Welcome to OVEREADY Insider 55. Please fasten your seatbelts.
Custom lights have something, often described as ‘it’ or ‘x factor.’ The factor is love. It draws you in in a way that’s hard to explain. Love of design, love of your customer, and in our case, also love of power. Put these factors into something and you get them back out.
In the world of engineering, power is about bottlenecks. Add more and watch as one thing after another gives way, forcing limitations. In flashlights, that starts with the driver, but we long ago started making our own. Next is LEDs. As we approach their limits, more power equals less and less more light (diminishing returns). You can add more LEDs, but we long ago started doing that. So the next step is adding larger LEDs. Once they’re in, most everything else is about heat.
Air is such a poor conductor of heat that it is the basis for most insulation (which traps air). To get air to move heat, the air itself needs to move. The standard approach is to move air past the surface of the light (i.e., fins). But this means first conducting that heat from the center of the light out to the surface. By the time it even gets there, the system’s internal heat capacity is by definition – already full. Keep adding heat and there isn’t much to be done from the outside.
In a sealed flashlight, the closest moving air can theoretically get to the LEDs is just underneath the shelf on which they sit. Moving air through the flashlight itself. This is of course impossible – but long time Insiders will recall that impossible is what we live for. Presenting the worlds first open air flow flashlight. Even parked on a table, air flows through the head, starting to move heat away from the source almost as soon as its generated. And moving about in your hand during use, things get even better.
Here’s a close up:
Three XPLs, driven at 20 watts (or 219B @18), in a package 1/3 the size of lights anywhere close to the same performance (over 2000 lumens). And if it looks familiar, that’s because our head is the newest member of the Moddoolar flashlight system. So it works with every Moddoolar bezel and body and tailcap you already have. And it features the first user replaceable boards, so you can upgrade the engine (or swap optics) as often and as many times as you like.
So what does such a head look like on a finished light? In a word, awesome:
And mirroring our popular ZRS Host, also available in ZRS Shorty:
And back by popular demand, both models are also available in natural:
Oh. And while we were at it, we custom molded our own self charging (GID) optic frames, standard on everything above. Made from premium materials, for the brightest possible result. Bright enough to find it across the room and even for navigating in pitch black with night adapted vision:
And finishing out today’s announcements, here is our aluminum bezel tool, in Z32 size:
Extra Notes:
219 heads are ready to ship, XPL heads are arriving next week. See our companion CPF thread for real time updates!
We’ve boosted Triad Clip thickness, creating what is probably the strongest clip in the business
Clips are now available in black and silver, on our tailcaps, shrouds, and parts page
We are retiring the Belt size clip, get them while supplies last
Two Oblivion Twisty lights remain, one is available today
All HDS models are ready to ship with clip options
Large optic Peaks are ready to ship with the first XPL option (with Logans returning next)
AW IMR are ready to ship with greater amperage and higher capacity
We are closed Dec 24 and 25th, so orders ship later this week. Best wishes to your family from ours!