Cavechat.org

I have to be honest, I'm getting ever so closer to breaking down and just buying a sten. I love building lights, but between the time and money I've spent on it I could've bought about 5 Stenlights. Maybe I'll get one and fix it up to suit my preference...

The sten light modified with two of the new Cree XR-E Q5 could put out 456 lumens...The Cree XR-E Q5 put out 228 lumens each.

I'm not sure why, but I don't believe that you can order a sten with cree leds. I'm betting it has something to do with the lenses or something.

FiddleCaver wrote:I'm not sure why, but I don't believe that you can order a sten with cree leds. I'm betting it has something to do with the lenses or something.

It would be the mounting of the LED...I will not fit the sten without modifications....

Mark620 wrote:It would be the mounting of the LED...I will not fit the sten without modifications....

is is my understanding that the Crees would also require a "daughterboard" to fit into the Sten units, just like the Rebels, but would also require some rewiring or addiitonal changes to the layout.

however, i know that they were displeased with the options available for optics. i don't know the specifics, so i don't care to make this into a debate over which LEDs are better, but keep in mind that it's not all about lumens.

frankly, anything brighter than what i currently have, or an SSC modified Sten even, would seem almost pointless. unless you want your fellow cavers to start wearing sunglasses.

if you have questions about what is or is not possible, contact Sten. in my dealings with them, they were extremely receptive to my input and we discussed several customization options.

Off topic again

FiddleCaver thanks for the offer! I'll definitely PM you once I get a little further along and a lot more lost.

And hey if I build anything worth sharing I'll even post pics.
Eric

xcathodex wrote:frankly, anything brighter than what i currently have, or an SSC modified Sten even, would seem almost pointless. unless you want your fellow cavers to start wearing sunglasses.

It's not about brightness, it's about efficiency. A ~50% (claimed) increase in efficiency is nothing to sneeze at.

xcathodex wrote:

Steven Johnson wrote:I wish the Sten would beads available with Cree or other nextgeen LEDs as they are around 50% more efficient.

see above - I know for a small customization fee they will sell you one with SSC P4s, and possibly Cree XREs or Luxeon Rebels. you just need to tell them what you want. I had the same concern when purchasing, i didn't the older style of LEDs when several more efficient/brighter options are available.

who has an SSC loaded version on this board... Driggs?

Thanks, thats a lot of good info on the Sten Could you elaberate on the bulb choices as far as brightness and burn time goes. I'm interested in the differences in the SSC P4s, Cree XREs and Luxeon Rebel.
Thanks a lot Everybody

CaverCraig wrote:Thanks, thats a lot of good info on the Sten Could you elaberate on the bulb choices as far as brightness and burn time goes. I'm interested in the differences in the SSC P4s, Cree XREs and Luxeon Rebel.
Thanks a lot Everybody

beats me =) this is basically how i understand the hierarchy of 3W LEDs:

OLD:
Luxeon 3 (Apex, original Sten)

MO BETTA:
SSC P4 (Scurion, common Apex/Sten mod)
Cree XRE

EVEN MO BETTA:
Luxeon Rebel
Cree Q5 (is the Q5 a "bin" of XRE, or a new LED?)

the Q5 is just a different bin cree. Honesly, I would put the rebels in the Mo Betta category simply because they don't have either the brightness or efficiency of the SSC or the XRE. Brightness wise, you won't get any better than the SSC P4 (240 lumens), but they tint everything blue. For efficiency, the Cree XRE (228 Lumens) are the best and are just under the brightness of the SSC. The deal with the rebels is they are REALLY small and so you can put a bunch of them in a small space, but it seems to me that heat would be more of a commanding issue with a less massive product. Right now the best available rebels are at about the same efficiency and lumen output as the old P4 bin Cree (140 lumens) which was about 5 bin advancements ago.

FiddleCaver wrote:I have to be honest, I'm getting ever so closer to breaking down and just buying a sten. I love building lights, but between the time and money I've spent on it I could've bought about 5 Stenlights. Maybe I'll get one and fix it up to suit my preference...

Say it ain't so!

FiddleCaver wrote:the Q5 is just a different bin cree. Honesly, I would put the rebels in the Mo Betta category simply because they don't have either the brightness or efficiency of the SSC or the XRE. Brightness wise, you won't get any better than the SSC P4 (240 lumens), but they tint everything blue. For efficiency, the Cree XRE (228 Lumens) are the best and are just under the brightness of the SSC. The deal with the rebels is they are REALLY small and so you can put a bunch of them in a small space, but it seems to me that heat would be more of a commanding issue with a less massive product. Right now the best available rebels are at about the same efficiency and lumen output as the old P4 bin Cree (140 lumens) which was about 5 bin advancements ago.

