Cree Q5 Made into 3-mode 445nm

I purchased a few of these a while back with the intention of using them as a nice mini host. You can get them about from $5-$8 depending whether they come from China or not.

Amazon.com: Mini 400 Lumens CREE Q5 LED Zoomable Adjustable Focus Flashlight Torch With Waterproof Design: Home Improvement

When I was taking it apart for inspection and measurements I decided to see what the driver would put out for me on the Jurfan88's test load in the high and low modes and here's what I got.

Purple(6) - 100ma high , 30ma low
Blue(4) - 330ma high, 90ma low
red(3) - 480ma high, 130ma low

I took measurements and ordered a few copper sinks from flaminpyro. Then the project hit the back burner for a while until I was able to harvest an M140 from an older build of mine that I scrapped. A little arctic silver and arctic alumina epoxy later, I'm pretty happy with the turnout.



Here I made one of my afterglow focus rings :yh: this time with red GITD. I should have a thread up sometime in December selling these afterglow focus rings in sets of seven including green, aqua, blue, violet, red, yellow, and white.


A pic of the afterglow module I pressed the M140 into :yh:


Even at 330ma it still makes a nice visible beam on high mode


Here I show the 3-modes. High, low, and strobe. The low appears to be pulsed, when it's waved around the line becomes dotted. Duty Cycle is great, did a 5min test run on high and didn't notice any heat build up.

Damn I have a couple of similar hosts too, but the 18650 versions! I have a cunning build planned...

Nice work and great idea with the glow rings! :beer:

Thanks!

An update, the driver from this light will pull as much as it can from a AA, which isn't as much as a Li but it still puts a visible beam out in the dark. I also did a run test on it, drained a cheap china made Li in 45min until the batteries protection circuit tripped. The host got slightly warm after about 20min but heat didn't build up.

Gotta say 1W+ is fun but this one is up there too. It's not necessarily blindingly bright all the time, feels safer, and with the high low modes I was able to neatly write my name in cursive on a few things :yh:

I like the modes. This is really cool!

If you don't mind me asking where did you get the heat sink.

TheDukeAnumber1 said:

Here I made one of my afterglow focus rings :yh: this time with red GITD. I should have a thread up sometime in December selling these afterglow focus rings in sets of seven including green, aqua, blue, violet, red, yellow, and white.

Click to expand...

I especially like the different colors that shows up when the laser is operating :gj:

I have been secretly working on my own custom milled focus adapters with GITD that can be charged while the laser is operating, it's a secret now so don't tell

awillis2589 said:

If you don't mind me asking where did you get the heat sink.

Click to expand...

It's in the OP. I measured the host and used CAD to make a simple heat sink design. Then Flaminpryo took the CAD drawing and machined some nice copper sinks for me.

@ Flaminpyro

The contrasting colors are pretty neat, and come on now you've been working on those rings for too long, lets see em