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. :(