hunting for scorpions, fluoresce(?) money, diamonds other things etc. You know, just to play around with (safely!). That is why I can't justify spending big bucks! I know to find scorpions, I am going to need more than some little 1-3 LED penlight so I would want something with some "throw".

Any feedback from real world use on eBay stuff like the 32LED 3D Mag UV "bulbs" or the 12/14/21 LED UV lights? Any other recommendations would also be appreciated!

I bought one of the Peak UV lights. It uses a cluster of 7 LED and is very nice.

But you may not be able to find a single UV light that does what you want. UV light is loosely classified into different bands or wavelengths such as UVA, UVB, UVC. A UV light will generally only produce light on one band and might overlap into two bands.

The problem is somethings only fluoresce in one band i'll say UVB for example but not in another, say UVA. So you might light something up and not see it with one flashlight, but another UV flashlight might make it glow.

UVA (380–315 nm), also called Long Wave or "blacklight";
UVB (315–280 nm), also called Medium Wave; and
UVC (280-10 nm), also called Short Wave or "germicidal"."

Donovan;

I've built over a hundred UV rechargable pocket lights for detecting stains in carpets.

The first batch used 8 of 395nm 5mm LEDs for illumination.

Then the Cree 1 watt UV came out with well over twice the actual UV output. It is definitely the best source for resonable UV.

It does require some optics for focusing the beam. I use a convex lens to shape the beam. For power it uses a 2230mah lithium rechargeable.

Here is a picture from our website:
http://www.cobbcarpet.com/uvlight2.jpg

Larry Cobb
Homemade 1 watt Crees (White & UV), Quicksilver III, Ultrafire 3W WF-505
100% Lithium Powered

I use a Peak 5 UV LED light that runs on a single AA. Its specific use is to find scorpions and look for blood contamination. It works well, can be contaminated with blood, then cleaned with no ill effects. Think it costs 35 to 40 bucks, is waterproof and hard anodized III so it is a very tough light.

We carry the TerraLUX TLE-4UV for $29.95
TerraLUX TLE-4UV (MiniStar1) with 4 each UV LEDs at 395nm giving 40 mW output used in the 2aa Mini-Mag.
http://www.led-replacement.com/tle-4uv.html
led_replacement

Sounds like that Cree is the way to go! Are there any cree based kits or flashlights that are reasonably priced? Even a standard white cree based light or retrofit kit would work since I could replace the white led with a uv after the fact...

Hi led,

what is the range of such a replacement? does it light up a darkned room, or is it only useable close up? are there any convex lenses for mag-2aa's to make it more focused? Because with the Surefire A2 you can clearly see the rings of the leds.
I would be interested to have such a replacement.
Last question, is it also possible to order a replacement like that for a Solitair maglite?