The Twins are Finished!

Well, not really twins, I'm too old for twins, well maybe not too old....

These are a pair of the Home Depot 3AAA lights. They want to be more than just plain old budget lights...

t1

I don't remember the original price for these Home Depot lights, but I bought them as a set for $5. They are thinwall lights with plastic SMO reflectors and plastic lenses.

t2

Oops, looke like the one on the left got a black eye. Hate it when that happens. I had already disassembled that one.

t3

Simple 3AAA lights with a Cree? emitter, man it's tiny! The heads are one piece and the reflectors/lenses are glued in. They are a larger diameter than P60 or I would have just done P60 drop-ins.

t4

Well, the pill is hollow, which I figured on. The star is 20mm and the board is simple a contact plate for the wires, no modes. As you see, some plumbing supplies await their role as a small heat sink. (Very Small 19mm dia x maybe 12mm deep, so cooling will still be an issue even with the heatsink.

I am not going to change out the reflector or the lens. These will be "budget" lights, with just a new emitter and a 3 mode board. I don't plan on anything fancy. Hopefully one will end up a thrower (of sorst) and the other a flooder. Time will tell. I think I have an XP-G and an XP-E lying around, along with two 1.4A 7135 boards. Hopefully the transplants will not be rejected.

I'm "in between" other projects that are waiting on parts to come and I have the boards and emitters for these, so I figured to get them done this week-end while I wait for other parts.

More later........

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Here's a video on how I make a Copper heat sink for smaller lights like these. Thought it might be interesting to someone.

I ended up putting the heat sink and the outer wrap of copper, into the aluminum outer holder to solder all the copper together. This made it tight in the aluminum and then I used some Arctic Alumina to glue it in place.

shs1

shs2

Next is the star and board.

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Well, I just settled down last night and this morning, to finish the twin mods. The emitters are an XP-E and an XP-G. I said I wanted to do a thrower and a flooder.

Here's the pills for both.

twins1

The XP-E came from LED Supply and the XP-G came from Illumination Supply. Both are set on the copper heatsinks I made.

twins2

Both pills have a NANJG 1.4A Driver. The Thrower has three modes. The flooder was supposed to as well, but it is only on High and I'm not going to try to do anything with it. It was hard enough trying to do these pills, so the flooder has one mode.

The only way to give any kind of flood to the XP-G would be to use clearcoat on the reflector. Unfortunately I never did get either reflector to come out. They are glued in and even after taking the heads apart, neither one would budge without breaking, so I clearcoated the lens instead. Now there's a thrower and a flooder.

twins4

twins5

twins6

Since it's daytime, I can't do night beam shots, so the old garage will have to do.

First off is the XP-G (I'm at about 10' away from the wall).

xp-g

Here's the XP-E The sequence is High, then Medium, then Low.

xp-e high

xp-e med

xp-e low

Two identical lights to start with, ended up being two different lights. I favor the flood beam over the tighter thrower. Throwers always seem to have rings and I don't care for that, but everyone has a preference.

They will both be going up for sale at reasonable prices and you can pick your favorite.

Carry on,

Justin

This should be interesting...

i see a bright future for them ;)

:-)

Work Fast I want to see.

Hehe, speed is relative to age…Wink

Hey old, check again on the heads. I picked up the same 2 lights from HD and their heads are indeed 2 pieces. The reflector will drop right out after you un-srew the parts

Well, I will do that. I saw what looked like a seam, but I beefed on it and couldn’t budge either one, so I figured it wasn’t really a seam. I’ll try it when I get home.

Thanks

EDIT: I tried at home and the head did come apart, but the reflectors and lenses are glued in tight. I didn't want to pry or force too much, but I can see the glue line in them.

Updated the first post.

These come with XP-Cs

Updated, Mods are Done!

Nice work, Justin. :)

Great job, I love it when cheapo lights can shine bright.

Great video of making the heatsink, O-L !

The title of this thread sounds like something a plastic surgeon would say...

I love the way you do stuff without machine tools. Your creativity is impressive!

Patience is something I've never been good at. You obviously are very, very good at it.

I like the care that you put into it O-L. That is really something.

And AA for gluing. No cheap stuff here. Good job(s) :-)

I actually like the thrower best, I wish we were on the same continents. But I do hope someone will pick up on these little babies. Sure thing is they will surprise anyone who knows anything about flashlights because they wont expect to get that kind of performance from that package!

Me too. Any plans to move to Europe Old L?

You'll be very welcome here.

Would you believe that one of your videos enabled me to spot a Texan accent the other day? Well it did. I'm no use at identifying US regional accents - except Texan.

The doctoral classes I'm doing just now are 2/3 American and the only accent I could place was Bill the Texan. Whose accent is stronger than yours. He was impressed that I guessed he was a Texan. Most of the rest of the class are from PA or thereabouts apart from one ex-Canadian who now lives in PA.

Everyone, Thank You for the kind words. I really do appreciate it. I enjoy doing the mods and I also enjoy sharing what I do with others. In some small way it makes me feel useful again.

That is the exact same way I feel and the sole reason I do it also.