Erm...I've been hanging out on candlepowerforums for about a year, have done LED upgrades on about two dozen flashlights and headlamps, and consider myself relatively knowledgeable about LEDs, and I have issues with some of the statements made above.

1. "Honesly, I would put the rebels in the Mo Betta category simply because they don't have either the brightness or efficiency of the SSC or the XRE."

The Luxeon Rebels are on par with the SSC P4 and the Cree XR-E.
For proof, see the third chart (efficiency) in this thread:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/sho ... p?t=171365

2. "SSC P4 (240 lumens) but they tint everything blue"

I'm not sure why you say this. The SSC P4 has different color bins just like the Luxeon 1, III, etc. To see the color bin definitions for different LEDs, see this thread:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/sho ... p?t=156772

If you're talking about overdriving a SSC P4, yes, it will shift the tint to a bluer color, but this is true for all white LEDs, because they are a blue LED coated with phosphor which absorbs the blue light and re-emits it as white, and if you dump more blue light into the phosphor, it can't absorb it all so the overall light output is shifted towards blue. If you start with a warmer tint (reddish-yellow white) LED and overdrive it, then you can have a less blueish overdriven light.

3. "For efficiency, the Cree XRE (228 Lumens) are the best and are just under the brightness of the SSC"

Well, the SSC P4 uses the same raw die as the Cree XR-E. Seoul Semiconductor buys them from Cree. so it's the exactly the same. There's differences in the viewing angle because the packaging is different, and very slight differences in efficiency because SSC seems to use a different phosphor coating than Cree, but the die is the same.

It's not really meaningful to compare the efficiency of the Cree XR-E vs Seoul for this reason. You could compare the efficiency of various bins which would make a little more sense.

4. "Right now the best available rebels are at about the same efficiency and lumen output as the old P4 bin Cree (140 lumens) which was about 5 bin advancements ago."

If you look at the third chart in:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/sho ... p?t=171365

You'll see that the Luxeon Rebel they tested (NVND bin) has better efficiency than both the Cree XR-E P4 bin and the SSC P4 they tested (probably a U-bin).

Toshi

xcathodex wrote:...beats me =) this is basically how i understand the hierarchy of 3W LEDs:

OLD:
Luxeon 3 (Apex, original Sten)

MO BETTA:
SSC P4 (Scurion, common Apex/Sten mod)
Cree XRE

EVEN MO BETTA:
Luxeon Rebel
Cree Q5 (is the Q5 a "bin" of XRE, or a new LED?)

If I might expound on this a bit:

Last generation 3-watters:

Lumileds Luxeon III
Lumileds Luxeon K2

New generation 3-watters:

Seoul Semiconductor P4
Cree XR-E
Lumileds Luxeon K2 TFFC

If I remember correctly, the new generation of LEDs use nanoholes in the die. This allows more photons to be emitted from the die instead of just bouncing around and being reabsorbed .

The difference between last-gen and new-gen 3-watters is about a factor of 2.5. The old gen was about 20-40 lumens/watt at 3 watts, and the new ones are about 50-70.

The difference between the different types of new-gen 3-watters is about 40%, from 50-70 lumens/watt.

Since the eye's response to brightness is nonlinear (about logarithmic), there's a large difference in brightness between the last-gen and current-gen, but only a small difference in brighness between the different current-gen LEDs.

I personally can't tell the difference betwen two adjacent intensity bins of an LED unless I really, really try. In my experience, the beam pattern makes a much larger difference. The Cree XR-E has a much narrower beam angle than the SSC P4, so even though the light output is the about the same, it appears much brighter because it's more concentrated.

Toshi

Well, all that was just from my own calculations and personal experience. Obviously, someone else came up with slight differences. My only other big thing with SSC's and Luxeon (not sure if this applies to the rebel) is the soft (silicone?) lens. This things just tears right off if you aren't careful (think SIT light) whereas the Cree has a glass lens that doesn't come off quite so easily.

FiddleCaver wrote:Well, all that was just from my own calculations and personal experience. Obviously, someone else came up with slight differences. My only other big thing with SSC's and Luxeon (not sure if this applies to the rebel) is the soft (silicone?) lens. This things just tears right off if you aren't careful (think SIT light) whereas the Cree has a glass lens that doesn't come off quite so easily.

The Luxeon I, III, and K2 do not have a "gummy" silicon dome. I know they have a hard glass dome, because I have a bunch of them.
I don'ot think the Luxeon Rebel does either, but I haven't handled one personally yet.

It's only the SSC P4 that has the gummy dome.

Toshi