What did you mod today?

Toolā€™n around
Driver replacement in a copper tool I gave a buddy last year. Guess that was free lifetime warranty.
Led reflow in a GB Tool Ti. Ordered a Nichia and was sent a Cree. Now itā€™s a Nichia 219BT 4000K high CRI.
Got a deal too good to pass up on 2 SS Worms but they were Cree. Now one is a Nichia 219BT
Amazon deal on a few (4) GLAREE E03 @ $5ea. Nice lights, Very similar to some Thrunite right down to the driver. Got 2 of these swapped to the 219BT also.
GB has another sale on the SF348 for $3 and just finished that one out with a 219BT also.
Last was the Massdrop Brass E-Sw Tool I get a deal on from 264. Was a Cree and now has 219BT. Actually a nice light and the first AAA Lumintop Iā€™ve had apart that came with a copper MCPCB.

The 219BT were bought on the RMM moving sale and I got a bunch for less than $2ea.
Some of the lights, Top to Bottom
SS Tool still Cree
SS Tool 219BT
Tool Ti 219BT
Brass Tool E-Sw 219BT
Glaree E03 219BT
Copper Worm original Nichia

And Some UV fun. One doesnā€™t belongā€¦

Added thermal paste to my Manker U11 to make it a little better. In stock form it has nothing between pill and body. They are just very close together. And the pill is secured by a retaining ring. It is not the best heat path in stock for a more than 3A current flashlight.

Reflector lights can do that to!
My Convoy M1 easily does that. But it is running a XHP50.2 at 8A :sunglasses:

Nice!
I will build soon a Convoy L6 with XHP70.2 and want to use the stock XHP70 from the L6 in an M1 host with zener modded TA driver and two Aspire 18350 batteries. I think it will heat up fast and can burn some things :smiley:

Would this be a mod or a ā€œtrickā€?
I donā€™t know, but it works :smiley:

- 1 Neodymium magnet (20mm x 3mm) glued with ā€œalpha cyanocrylateā€ contact glue outside the tailcap of Manker E11 (not fancy or pretty, but effective )

  • 5 Neodymium magnet (5mm x 2 mm) attached to the pocket clip, and a heatshrink(ed) tube to make them stay in the place

Flashlight in horizontal position sticked to the fridgeā€¦

(The ā€œwhiteā€ stripe below the clip is luminous tape to find the flashlight in the dark. Not fancy, once again, but works pretty well: just getting some minutes of light before going to sleep, it will be visible till 7/8 hours later!)

MascaratumB: Me too like the functionality a little bit before look.
:+1:

Did adding the thermal paste help? Does it get hotter faster? Seems it would be better than air.

I didā€™n t measured before and after but it feels to get hotter faster with hand.
If somebody will do this also please measure temperature with time on the side fins before and after the thermal paste.

Thatā€™s good, means itā€™s working :slight_smile:

Fixed the optics position in my S42.

The light will never be any good because of the messed up user interface, but the extremely out of focus optic certainly challenges the UI in things done wrong in this light, I have rarely seen an uglier beam profile.

The focus problem is because the optic rests on two small opposite ridges on the inside of the head that are too high up. Because removing plastic is easier than removing aluminium, I filed a bit off the optic on both sides to make it sit deeper, closer to the leds. I broke off one of the legs of the optic in the process, but in the end the light closed up fine.

Because the optic now falls inside the head, to make the glass lens still clamp the optic in position, I added a paperclip ring on top of the optic (a silicon o-ring did not work, it twisted out of position when closing the bezel)

The paperclip does not spoil the looks of the flashlight.

And the beam is as it should be.

Nice job djozz! I like your ingenuity of using a paper clip and it looks good in the flashlight.

@djozz
Do you think a copper plate between shelf and MCP could do the trick to get the LEDs in the right focus position?

thanks this was my first TIR light and I thought the Beam is OK
I did glue the paperclip only on 2 sides where the optics is filed down because otherwise it blocked light from the TIR

after I modded the TIR I could see it does throw better and beam looks better overall
if you need a driver how about a TA one I can make you one with Narsil just for material costs, the light is great with Narsil

Yes, that is thw other way around to get leds and optic closer together, someone posted already that he had done that succesfully. I will look that post up.

Good that it worked!

About a new driver: Iā€™m not sure that can be done while saving the internal charging function? I donā€™t think that could accept to have a flashlight with a charging hole that is there doing nothing (and fancy aftermarket cover for that emty hole :party: )

(back in the days when I wanted a flashlight for actually using it, a random hole in it would be perfectly acceptable, but that was a looooong time ago, I aim for at least perfection now, and of course never get there)

Hi djozz, do you have a ballpark measurement of how much you had to sand the optic down? The beam looks great by the way.

It can be done with charging working but its not easy

You could alter the charging hole to a reflash hole

@glide
someone wrote he changed the focus by 0.8mm

Thank you joechina.

I already assembled the flashlight but 0.8mm sounds about exact what I filed off the optic.