Some years ago, before LEDs were a thing, I bought an Ultrafire WF-500 Flashlight that features a Xeon light bulb. As you might imagine the bulb reached its lifetime and burned away.
Now a replacement bulb is available here https://www.ebay.com/itm/321916301663 the thing is that it will cost me 35€ and for that price I could just buy a new LED flashlight.
Now I was considering trying to adapt a generic LED bulb like this one here https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002419159094.html?mp=1.
Anyone else with this model of flashlight succeed at a similar mod? Any LED bulb recommendations? Or… is there any other source for the original bulb at a lower cost?
Some photos:
- https://cdn.tcb13.com/2023/wf500-bulb.jpg
- https://cdn.tcb13.com/2023/wf500-bulb2.jpg
- https://cdn.tcb13.com/2023/wf500-bulb3.jpg
Thank you.
My opinion: look for a new LED flashlight. It will have the proper circuit and design to take advantage of LED capabilities including high brightness, PWM dimming, power efficiency, and heat management. Adapting an incandescent flashlight will always be a compromise in one of those.
Edit: I have a similar flashlight and I bought a tiny usb-c rechargeable flashlight that is brighter for 1/5 of the size. And for battery life, you can recharge your keychain size light with any usb battery pack.
Yes, feature and price wise that would be the best decision… but I kinda feed bad trashing a perfectly good machined aluminum piece just because of a bulb. :(
From looking at the LED bulb, I can tell you that it will not work very well in that flashlight.
The reflector of the flashlight is built so light coming from a very small source (like the filament of an incandescent bulb) is directed forward in a focused beam. With the led bulb, light is coming from 10 different spots, none of them being in the focus point of the reflector. The result will be a spread out beam that won’t be bright over longer distances.
The only type of LED bulb that could work is something like this car replacement bulb that keeps the light source to a relatively small spot. But I don’t think those are available in the size you need.
Well I emailed UltraFire and they will ship me a replacement bulb that is LED. They also say it is 600lm. I’ll report on how it goes.
Finally got a replacement head from them with a LED, works great, way less heat than before and most likely the light.
Thank you for the reply.
So your in your opinion something like this would work better: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005278498808.html
But… I don’t believe that bulb does 500lm was advertised.
Not really. With that bulb, all the light is focused forward, not to the side. The light will never hit the reflector, it is only focused by the lens in the LED housing, and that isn’t enough.
The reflector of the flashlight is built so light coming from a very small source (like the filament of an incandescent bulb) is directed forward in a focused beam.
I agree, but I also think that using a modern LED with a single source of forward-facing light is fine. However the emitter would need to be properly positioned in the light.
Here’s a very similar host (from one of the best low-cost flashlight makers) showing a properly aligned LED and reflector:
Product link: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256801849471618.html
I found a few references to this exact model on candlepowerforums.com which I believe has more folks who own(ed) incandescent lights. Not that has been such a long time, but LED technology advanced very quickly. Not sure if that will help your search.
There’s also a few people over on [email protected] !
