18650 Head Torch ideas

[ex-member BareThrills]

Evening All

Tis my Birthday on Monday and folks have kindly donated some wonga for me to buy some goodies with. The two purchases ive been holding off on are a new sleepmat and a head torch.

The sleep mat is now ordered and im looking forward to a fat exped. The torch is giving me more problemos. The Petzl chicken tikka variety seem to look very good but they run on AAA batts. I have a lot of 18650 cells and would rather have something that runs on them instead. There are plenty of Chinese models on ebay but i was wondering if there is a good solid branded head torch that takes 18650s.


Cheers
Paul

 

[bushwacker bob]

Easiest to use headtorches are lightweight self contained ones. 18650 batteries would need a belt pack to hold the batteries because of their weight (about 45 grammes each)

 

[tinderbox]

18650's are high voltage, so you only need one to drive a headlamp instead of the usual three. Further, they are lithium so they work at low temperatures. I don't know any big name brands that use them, but they are a good battery for headlamps.

 

[ateallthepies]

Not sure of any dedicated 18650 head torches but there are plenty of head bands that will take a regular flashlight like this... http://www.flashaholics.co.uk/nitecore/nitecore-headband.html

Or something like this... http://www.flashaholics.co.uk/zebralight/zebralight-h600.html ...just a a small 18650 light for use in a head band?

Steve.

 

[cave_dweller]

If it has to be 18650, look at the Zebralight that Ateallthepies linked to - it comes with a head band, and I personally thing their stuff is very good.

There really isn't much choice of 18650 based head torches. I don't think I'd want 700 lumens being beamed out of the front of my noggin though by that monster though!

 

[ateallthepies]

If your handy with a soldering iron, I'm sure something like a cheap Solarforce L2 host could be chopped up and turned into a head torch with the LED head mounted to the front of a headband with the battery tube mounted at the back like a regular head torch?

Steve.

 

[ex-member BareThrills]

Steve you seem to have a knack of getting me spending lol. That zebra is very nice but its really a bit more than i want to go to. I did think about a diy solution but dont want to take any chances with waterproofing. I think i might be looking at either the empty head band which i can stick something in or just accepting defeat and going with a petzl. I like the idea of easy to use filters too. Ive got a ton of led stars so might have a play.

Thanks for everyone's comments

 

[cbr6fs]

Zebralight H600

Top torch

Bit pricey but it truly is the last headtorch light you'll ever want.
It's small, extremely light and is capable of putting out a wall of light.

I own several torches from little 20 lumen AAA type to 2000+ lumen monsters and a fair few other torches in-between, the H600 is the light i use by far the most though.

I don't think I'd want 700 lumens being beamed out of the front of my noggin though by that monster though!

Thing is though, it's not 750 lumens or nothing, the light has several outputs depending on the need.

High: H1 420Lm with 750Lm turbo in the first 3 min (2.3 hrs) or H2 170Lm (7 hrs) / 270Lm (4 hrs) / 420Lm (2.4 hrs) / 4Hz Strobe
Medium: M1 65Lm (18 hrs) or M2 21Lm (50 hrs)
Low: L1 2.8Lm (280 hrs) or L2 0.1Lm (80 days)

So have 8 various output options from 0.1 Lm through to 750 Lm.

I've been using the SC600 for around 1 year now and the H600 for around 4 - 5 months.
They've been used for everything from working on my cars, to hiking at night over VERY rough terrain and i have yet to find an output that didn't suit the situation perfectly.

The only thing i don't like about the H600 is it uses a timer rather than a temperature sender to switch down from turbo.
For a light THAT tiny though something has to give.



Cheers
Mark

 

[ex-member BareThrills]

just found a poor mans version. less lumens but might consider it

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/280711572...X:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649#ht_2485wt_1052

 

[bushwacker bob]

I have a couple of ultrafire 18650 torches the quality is reasonable and they both throw a long way.
Headlight http://www.dealextreme.com/p/flood-...s-led-headlamp-with-charger-set-1-18650-55595
torches http://www.dealextreme.com/c/18650-batteries-flashlights-929?page=1&pagesize=52&pagesort=relevance

 

[Gill]

I have a couple of Flashlights from Ultrafire and they are quite good ,worth the money.

 

[ex-member BareThrills]

yea ive got several 501b models from them and they have never let me down. I never touch their cells though as most of them have heavily over stated mah. I salvage my cells from laptop batteries.