Tear Down (and upcoming mod) - Boruit RJ-02 Headlight (Pic Heavy)

Thanks for the pics, info, and inspiration.
Ashamed to say that after probably 100 emitter swaps I’ve never used the hot air attachment on my butane torch, used it tonight and it worked perfectly! I normally just heat the board up from underneath with corded soldering iron. I used your method of slightly pulling away the board, (wedged it 1/8” out with a shim).
To get the most out of those heat sink fins around the optics I’m gonna try to squeeze some thermal paste onto the board under the circular area of contact around the emitter.

It’s a pity the IR mode doesn’t echo the last used level but that won’t ruin the feature for me.
At work my hands are often covered in coolant, oil, and filth which makes me hesitant to turn on/off headlamps, this will be great when working on broken machines and such. ON/OFF with a wave of my hand!
It’s a harsh environment for nice electronics so I won’t feel so bad if this light eventually succumbs to the torture, at this price I ordered a spare.
Thanks again!

Thank you for the kind words and welcome to BLF bansuri. You're talented. I tried to use a butane torch to reflow once. It wasn't pretty. I will need to google the hot air attachment you mentioned.

I like the lamp for the same reason. My favorite for doing dirty work like automotive repairs, etc. Congrats on the successful mod. What emitter did you swap in?

I had a neutral XP-Something that was pulled from something else.
Had to really dial the heat back on the torch, it will bubble the dome. Did a test on a board with a different emitter to get a feel for it. Doesn’t take much.
Aimed the heat off to the side but not at the light body. I’ve never really used it but now I can’t wait to do it again! May squeeze the opening shut slightly to allow for more precise application of heat.
It’s just a little butane soldering iron with torch and heat attachments, got off ebay second-hand.
I used the 70-01-52 attachment in the pic. I had also previously made an internal adjustment on the adjustable gas control to allow it to reach lower temps. If you remember the old Bic lighters that had an adjustable flame, it has a lever that rotates to reduce the flame like they had.
Squeezed in a little thermal paste around the circular contact point around the emitter, put some DCfix tape on the lens and it’s ready for work.

i’m well into the “long range” test of this headlamp? easily one of my favorite lights.

i was afraid to really try to get it open, cos until i get a spare? i do NOT wanna risk hurting one of my favorites.

i was at first put off slightly by the fact the on/off IR is only “hi mode”? But, after using it a few days… i realized that just like you reported its hard to “catch” the absolute lowest setting on ramping? its equally impossible to try to catch the HIGHEST output either…

so… IR on/off is my best way to know i am using “max” if i want to see across the yard…

you get pretty used to “catching” the LO-est mode, or close enough it’ll run forever… i have used it for HOURS on LO mode, and its great.

i think i am in the “camp” of just wanting to swap emitters. maybe a HAIR higher output? but… its no deal breaker… its actually useful power as it is. This light is an actual useful TOOL for me, and i use it a lot. Its not a TOY i want to white wall hunt and show off the 10 minute run time, lol… I mean, i just dont need this thing to eat an apple and sh!t a fruit salad, I just need it to “be a light” for me.

starting to think a NICHIA hi-cri maybe makes sense… raw power is not needed for my applications. If i want THAT, i would buy one of the many “star wars” head lights out there, with multiple battery packs and multiple emitter heads, lol, and make a “high power toy” out of that…

Hi sedstar,

Swapping in a good XPL should about double your lumens over the stock generic Chinese emitter. It will also make the lamp run cooler due to higher efficiency. It will change your beam pattern though. The stock emitter is large and gives a nice floody smooth beam. The XPL is smaller and will narrow and take some of the smoothness out of the beam. I actually bought another headlamp that I keep stock for the floodier (and nice neutral tint) beam. I use the modded lamp for moving around outside.

Nice info. I have a couple butane solder irons that are really great for when I need to work out in the rain or when I just don’t want to bother running an extension cord to out to where I’m working on something. I think I will order one of those hot air attachments and mod of of my butane irons to run lower like you mention. Thank you for learning me some stuff today. :slight_smile:

Received 2 of these lights. Pretty nice for the price point. Output was a nice crisp cool white on both (thought someone posted they were neutral white). Stock output measures 1.25A on one, 1.29A on the other but the amps continue to slowly rise. Rear cap on one came off without tools easily, the other took some negotiating with a flat tip screwdriver.

Modded one to a 4000k XP-G3 emitter. Wasn’t easy to change out the emitter with a soldering iron! Destroyed the original getting it off and struggled to get the new one seated properly without the pads shorted underneath. TIP - scrape the traces wider & longer so you have a location to apply the iron. I tried from below, but couldn’t get solder to melt on top; finally just worked from the top (i.e. the front).

I also tested using a 30x60 elliptical optic from LEDDNA which looks like it’s going to work nicely. I had to trim feet off the optic and I’m going to need to watch screwing the bezel on pushing the emitter board away. I’ve not reassembled yet. I think this may replace my mule headlamp as my goto headlamp! And since I still have one in stock form I may take lumen measurements on before & after.

-Garry

Sounds like a nice mod gb. Any chance of some before and after night shots? :slight_smile:

Maybe. Depends on if I feel like it :slight_smile: . Being a floody headlamp there isn’t a lot to showoff in beamshots.

