All the Candela LED Swap - from flood to thrower with just an LED change
I recently sent out for a custom version of my EDC Flashlight, the Eagletac D25LC2 MKII. The goal was to raise the Candela of the light so that it would be better able to illuminate targets at medium distances, and be more retina frying at close range.
I contacted SkyLumen, who does a lot of both custom flashlights, as well as modding existing flashlight designs for higher performance. I requested that the factory LED (Cree XM-L2 U4) be swapped out for the new generation OSRAM W2.1 LED.
The OSRAM works by being a tiny LED. By shrinking the area of the LED, the intensity of the beam is more concentrated.
Modded D25LC2 Osram W2.1 top, regular XML-U2 LED bottom. Note how much smaller the yellow square on top is compared to the bottom yellow square - thats the difference in LED emitter size:
https://i.ibb.co/VjR0dnC/Osram-vs-Re...D-Eagletac.jpg
Skylumen offers testing service done on their lights, which I requested. And the test results from the LED swap are quite impressive.
https://i.ibb.co/KyF9nTk/Sky-Lumen-E...25-LC2-mod.jpg
Factory D25LC2 MKII = 1150 lumen / 10,500 candela (10.5kcd) / max distance 205m
Modded D25LC2 MKII = 730lm / 40,000 candela (40kcd) / max distance 400m
--> The LED swap has 4x'd the beam intensity (candela) and effectively doubled the maximum range of the flashlight.
Heres what that looks like in practical terms, using a Palm Tree at 60m as a target.
Night:
https://i.ibb.co/q7BfJ1Z/Palm-tree-60m-target.jpg
Regular 10kcd LED:
https://i.ibb.co/vvKyMsr/Eagletac-Regular-60m.jpg
Modded 40kcd LED:
https://i.ibb.co/M7cYVqZ/Eagletac-th...-palm-tree.jpg
As can be seen, the 40kcd OSRAM resulted in a much higher level of illumination of the palm tree, while the more diffuse 10kcd regular LED, while lighting up a wider area, results in less brightness of the actual target.
Overall I'm very impressed with the results of this LED swap. Not only has candela increased 4x, but its especially impressive given how compact the D25LC2 MKII is.
The Eagletac is much more compact (0.9"x4.5") then a typical tactical flashlight; shown between an Armytek Doberman Pro and Malkoff MD2. Yet despite its small size, it has actually a bit more throw (400m vs 395m) then the much larger 1400lm Armytek due to the OSRAM LED.
https://i.ibb.co/MB4ZcW3/Eagletac-D25-LC2.jpg
Hopefully we will see more manufacturers employing the OSRAM in their light designs. It offers the opportunity to produce more compact weapon lights with better range, or to turn full size rifle lights into true long range illumination tools.
In the meantime, if you're looking for Mod work, I highly recommend Vinh over at https://skylumen.com/