I got my first BLF Q8 in yesterday. It looked fabulous and worked the same, making 5409.6 lumens right out of the box on a set of Sony VTC5A with copper buttons soldered to the top. But of course, I felt like 5000 lumens was too weak, soâŚ
I started off with small changes and checked for the differences with freshly charged cells. Like, I swapped out the screws for brass ones. Boom! 328 lumens for a mere brass screw installation. So I tried an UCLp lens swap, not so much gain, only 41 lumens, not worth buying a lens for. Then I pulled the pcb with springs from the tail, removed the dual springs, and re-flowed them onto a copper sheet cut to fit the tube. That netted another 93 lumens. So then I put 22 ga wire bypasses inside the dual springs. Tedious stuff, that! And it made the single most difference, 1214.4 lumens gained for the effort!
Then I decided to get real, I pulled the driver, replaced the leads with 18Ga Turnigy wires, removed the MOSFET and used a premium Vishay SIRA20DP, swapped the XP-L V6 3D emitters for new XP-L2 V6 1C. And a whopping 3000 lumens gain!!!
Yes, the Q8 started at 5409.6 and did 5213.64 at 30 seconds, now it makes an outstanding 10,212 lumens at start with a drop to 9,177 lumens at 30 seconds. I donât have a way to measure amperage, but I donât think I really want to knowâŚ. (of course I know how, I just donât want to!) [based on previous experience, amperage is going to have to be up around 28A to maybe 30A, ridiculous, I know]
Nice work there, too I guess I wonât shorten it due to batteries and springs, but thats nice
I also thought about a illuminated tailswitch, Iâm going to buy one for this and maybe for other lights
And then, driver and LED modification!
Thanks for sharing :+1:
Yeah sac02, I kinda wish Iâd followed what Iâd been doing and done one thing at a time and measured in between. The 18Ga wires probably helped a little but I wouldnât think thatâd be a big jump. The FET made a difference, more so than the wires, but in the end I think the XP-L2âs were the major change. 700 lumens between a modded XP-L light (for each emitter) means 2100 lumens easily right there in the emitters. Tom had seen around 7100-7200 which was 1800 lumens per emitter, looks like we can attribute most of the gains to the next gen technology.
Donât know if you could call it a mod, exactly, but Iâm very very happy with DBC-06.7⌠24 hours of lathe work, then final assembly including building an A6 driver.
The emitter is a de-domed XM-L2 from MaxToch, clean job on the de-dome they did. Itâs new gen, so it only pulls 4.61A but makes 1652.55 lumens. Final tuning it does 815Kcd for 1974.57M throw, which is 1.122 Miles!!!
I made the tail cap (more of a plug) the body (from a single bar of 2.75â 6061) the reflector adapter (from a 4 1/4â bar of 6061) and the bezel (also from the bar of 4 1/4â 6061) The copper pill is 35mm dia and 35mm tall. Cell is the TrustFire 32650 by design, the plug in the tail has long threads to allow the use of anything from a 26500 to a 21700 or 26700, even the protected variation of 32650 works. Lens is a custom order 3mm thick 104mm UCLp from Chris at flashlightlens.com.
I went with an oversized variation of the small 18350 light I built last year where the battery tube looked like twin thread spools stacked, this allows cigar grip even on this 1234 gram light!
Edit: PS, if you think turning a 4 1/4â bar of 6061 on a 5â chucked Grizzly 10x22 lathe is easy, youâre sadly mistaken!
The hot spot is actually smaller than what shows in that last pic, the tiles in the picture on the wall are 12â square, the hot spot is about 8â at this distance.
Not exactly sure where the reflector came from George, itâs bigger than that though. A friend sent it to me and laughingly said see what you can do with this! He said there werenât any more and the mfr quit making them. I was planning to build this light already, had the battery tube bored for the 32650 and was intending to use the reflector out of my Olight SR-90 Intimidator since I have the Lum 5-90 in that light. I think thatâs what inspired my friend to send this one, going big go all the way⌠lol
I was talking with another friend with machining experience about the sheer size here, I only had the 4 1/4â bar and it wouldnât be big enough to machine a head for this 98mm reflector, so he said why not just use it as a stressed member, like Ducatti does their engines? And so I did, threaded the reflector to fit the machined body part and bezel. Out of the ordinary, but then, itâs no ordinary light.
So I guess I modded 2 bars of 6061 into a flashlight. hahahahaha
Edit: This pic should show how it all started, the full sized bars are pieced together for testing of an emitter inside the reflector. I used my power supply for this test, but you can see the sheer mass of aluminum I had to carve away, hence 24 hours on the latheâŚ