Convoy L2/L6 modding thread

MRsDNF already built a large one with air cooling holes through the finned pill, the next step would be to install a small MCU controlled fan and link it to the temperature. With a lot of the drivers now going to ATTiny25 and ATTiny85, the storage space is there for programming fan controls I would think, so yeah, just a matter of time…

I took off both R082 resistors and put a small piece of wire across the pads. The light still only hits ~5.25A on turbo. I have myself convinced that bridging the pads should give me all the amps the FX30 has to offer. What am I missing?

What cells are you using? Bridging the pads should give you 9A+ with good cells.

Unprotected Keeppower 5200mAh fresh off the charger.

The bridge isnt good/ the springs are loose/ the spring/battery contact isnt good/ the driver ground isnt good/your MM isnt accurate or your MM cables arent thick enough….so many reasons…

Like TA said: arround 9 amps, pay attention that the driver could mallfunction with this mod( i have several friedalready) especialy on a long term base

I’ve reflowed the bridge a few times, so I feel confident it’s good. The bridge wire is a solid piece of 22AWG. I’m measuring current using a clamp with a 3” piece of 16AWG between battery and tube edge.

Thanks for the heads up on how aggressive the bridge is. I plan to swap the driver out soon anyway, so I’ll probably just abandon this quest for now and focus on that. I want to move to FET based and Narsil for ramping.

Has anyone here noticed that the stock L6 reflector seems to press down on the red and black wire insulation more than it presses down on the centering ring?

I can remove my centering ring and the reflector won’t go down any farther.

I’ve got an smo reflector now and I’m trying to think of a way to get it lower to improve the focus. Some have swapped to wires with thinner insulation, but why not just cut some small holes in the reflector base to clear the wire and solder blob. Then I can drop the reflector a lot more to see if it helps the focus.

The reflector shoulders and bottoms out on the head I.D. Even shimming the mcpcb board up with a stripped board, the leads/reflector bottom interferes. Relieving or clearing the base of the reflector has to be done, use painters tape to cover both emitter hole and reflector top to keep most of the crap out, clear the interference by filing, sanding or machining, its alot of work, be careful don’t break thru into the reflector surface.

I machine the head to accept a 32mm Noctigon (XP/XHP35 build) or 26mm Maxtoch (XHP70/50 build)

Or cut/ machine the bottom out of the reflector out, and shim the mcpcb to focus…

The stock OP reflector measure 2.6mm clearance between centering ring and reflector base.

In this example, did you change to some different screws to apply downward pressure on the MCPCB since the reflector is no longer pushing it down?

Correct. Drilled and tapped the solid aluminum press fit pill for 2mm flat head screws, the pill was pocketed to keep the mcpcb board on center.

Well, I was wrong. With no centering ring it does drop down a tiny bit and I can see the focus tighten up.

I’m slowly learning. :slight_smile:

I think your over thinking things. There are already tiny fans with temp probes built in that you just feed power to. They will come on at a low level when the probes reach a certain temp and speed up as the temp rises. They are used in computers.

I haven’t seen any tiny enough for flashlight use, but I’m sure they can be built or are already out there somewhere.

In a way, the emitter and mcpcb are just like a CPU. Current flashlight designs have given us these awesome emitters/cpus, but we are still relying on big old solid chunks of aluminum to absorb the heat. That only works for a short time. You can’t cool a computer with that. It’s like we’re still in the stone age.

You gotta have active cooling or maybe use heatpipe technology like laptops use if you wanna run it for a long time. Yeah, now we’re talking.

Here’s some simple mods I did to my L6.

I cut the bottom out of the SMO reflector and fabbed some very thin copper shims to play with the emmiter to reflector distance. I also swapped to new, longer screws to clamp down the emitter for good heat transfer.

I also wanted to share some info on this new FX-30 driver I got from Kaidomain. Not the Convoy version, the original.

This has a unique interface not described on the website. The tail switch puts it into standby and the side switch only has 3 brightness levels plus a strobe. You can turn the light on and off from the side switch. Very odd. I made a quick video on YouTube showing how it works and went into more details on it.

Same here… :smiley:

Might work for my F13, tnx!

(Was going to shave down the ring a bit to try to tighten up the focus, but it’s hard to unshave a ring.)

Be sure to use some tape to keep things insulated.

Buy a couple new rings, no worries.:slight_smile:

I got a bunch of PETE insulating discs for that, but they add their own thickness. Ah, these: https://www.fasttech.com/p/1138102 .

Had a bunch of paper insulators too, but no idea where they disappeared to. :stuck_out_tongue: Those would probably be a bit thinner, and more compressible, too.

One word: ewww.

Lemon-yellow in/around the hotspot, angry blue in the spill. Pulling it out more or less “blends” it together.

Back to the stock spacer…

Jason, I might overbuild something but rarely ever think enough to be accused of over-thinking. :wink:

I was cutting out the reflector like that on Courui D01’s (The Fathead) several years ago. But yeah, whatever it takes. Like Kawiboy I like to machine the emitter shelf to take a 26 or 32mm mcpcb in the L6, moving the contact pads much further out and making things easier. Or using the cut off tabs from a large Omten switch to move the connection outside the mcpcb and thus allow the extra room for the reflector by not having that wire there. Kapton tape is your friend. :slight_smile: