Originally Posted by Lossy
I have seen many members on here do a variety of hombrew projects to mount up anything from a mini-mag to a 4D mag. Every time I saw one of these mods, I thought to myself, if only they had popped a surefire in there....
A lot of common flashlights aren't really meant fror sustained use--even expensive ones like Surefires.
With regulated-LED flashlights, in the first couple minutes of use the LED will heat up, and the regulator will throttle its output back down to avoid overheating it.
With many unregulated halogen and xenon flashlights like regular Mag-Lites, their output drops off drastically very early on--it's not uncommon for them to lose 25% of their brightness in the first 15 minutes of use, even though they may claim 2+ hours of runtime.
If you search Flashlightreviews.com they have output charts showing this stuff for lights they've tested.
...Then I saw this hombrew flashlight that costs under $10 dollars.....
The problem with it is that I would wonder if it would
melt..... -he's running a 3V light bulb at 6 volts, in a PLASTIC flashlight.... What could possibly go wrong?
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The best flashlights right now are the CREEs, such as from Fenix. The LEDs are more efficient and they come with multiple run-levels built in (efficient regulators aren't real easy to make at home). Eventually most-all LED bike lights will switch over, but that may take a while.
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