What did you mod today?

Well, i had been looking forward to this light arriving form the US for a few weeks now.
I had always wanted a Foursevens Mini ML in titanium and they are exceptionally hard to find now.

Really love the form, colour, knurling & material.
Unfortunately i was not on form when doing this mod… :laughing:

A brief summary of the build from start to finish…

First i had to to pick it up from the post office - $20 import tax on a $40 flashlight. Good start…

Opened the light up - aluminium pill :weary:

Didn’t sand down triple MCPCB enough, caught in flashlight head, ripped wires out from board when tightening.
Fixed that but had forgot to camfer the top edge of board - shorts on head again.

Overtightened this time rebuilding - ripped negative wire from soldered in driver again.

Rebuilt and tested, single mode direct drive - driver short.

Remove everything again, smooth down board and reflow - damage one emitter dome.
Another reflow.

Miscalculated space required for tail switch - everything out again and sanded down pill another 2mm which means i can’t use the 17mm LD3 driver and need to use a MTN 15mm instead with made brass retaining ring.

Gets the head all together very carefully, all works but - hair under glass…

Onto the tail, this should be easier, nope - drill hole off centre, out with the mini hand files.
After a while i thought i’ll just use the dremmel to finish off - slips and marks the nice bead blasted satin finish on the tail with the chuck.

Epoxied in tail switch and forgot to check level was below switch contact - out with the dremmel again…

Ok, time for tritium vial installation in lanyard hole - no need to even say what happened to the first one…

I’ve never had so many problems with a build before, it was nearly launched out the window a few times i’ll tell ya :laughing:

Apart from all that i got it finished eventually and this mini pocket rocket is great with the tail switch :slight_smile:

Triple Nichia 219c on Noctigon
15mm MTN FET +1 driver
Press fit copper core heatsink
Reverse omten clicky switch
Green 6mm x 1.5mm tritium vial
8A start up current from AWT 16340

I’m sure glad i didn’t try to reflow my newly arrived Meteor today…

Murphy’s law :confounded: … but you’ve made it! :+1:

Another gem from CRX’s factory !
Was it a twisty that you converted to clicky once again ?

Yeah, now it can be both if desired, like the others :sunglasses:

Nice one on the 4Sevens, sounds like you had one of my days! lol

I rebuilt the LuckySun F3X Triple yesterday. Stock it was making 1025 lumens from it’s 3 XM-L emitters at 2.54A draw from the tail of a 26650.

Made a new Copper pill for it, used 3x16mm Noctigons with XP-L W2 1D emitters. Built a new A17DD S08 driver with 7 levels. Had to fit the extension tube to the head for a primary tube (original primary is ugly) threaded the pill all the way through so I had to recut threads in the head, matching them was really fun, inset the new Cu pill about 5mm deeper to allow for the thicker Cu shelf on the pill. Cut a new triple reflector with a more pleasing to me style, got everything assembled, nothing.

Touched the wires on the Noctigons with a cell and they fire up just fine. Nothing from the driver. Ugh. Pulled it this morning and checked it again outside the light, wonky. Tried re-flowing it again and it works! I’d used just a wee bit lower heat than necessary, didn’t get everything connected solidly.

Not surprisingly the output is lower than I might have thought. I used 22ga wires to fit under the triple reflector and didn’t bypass the tail spring intentionally. On a fresh charged Efest 26650 3500mAh cell it makes…

0.05A for 21.44 Lumens
0.14A for 54.51
0.24A for 123.165
0.67A for 336.375
1.82A for 979.8
3.09A for 1490.4
6.82A for 2632.35

Worthy to note that when I modifed power from the original driver to the original XM-L’s, it was doing 6.10A and making 1825.05 lumens. So the XP-L W2 1D’s are certainly making a difference at the amperage involved.

Nice build, Dale! That reflector is a perfect fit, you mention you ‘cut it’, I suppose you’re not saying you made it from scratch?

How is the beam?

@CRX: I have always liked 4sevens lights, that triple looks sweet! .
I feel a familiar pain with everything you mentioned going wrong.

I cut the triple reflector to fit. Several dimensions kept it from fitting into the head of this F3X so I carved it until it went in. There was a lip at the top edge that also had to come off, standing proud of the reflective flats. Cutting this off let the aluminum shavings rub on the top flats and scratch em up, but thankfully they stayed out of the reflector cups.

I bought a bunch of flashlight kit from Justin (Old-Lumens) and this triple reflector was in the stuff. As such, I haven’t a clue where it came from.