I might post some pics of the mod too.

-Garry

Think you were the one who pointed me at it. Now got 4… or is it 6? Gave a couple away, really handy!

Seems to be a linear ramping, not logarithmic. So big changes at its brightest look like little to no change to the eye. Conversely, small changes at the low end look rather huge (and fast!), so yeah, it’s hard to catch it at its lowest. Takes me a few ramps up’n’down to get close.

When we got the last big batch o’ snow, it was only a few inches up front, it seemed, but I got a big drift blown right up against the back door almost a foot high, which quickly turned to ice. Door opens outward, so it was completely unopenable. Gates to the backyard were similarly frozen in place, so had to go out the side door, sliiiiiide down the ice, chip away the ice on the stairs to get up the patio, slide on top of the igloo that formed on the patio, then chop away at the igloo to be able to open the door.

At night.

So even on its near-lowest setting, the good ol’ Boruit let me hack away at the ice for the better part of an hour with both hands, with plenty of light even on low, and I was in no danger of even remotely running low on juice even though I’ve been using it around the house forever on pretty much its first and only charge.

Funny thing is, I’m running an LG pull from an almost unused power-pack (digital display went wonky, so of course cracked it open to salvage the innards), so it’s not even a panny-B or 30Q or anything fancy.

XM-L2, then. Same chip inside as the XP-L, only a wider area.

Check first to make sure it fits the TIR.

What about XP-G3’s? Better choice than an XP-L, neatly as good a choice as an XP-L2, efficient, and cheaper than XM-L2’s and XP-L2’s.

-Garry

Don’t have any, and never tried ’em, so can’t really say.

Imagine they’re not gonna be overstressed if a clone chinatastic LED is in there right now, so would probably be safe to say it’d be just fine.

Pound for pound, though, the smaller G chip would have a much higher current density compared to an L chip, so efficiency would be that much less at a given current. Doubt it’d even be all that noticeable, though, even if the numbers say 20% less efficient.

I’ve got no real complaints running an even smaller E chip (XP-E2) in a C8, so a G should be just fine.

Actually, I’m just looking at my un-torn-down light, and it looks like a regular XM-L2 anyway, unless it’s a pretty good clone. Me, I’d leave it as-is, as I’m happy with it as-is.

I’m only looking at mine through the TIR, so looked kinda like a regular XM-L2.

Is it really that crappy?

What holds in the bezel/TIR? Friction-fit? Glue?

The bezel simply screws against the optic. The optic does have a ledge that fits into the bezel. No glue is used at all (thank goodness). It’s kinda tough to screw & unscrew the bezel just because it’s so small and against the rest of the body.

-Garry

Hmm, will give it a try, tnx!

Few pics of mine. Compared to ImA’s, I see my Li-Ion charging IC is a 57B0, but it should be the same as the 57B1 he shows. My FET is an A2sHB (which I’ve run across before and have replaced with an AO9 IIRC) and is in a different location. My board has slightly different labeling, and layout but I believe it’s very similar. Oh, I don’t know if ImA’s had it, but mine has a half-circle copper ring that was between the end board (with power switch) and the end cap I guess to help with electrical contact? I decided to solder it to the board so it wasn’t just floating around. Sorry, I didn’t get a good picture of this piece. EDIT - added new pic at end.

Charging ic board:

Main board:

XP-G3 Mounted:

Showing XP-G3 sitting up off the pcb (best I could do, but it’s working):

Two optics, stock on left, 30x60 elliptical on the right:

Partially Disassembled (showing bezel unscrewed):

EDIT - Pic of copper piece I soldered to the board:

-Garry

Tried it, comes off nice and easily. I’m quite surprised. Maybe I’m thinking of the non-switch endcap? Recall someone had to twist the crap out of it to get it off.

Anyway, now youse got me interested in swapping emitters on that beastie… hopefully without letting the SMDs on the opposite side drop off like bugsprayed flies.

Ooh! That means I can swap in pretty much any 20mm TIR that I want to. Got everything from 90° to 5° inclusive. :smiley:

Thanks for the pics gb. I have had lots of these headlamps with only two being faulty. I assumed it was a crook earth as the light output flickered up and down slightly. Pulling it apart I assumed it was a bad earth at pressed in end cap. Put it all back together but no go. I wonder if the copper was added to fix this sort of problem as mine never had this piece in there.

The lamp is on flashsale at GB for $8 again. And you could try to use points as well.
Edit: $5,61 with points

Non-switch end cap? You mean the end with the switch, right? That’s the one that’s tough to get off (on some samples at least).

Yeah, like I said, on one of my units the end cap (switch one) came off just pulling/twisting with my hand, the other took some brute force with a screwdriver. You can wedge a flat tip as a lever against the front body in two places, but for the backside you need to just drive it off like your using a chisel. What I did was hold the blade of the screwdriver in position against the inside edge of the cap (like you would position a chisel) and then smack the handle of the screwdriver against my workbench (holding the light in place against the screwdriver blade as I did so). Hope this makes sense; a picture would be worth a thousand words here! I at first tried wrapping a thick rubber band around the cap and twisting with pliers over the rubber band, but that just marred up the aluminum.

-Garry