Be very careful of the Chinese dive lights on ebay.

[EL Pistoffo]

Lousy o-rings are usually the culprit with light floodings. Chinese lights sometimes have wimpy o-rings with insufficient lubrication. I have a pair of Archon video lights in which I replaced the original o-rings with beefier ones and lubed them properly. They've been on multiple dives to as far down as 100 ft no problems.

 

[Peter69_56]

My Chinese lights have been down to 220 foot and no leaks to date.

 

[MrChen]

I had bought one for $35. Worked great. But I did grease the o-rings before using it. How do you prevent them from opening a zipper and jumping out of your pocket though? Dang chinese lights.

 

[alpinestars69]

ok here is my 2 cents worth.

the brand "ultra fire" i had one & it was junk so i returned it the light.
i like my archon a lot. in fact going to buy another of there light but this is what i have & for the money it is not bad at all. it is very very bright & battery is good.

Shop for Best ARCHON DH30 3000LM Canister Diving U2 LED Headlamp with Water Resistant Deepness 100 m Underwater at US$227.36 Now

 

[dawindmill]

I bought chineese waterproof housing for my Sony camera and till now work great.But t was not cheap about 130 USD. I tryed till 20 meters and camera was dry.Think if you buye some little more expensive torch it work good.

Sent from my Lenovo K900 using Tapatalk

+1 totally agree with you

 

[Peter69_56]

The O rings are usually the problem as they appear to use silicone O rings rather than Nitrile and are far too soft so catch when screwing the cap on damaging them. I replaced all my silicon O rings with nitrile (you have to play with the sizes a little as the nitrile are not as compressible as silicon so a smaller O ring same diameter means it stretches a bit and fits. Lube them and when you get to where the cap is touching the O ring, push the cap forward a little and then screw, in this way it captures the whole O ring and doesn't damage it.

 

[kelemvor]

I got a great deal more interested in these when I started planning a DIY light that puts out quite a bit more light than what I can find.

I started researching the emitters themselves. Particularly the 100w LED arrays (should produce in the neighborhood of 8000 lumens). Unfortunately, I stumbled onto a few videos that are basically very bad news for my project. If you're buying cheap high power LED lights, these videos may be of interest to you:

https://youtu.be/NjKgPLeJ79Q

https://youtu.be/_wR_mFWeI6Y

I don't know the guy who made the videos, he's just some electronics guy with a youtube account and a funny accent.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no good way to know in advance if you're getting a good LED or a crap one. I think it's safe to assume that cheap high output lights aren't using high quality parts. However, the inverse is not true. Expensive lights aren't necessarily using good LED's. It's so common The only way to know for sure is connect the LED to a variable current limited driver and test for yourself. Obviously that's beyond the capabilities of most divers.


I haven't found a solution, but it was a real eye opener for me. I'm actually kind of bummed about it.

 

[miketsp]

Here's the thing with ANY dive light for serious use. DISASSEMBLE, inspect o rings, lubricate, tighten all nuts/bolts/screws and then carefully reassemble BEFORE use. I have found most mass produced lights are misassembled and therefore run the risk of leaking.

However, I have found that if you anticipate this and do the requisite pre-dive breakdown and rebuild they work just fine.

+1

I have bought various types of cheap lights (all <30USD) direct from China (site DX) and practically all were good designs flawed by poor assembly.
I learned very quickly that a complete dis-assembly, inspection and careful re-assembly with lubrication worked wonders. It's common to find completely dry or even missing o-rings.

 

[spoolin01]

I got a great deal more interested in these when I started planning a DIY light that puts out quite a bit more light than what I can find.

I started researching the emitters themselves. Particularly the 100w LED arrays (should produce in the neighborhood of 8000 lumens). Unfortunately, I stumbled onto a few videos that are basically very bad news for my project. If you're buying cheap high power LED lights, these videos may be of interest to you:

https://youtu.be/NjKgPLeJ79Q

https://youtu.be/_wR_mFWeI6Y

I don't know the guy who made the videos, he's just some electronics guy with a youtube account and a funny accent.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no good way to know in advance if you're getting a good LED or a crap one. I think it's safe to assume that cheap high output lights aren't using high quality parts. However, the inverse is not true. Expensive lights aren't necessarily using good LED's. It's so common The only way to know for sure is connect the LED to a variable current limited driver and test for yourself. Obviously that's beyond the capabilities of most divers.


I haven't found a solution, but it was a real eye opener for me. I'm actually kind of bummed about it.

Cool videos, liked the guy's accent even if I couldn't understand some of what he said. Are you working on a super dive light?

The dive light manufacturers mostly seem to use Cree emitters, which must impose some kind of good quality control benefit on the product. With only one or three emitters, a really bad one or bad driver should be easy to spot. I've had over a dozen single emitter Cree lights or modules bought from DX or china-bay and have not had any that were atypical in either current consumption or light output.

I like the idea of the DIY superlight though, especially if you're talking battery-driven. Tell us more!

+1

I have bought various types of cheap lights (all <30USD) direct from China (site DX) and practically all were good designs flawed by poor assembly.
I learned very quickly that a complete dis-assembly, inspection and careful re-assembly with lubrication worked wonders. It's common to find completely dry or even missing o-rings.

This is my experience as well. The components and fabrication are fine, even very good - maybe the o-rings can be cheap - but the assembly QC is lacking.

 

[the_dragon_no1]

Here's the thing with ANY dive light for serious use. DISASSEMBLE, inspect o rings, lubricate, tighten all nuts/bolts/screws and then carefully reassemble BEFORE use. I have found most mass produced lights are misassembled and therefore run the risk of leaking.

However, I have found that if you anticipate this and do the requisite pre-dive breakdown and rebuild they work just fine.

Most cheap china light you can't disassemble all the way due to the fact that they are "glued" together..

---------- Post added November 25th, 2015 at 01:21 AM ----------

Lousy o-rings are usually the culprit with light floodings. Chinese lights sometimes have wimpy o-rings with insufficient lubrication. I have a pair of Archon video lights in which I replaced the original o-rings with beefier ones and lubed them properly. They've been on multiple dives to as far down as 100 ft no problems.

My archon video light has around 200 dives on orginale orings. Been down to 40+ meters several times aswell. No problems. Clean and lube them regularly is key