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

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

Could probably just melt a bunch of solder onto that crescent to raise it slightly and make better contact.

Yeh, had a bit of a “duuuuuh” moment there. :smiley:

Not sure what happened but my emitter no longer works. All I did was file down the emitter base (it’s slightly taller than the stock one), assemble the light, and turn it on - nothing. Driver works because a double-click turns the switch red. Emitter didn’t light with meter probes on diode check but then I knocked the dome off anyway. Oh well, everything I’ve been touching lately has been turning to crap anyway. Guess I’ll give it one more shot. (My spare XP-G3’s are reserved for my 2nd BT40S that I’ve also been destroying emitters on.)

-Garry

Bugger. Good luck for the repair.

Bummer, your mods on page one are pretty cool. It appears you did some emitter trace work. When I did the XM-L2 mod, I had a couple issues with shorts. Had to reflow a couple times to fix. The second time was fixed by removing excess solder. You appear to have a good amount of solder under that emitter. Check to make sure you don't have continuity between the center thermal pad and the LED power tabs on each side of it. A good way to remove the excess solder is to heat up the emitter until it "floats" than slide a small piece of solder wick up against the emitter so that is slides just enough for the solder wick to touch the MCPCB pads. The solder wick should draw out the excess solder. I find putting a drop of flux on the solder wick helps greatly.

Like you, I had to reflow from the top side. Didn't want to melt any plastic inside the light with my heat gun.

Swapping in the XML requires a good amount of surgery. Check out Post 6 if you decide you want to go that route.

Well the 2nd emitter was working for a little while (was being the key word). Apparently I burned it up as it only dimly lights up now even if I connect a li-ion cell directly across the pads (a mostly discharged cell to test). I’m guessing the center pad didn’t connect and so it burned right up.

And now after screwing around with it in the body, the end board with the switch has broken away from the main board and I don’t know that I can even fix that.

So I guess I’ll try a heat gun to reflow on this board now that I don’t have much to lose. Can I use a heat gun blowing directly on the emitter dome? I’ve only ever used a heat gun from below.

At least I have the 2nd headlamp with its craptastic Chinese cool white emitter.

-Garry