[SuperJETT]

I bought 3 mc-e torches from dealextreme and was worried about heat, so based on some reading decided to wrap one of the dropins with heavy aluminum foil from a baking pan last night. I brought all 3 in to work and shot them with our thermal camera to see if it really works, not just by feel.

You can tell the modded one transmits the heat to the full cap much quicker than the other 2 without the aluminum. It was also about 5F hotter when I shut them off.

A free mod (after washing the aluminum pan) that works. :thumbsup:

ambient temp on all 3 laying on floor

about 60 seconds in the difference is very noticeable and you can see the middle one was hotter at the end where the reflector contacts the cap

75 seconds after that, you can see it's hotter and more uniform

Here's a second test I did after they had cooled back down, this shot is just 10-15 seconds after turning them on

and just a little bit later with my hand as a reference

 

[Cat-man-do]

Interesting photo's using the thermal imaging. What you said about the aluminum foil bake pan got me thinking...I happen to have a set of replaceable aluminum gas burner liners that are more robust than just plain Alum. foil. but still very flexable. :ihih: I'll give that a try with the XM-L drop in come Christmas. I don't have thermal imaging but I do have a thermal probe on my multimeter ( although I've never used it before ). It would be interesting to see the difference after a bit of time. Worth the try once I get it setup.

 

[orion_134]

I don't get what you did with the aluminum foil.

 

[SuperJETT]

I wrapped the sides of the dropin with it to hopefully make some contact between it and the aluminum housing.

Here's where I got the idea, pics are in the first post too. http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=230854

 

[SuperJETT]

Last shots with all 3 wrapped. I'll have to do some comparisons, but based on the heat either the left has much better contact or is just a better led as they all pull about the same current even after this test.

I finally shut them off after 140F+ with no airflow.

 

[Cat-man-do]

SuperJett, this has been very interesting. Don't know how you did all the fancy display photos but they are very nice. Can you tell me how much current the drop-ins are pulling on high? If you ever decide to buy a couple different P-60 hosts, please don't hesitate to do a comparison with the 501B's again. I would love to see how the Solarforce P2 host fairs against the WF-501B's.

 

[SuperJETT]

I have seen 2-2.2amps at the cap on a full 18650 and they are direct driven so it drops over time of course.

I'm not planning on buying any more dropins really, these 3 are strong enough for my night riding. (I do have some smooth reflectors on the way to try to tighten the beam some though)

We have a FLIR thermal camera here at work and the guy in the next office over is the primary user, so I can run tests pretty easily.

I am just glad to see that the mod does do something and it will hopefully extend the life of my LEDs and make them a bit less sensitive to conditions.

 

[hankering]

Pictures not showing, are they still available somewhere?

 

[Cat-man-do]

Wow, you dug this thread up ( OP from 2010 ). If my memory serves me the photo's were of thermal imaging and really not much to look at. I used to pot my P-60's but somewhere along the line I stopped doing it. Not that it doesn't help, it does it just takes time to get it set-up right. You just have to experiment with the fit till you get it right.

One of the things that tends to get over-looked in these discussions is that it's very important that the ( screw-on ) reflector get tight contact with the pill as the reflector is a very important part of the heat sink process of the torch. Adding a bit of thermal paste to the threads on the pill might not be a bad idea. Some people have even tried to pot the top of the reflector with Arctic Alumina or Arctic Silver. Never tried that myself because it sounds messy.

Generally when I use a drop-in torch I don't over-use the high mode anyway and I've never had a problem in all the years I've been using them. The only time I ever had one burn out was when I was operating the drop-in without a reflector ( while testing reflectors ). It only took once for that lesson to be learned. Going forward if you like to run high mode longer than a couple minutes anything you can do to add a couple more direct thermal contact spots with the torch body is going to be positive.

 

[SuperJETT]

Old thread resurrection.

No, I doubt I have them anywhere now unless I uploaded them as attachments on candlepower maybe.

Basically, you could see the modded one heated up the outside quicker and more evenly than the unmodded which tells me it's conducting the heat more efficiently and should help it last longer.

I no longer have any of those torches now, so whether it helped or not, who knows.