Looking to modify a commercial LED light. Anyone have experience pushing LED chips?

[fastline]

I have a milwaukee spot/flood light that has LEDs on the face for flood, and a single chip and optic for the spot. The spot just sucks! Like I am embarrassed for them. They claim 700yd range and I would say useless at 500ft. They do have a seriously robust cast Aluminum heat sink assy. Similar to Makita so I am sure it all comes out of the same sweat shop.

For a quick reference, I put jumpers between battery and light and in spot mode, it does .6A at 19V, which is 11.4W. That is surprising! I don't know what the LED itself is getting but I have a pocket flashlight that does half of that and will reach further!

I am curious where you guys might go with this? I paid good money for this turd but I use it a lot in flood mode....mostly because spot is worthless, and I really need a good spot light. My hope was to cover this base within my M18 battery tool lineup. I am not worried about running the spot for days, I want 2hrs of serious light. The question is how hard can I push a chip and which one? I think cooling is far better than any normal flashlight but I know Milwaukee put a limited lifetime warranty on the LEDs.

 

[gophert]

I would look for a lens (or confirm that the unit is not missing a lens to focus the LED into a spot. It is amazing what a collimating lens can do in terms of range. Lenses are not an easy solution to mount perfectly and keep in position. Adding more LED power is not trivial.

Finally, your expectation that "casts light up to 700 yards" to mean, "illuminates a work area to a satisfactory level at 700 yds" is your fault, not their fault. Marketing is responsible for the ad copy and packaging text for a reason. If you used that instead of a Datasheet - the blame in on your lap. If their light sensor was more sensitive, they would have said, "casts light up to the moon".
From Milwaukee lamp advertisement....

• Powerful beam casts light up to 700 yds

 

[Visitor]

Look for BigClive on YouTube. He has done many teardowns and modifications on LED lights of all types.

 

[fastline]

I have things torn down. It is running at 10W. I won't be able to alter that without board tuning so my hope is I can find a different chip with outstanding lm/W efficiency? I know the chip is not a Cree but believe it is a 3030 but not sure if that is measured on the small chip edge to edge or the actual LED area?