Beam is nice, maybe a bit smaller hot spot than the factory one, but I really like how the cups are evenly cut, the emitters are on a wider radius than the original. Plus, the base of each reflector cup has a little protrusion, they left about 3mm clearance on the bottom where the OEM was flat and really tough to mod without an mcpcb that fit all 3 emitters.

I just came in from doing a little fine tuning. I beveled the bottom edge of the reflector so I can try to use teflon 20ga on the negative leads around the outer perimeter (all the Noctigons have the positive contacts at the center for a piece of copper plate to lay on them, the positive lead comes through the plate and solders on top). I also tweaked the areas that were holding the reflector up a little high, now I’ve gotten rid of a ring caused by the emitters not quite being inside the reflector enough. Now I can see the 4 flat sides on the XP-L’s, reflected in the cups. :wink:

Also cut down the brass retaining ring on the Cu pill above the driver so the big contact on the 26650 has less chance of touching. I’m using an insulator cut from a sheet of stencil material, but still, it has more play now and is surely safer. While I was at it, I put a spring bypass in at the tail.

This thing had a fixed distance convex lens and cold white circle spot for a beam.

replaced with S2 lens and OP reflector swapped 20mm board with unknown XP pull that’s warmer tint. Driver is integrated on the board running under the electric lighter. Has micro usb charge port and can be used as a USB power bank. It’s a flashlight, powerbank and lighter.
Aluminum housing was Gold anno but aI couldn’t stand it. Stripped and polished now. Installed a fully charged pulled 18650 and tried the onboard charger, led went green drawing no current. Hope it actually charges to 4.2V, no more.

Maybe y’all have heard me talk about the LiNiMnCo cell from Powerizer in the past, I got Tom E on them and he loved em, both of us wish we’d bought more while they were available… they’ve been discontinued for a couple of years. Anyway, I got the Efest 3500mAh cell charged back up and tested the F3X again, this time I got 7.06A for 2701.35 lumens, better with the reflector down onto the emitters, but still relatively low.

So I charged up one of my last remaining LiNiMnCo cells from Powerizer (Battery Space, but like I said, they no gottee). With this particular cell, the F3X pulls 9.95A and makes 3256.8 lumens. A 555 lumen increase by swapping cells! I do believe I’ll take it! :slight_smile:

I don’t usually buy lights I can’t mod easily as I don’t have a huge need for them, and really only enjoy modding and building them. That said, I did get a Lumintop tool TI recently because I couldn’t resist the incredible price that gearbest was selling them for. I knew the head was glued and the e-switch, according to Rey, wasn’t going to handle a linear driver swap. I thought I could live with the MLH mode order, but quickly realized it just wasn’t for me.

I cracked open an Astrolux A01 and started doing some measuring. It’s a tight fit as the A01 uses a 2 board stack for the driver, and the tool uses a single board. The driver diameter of the tool is also much smaller than the A01. It look some time with a file, but I’m very happy with the result. I now have a Tool TI with the mode order I wanted and a brilliant moonlight level.

My girlfriend went out tonight and left me at home alone :frowning:

so i decided to mod cheap P60 host with quad Nichia 219C :smiley:





with orange illuminated tail switch

Got most of the work on the giveaway light & diffuser done

.

Looks awesome CRX!!! :+1: :+1: :+1:

I’m surprized by seeing the difuser going all the way down! :exclamation:

Thanks, yeah i’m just experimenting, i thought it would be cool if i can basically fit the whole light in the diffuser and have it lit up that way for compactness.
Still working on it. :wink:

If I don’t win it :disappointed: in your 1000 posts GAW, please consider if you’d be willing to make me a similar one. I really appreciate the unique personality of DIY handmade flashlights (& stuff in general) and love brass/copper (and wood) as material.

That is a very nice compliment, thank you, i will keep that in mind :+1:

Was about to finish a 3up XP-E2 Convoy S3, but my cheap china-programmer refused to work…

Connection test gives me : “could not find USB device with vid=0x16c0 pid=0x5dc vendor=‘www.fischl.de’ product=‘USBasp’ ”

It’s strange because I didn’t change anything. Had it working on Windows 10 some days ago. Tried two different drivers, both with the above result… Don’t know if I need a new programmer or if it’s a software/driver related problem. :frowning:

I get that from time to time, usually just unplugging/replugging the usb programmer fixes it for me.

I have been tweaking my light canon, and I’m ALMOST at 1.5Mcd!!!
Sooo close… 61000 lux at 4.9m = 1.46Mcd…
I will post pics when I get to the magical 1.5!