If you make and sell lights .
This is my take on the DX bike light .
thanks to Martin who bought one and kindly sent it to me to pull apart and give it the once over
First up very nice box even with magnetic closures
WEIGHTS AND SIZES
I will let the pics tell this bit
On Opening the box I was shocked a little on the actual size of the thing as I try to make my lights as small as possible , this is tiny .
And looks on the outside to be a real nice product
the battery is neat and well packaged with a good connector set
I cant see any problems at all from the outside so time to have a look a little deeper.
first before unscrewing the the bezel I did a very non techy test the seal
this involved sucking with the whole bezel in my mouth to creat a vacuum and you can soon tell if it is sealed and it passed with flying colours no leaks there.
I also did the same test on the switch end and that was good too .
No real issues so far The alloy in side is very soft and poor quality but not a problem
there were signs of small bits of swarfe around but so far not in any place to cause shorts.
the first main niggle shows itself the screw holding the mount only 2 threads holding the thing together
ok as the second pic shows it cannot be too long but a couple more threads would be better
just prior to unscrewing the retainer ring I did notice this large piece of swarfe hiding there.
the bits on the right are just stringy plastic
Still nothing too bad found yet but was a bit concerned about the swarf inside with the driver board . I was just going to reassemble it as it belonged to some one else but after I saw the swarfe it need cleaning out so dismantled it and found that the P7 on its star was glued to the heatsink with a clear epoxy .
So this was removed and the star glued back in with Arctic Alumina epoxy
then it was just a reversal to reassemble
some thermal past on the heatsink and screw threads of the retainer
and some silicon round the cable . and I did put in a slightly longer screw to hold the bracket
Ok so now some thoughts .
When I first plugged it in the first thing I did was just sit it on the desk and wait to see how hot it got and how fast , now this is a rare sunny day in blighty with a nice 20 degree c ambient temp and after 7 minutes it was quite warm getting hotter than I would normally like so I ended the test and started the take down .
I was quite pleased it was getting warm as this meant some transfer of heat was happening.
The worrying thing about this is after the rebuild it got very hot real quickly like 3 minutes
so in very high ambients it stands a good chance of overheating the led .
Also I am just 1.5 hours in to a runtime test with a desk fan on full blowing over the light and is has stabilised at 35 degrees c so I dread to think what the internal temps could get to if I had not added the thermal epoxy and paste
No beam shots to compare it with my other lights yet but will try and get some tonight
so as it stands it looks like it will take quite a few sales away from the main light makers
and also makes DIY seem a bit daft as there is no way you could build a light of this quality for the price . including battery and charger.
The main failings I think will be the mount breaking as you stretch the oring round the bars or pulling the bolt out of the 2 threads holding it
, possibly overheating issues in warmer climes than the uk if the user is not carefull to switch to low in times of low airflow
also maybe the cable pulling out of the light when the mount breaks in a stack .
I cannot comment ot the electronics as I know nothing about them suffice to say the quality is no where near Taskled stuff
I would like to say it is rubbish dont buy it but Cant as I would buy one if I was in the market for a budget light .
