I really like the Nitecore Tube. I have bought more then 10 and sold them or gave them away. I have already tried to do the resistermod and adding some copper to the back of the LED as heatsink.
with those mods its really a great keychainlight for the money!
But I have always wanted it to be a little more powerfull. (Who doesn’t??).
So the idea was to swap the LED. my theory being; if i change it for a more efficient LED i get more light for the same power input.
I had some XM-L2’s on hand from swaps and it looked like the perfect candidate. not so small to solder to and not to big to fit.
I knew that doing this swap would result in a mule with a wide spread beam and no throw. But being a keychainlight, long range lighting isn’t really the use case IMO.
Let the party begin! the components, A XM-L2, a small copper strip as “cooling” and ofc the Tube.
for those who have not seen the insides of the Tube. A lot of tiny components! Get your finest solderingtip if you want to work on this light.
A close up of the board. the otherside only contains the switch.
while unsoldering the LED the pad came off.
this caused a big issue. there where no points to attach the XM-L to except a small hole that goes to the backside of the board.
Soldering the XM-L2 to the copper strip wa really easy.
I accidentally dedomed the LED when it was hot. but everything still works. so no worries.
I had to cut the copper strip because it was a little to big. Not really what i wanted because i like my LEDs cool. but there isnt a lot of current flowing into it so it should be fine.
Fast forward 3 hours; i did a lot of troubleshooting and broke a second Tube, But the mod was finally done.
There was this weird glitch where when I connected the XML directly to the output and i wanted to turn the light on it would flash very briefly. But when i would hold the switch u would turn on and act like it was in momentary.
After resoldering the original LED back the light worked well again. I think that the resistance of the XML must be to low or something. I did some tests with a 50ohm resistor in series with the XML and the light worked fine. I added a zener diode instead of the 50ohm resistor and the light still worked well and was a tad brighter so I left it like that.
I packed everything together and closed it all up.
The results;
I’m not going to say this was a big success; but I did what I was intending to do and that was to put a XM-L2 into a Nitecore Tube. This light isnt going into my pockets or even near it because of the gaping hole in the front of the naked, dedomed XM-L2. I’m even considering to revert it back to the original LED.
Some beamshots:
Stock:
XM-LTwo(be):
The difference is not that big IRL (I took all these pics with my phone) but its noticable.
the beamangle.
UPDATED 29/06/’17
I knew i could do better after seeing what CRX did with his Tube.
I planned the mod more carefully this time. And everything went way smoother.
I found a 1 Ohm resistor on a old multimeter and used it to bridge the zenerdiode.
The output is now way higher and all functions work well.
I also swapped out the dedomed led for one with dome.
A little bit more copper would have been better. The led gets hot quick but it should be fine for short amounts of time.
Thanks for reading
Dentillozie