Dorcy LED Flashlights

iubigred007

iubigred007

Joined
Jul 23, 2004
Messages
203
hello all,

I just bought a small 1 AAA Dorcy LED light from wal-mart. love this thing, carry it everyday, very small and compact. have used it a lot recently and the battery is still going strong. appears to be well made, but foreign made (Taiwan).

based on the light above; I bought a Dorcy 3 AAA 1-Watt LED... and as the smaller one was, this was awesome! click once for on, and click again for pulse. do not know what the pulse would be good for yet, but I'm sure I will find out. again, this light was just as the small Dorcy... well built, and compact, and has an awesome stream of pure white-blue LED light... very bright! I keep this 1-Watt beside the bed with the Beretta :) but again, foreign made (Taiwan)

just thought I would let everyone know my findings.

iubigred007
 
iubigred007 said:
hello all,

I just bought a small 1 AAA Dorcy LED light from wal-mart. love this thing, carry it everyday, very small and compact. have used it a lot recently and the battery is still going strong. appears to be well made, but foreign made (Taiwan).

based on the light above; I bought a Dorcy 3 AAA 1-Watt LED... and as the smaller one was, this was awesome! click once for on, and click again for pulse. do not know what the pulse would be good for yet, but I'm sure I will find out. again, this light was just as the small Dorcy... well built, and compact, and has an awesome stream of pure white-blue LED light... very bright! I keep this 1-Watt beside the bed with the Beretta :) but again, foreign made (Taiwan)

just thought I would let everyone know my findings.

iubigred007
Click to expand...

The new Dorcy's are a good value for the price. They are not waterproof, and the anodizing, circuitry and toughness are not like a surefire or an ARC. They should be giving MAGLITES a run for their money though!!

I have both the lights you speak of and they are great!
(The 1 AAA lasts about 3-4 hours pretty bright, and the
3 AAA 1 Watt is very bright for 1.5 hours, decreases to med/bright and is still useable after 5+ hours)
 
Can you solder? If you can you should swap out the LED in the AAA for a better one. The stock one is a POS. The white LEDs and cascade surplus have very good tint and will be noticably brighter.
 
The OEM one isn't even a Nichia. Get a strap wrench and remove the head. Coil side is positive
 
GarageBoy said:
The OEM one isn't even a Nichia. Get a strap wrench and remove the head. Coil side is positive
Click to expand...
Which coil? The cathode of the led should be soldered to the side of the board with the inductor. The spring coil is the positive contact to the battery and the tinned edges that contact the body are the negative battery contacts
 
I thought the dorcy circuit was pretty good, at least good enough to use as a base in a lot of flashlight mods. .
 
Dorcy makes decent flashlights for the money. They're not in the same class as Surefire lights, but Dorcy isn't out to compete with them anyway. They did make a bold move in becoming one of the first mass produced flashlight manufacturers to put out LED flashlights to the general public.

A WORD OF CAUTION on the Dorcy 3AAA 1watt Luxeon flashlight.

41-4260%20bulk%202.jpg


The design has a major flaw as far as shock resistance is concerned. It has been discovered that they turn off upon sudden impact. I'm not talking about a drop of 10-20 feet either. Just turn on the flashlight and strike the back of the flashlight against the palm of your hand and you'll see what I mean.

One of the guys on CPF (CandlePowerForums) noticed it when he dropped his Dorcy on the carpet from about 3 feet accidentally and thought his unit was defective. I tested my Dorcy 3AAA 1-watt flashlight and found that they do turn off on impact. The first test was to turn the light on and strike the back of the flashlight on the palm of my hand. It turned off. The second test was a bit more extreme. I flung my flashlight across the dining room and it hit the hardwood floor. As I suspected, it turned off but the unit was undamaged. I also called my brother-in-law (who also owns one) and asked him to turn the light on and strike it on the palm of his hand and his Dorcy did the same thing. It appears that the contact on the battery cartridge (which connects to the switch) is a small weak piston that is too sensitive to shock. It's a design flaw that is yet to be addressed by Dorcy. Other than that, the flashlight does produce a nice white beam, albeit with that annoying "strobe" feature.
 
Wow -- I tried it on mine and it doesn't need much of a whack at all! I think I'll start turning it off that way; it's easier than pushing the button twice to get past the blink mode.

I think if you wanted to fix that you could put a stronger spring in there without too much trouble. It has to be weaker than the spring in the tailcap, though, or you'll end up with no ground contact.
 
You know, I never thought that. You could bypass the strobe mode by tapping the light on the back to shut it off. Good call. ;)

You're right though. A stronger spring would remedy the issue. One of the guys on CPF actually placed 2 pennies on the end of the battery cartridge and it worked for him.
 
Dorcy flashlight are super for the money. For under 6 bucks you can pick up the single AAA light, and it'll take batteries that won't run your remote control anymore and make them useful again. .
 
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