I think your using the most interesting and promising LED yet in this clone.
I saw your first mention of this LED, I think it was you, but anyhow I went and looked, actually had to Google find it, first time I heard of this idea there was no mention who had these to my recollection.
I have read about these LEDs but they hadn’t been released yet, but the topic was the comparison to the black flat, really exciting stuff you have going,
Please keep us up to date, you may very well be building the best Z1 clone yet and I’m quit excited to see how this goes for you,
Personally I think it’s going to work out perfectly with just a few tweaks. Hurray for you …
I think I’m just going to go buy some of these because I can’t find them anywhere except where you bought yours, not even Mouser, and one other place had a 500 MOQ but zero in stock. I think these LEDs are the newest of the new LEDs of any company, very exciting and I’d hate to drag my feet and find them sold out.
Best of Luck to you, Ah luck my butte, highly skilled I believe …!! :+1:
Ya , haha, I had to laugh when I saw that in my file, I couldn’t recall what it was called to save my life, well that is if I ever did know the name of it, can’t recall ever having a conversation about that piece but it seriously important, you can see in the other parts photo that in the 1st version it wasn’t a part of the build.
Also found a statement thread this evening completely accident from looking at a Google pic from back in the day from a guy Budda CPF Italia, you know who I’m talking about and also some comments by Bugsy36, and he was the one who asked that we at BLF support CPF and so I did, but in these posts by bugsy he is almost denying he had anything to do with this cloning and I know and I think anyone here awhile would know he was in so deep with BG while he was here like the A6 GB that I still have my thoughts about him as culpable and I found the J Team guys with you know who, and who forgot to delete this pile of posts… ha ha ha, oh well made my peace and I’ll leave it at that…
Going to hit the hay, have a great evening or early AM I think for you… See ya pal…
Yeah…. the “Limitation Ring” plays an important part for sure.
Yeah T18, most people will never know the true story of the Cometa now almost 3 years after it’s beginnings.
Heck, most people didn’t even realize what had happened back then either… Because they were either to busy or to lazy to read a bit.
In all fairness there were at least 3 major Cometa Threads at any given time. Post were scattered among the open threads too. And each time a thread was LOCKED, another would be created to take it’s place.
Fun times in my book…… In the long haul, I think it was good for BLF in general.
More honesty & openness started to show up… IMO & a few others anyway.
After reading your post, I too went back and reread a bunch of post in those old threads. It got very ‘sporty’…… to say the least! It is somewhat hilarious & comical reading to say the least. I think it was the beginning of the wheat being seperated from the chaff on BLF. Some well respected members, at the time; were exposed as nothing more than schills & outright liars.
The general honesty of several was demonstrated lacking. AND of course…. the RUDE BUTTON was created. . . .
As you mentioned, bugsy36 was tripping all over himself saying the Cometa “WAS NOT” a collaboration between CPFI & a BLF Team.
He just forgot he had posted the quoted words below, early on in one of the key Cometa threads. ….
WARNING: Cometa – read/fix BEFORE inserting battery
I watched that assembly video Jax made and I thought the limitation ring goes on top of everything and keeps the lens from bumping into hard things when fully zoomed out? It appears it has an O-ring in a groove on top.
Anyway… just took everything apart and measured again. With the centering ring (“led center cover” in the Z1) fully screwed in, there’s even 2.0 mm between its central ring and the pill bottom. Which confirms my suspicion: even the thicker MCPCBs don’t get pushed down properly (or NOT AT ALL if your solder joints and wires are really nice and flat :person_facepalming: )
So a thicker MCPCB doesn’t fix this, unless there’s 2mm ones.
Several options left:
- ~0.5mm material under the MCPCB to raise it against the centering ring
turn down the shoulders –0.5mm where the centering ring bottoms out.
Yes a spacer around the LED fixes the pressure issue somewhat but the beam ain’t pretty since the centering ring sits 0.5mm too high. The Osram is 0.3mm thinner than the XP-L HI so you WILL have spill reflected from the ring.
OK, I understand now. There was indeed a lot of sarcasm in THIS POST. :person_facepalming: . (It was pretty funny though… to me anyway. )
But the truth of the matter is, with two simple ’fixes’; this light is as ‘safe’ as any other light. This is nothing new, we have known this for just about 2 & 1/2 years.
1. Put a washer/insulator around the driver spring.
2. Put a Butterfly Insulator/Spacer around the LED & rest the Black Anodized Disc on it.
2a. Put a piece of tape on the MCPCB solder joints.
The End. That is all that needs to be done.
Look close….
……Polypropylene is not missing from the ‘Plastics Chart’, it is #5.
That is what I made my driver washer/insulator from & it has been working just fine for right at 2 & 1/2 years.
There is no need to ’reinvent the wheel’ on this to make it safe.
Ok. While I see the safety intent in your #2 advice I agree with Hank’s precaution in his post #1570.
I would be kinda careful adding inherently variable thickness homemade spacers from common household products to areas that prolly don’t need or profit from an increase in pressure.
The thinner tape-type insulators IMO are the way to go here if deemed necessary as further precaution. Just my .02.
Most of the bare alu is covered anyway, the rest is barely visible when assembled but got some black sharpie
2. Turned down the rim of the pill (same 0.6mm), drilled and tapped M2.5 holes, milled out relief cuts for good measure.
3. Now the centering ring doesn’t bottom out on its shoulders but sits flush on the MCPCB in the center.
I did thin it out a bit more in the center anyway to make sure it doesn’t sit proud of the emitter.
4. Coated the centering ring with soot to get rid of reflections (candle & a heatsink to make sure the thin center doesn’t melt)
It sticks well enough to the plastic that you’d need compressed air to blow it off.
Before/after:
Done.
Centering the lens is still the most annoying part when reassembling.
I suppose all most of this could be done with hand tools, though it’ll take a while to sand down those 2 parts. A belt sander would speed things up a lot.
If I find a proper piece of plastic in the parts bin, I’ll make a proper insulating spacer for the positive spring but the milk jug ring they included works okay I guess.
I’m running this on mediocre ICR 18650s (don’t own any 26650s), I’m pretty confident the emitter doesn’t pull more than 4 amps. Not sure if I’d put a low-IR 26650 in this.
PS: I removed the bleeder resistor but the tailcap LED still light up (dimly). Is this normal?
PPS: One layer of kapton tape on the zoom threads gets rid of the head rattle and scratchy noises and gives just the right amount of tightness
Pretty good :sunglasses:
The die image is a lot prettier than stock. Some fringing on the edges, this may be in part from the white resin around the die.
I’ll leave proper comparisons and numbers to others, though I may be able to snap a few outdoor beamshots this weekend. Don’t have much to compare it to in my collection.
CRI is pretty bad, as was expected. Now most of the spill that’s left when zoomed in comes from imperfections in the lens. Those also are much more pronounced in flood mode, especially the donut (stems from a tiny bump in the center of the flat side).
I eventually turned a very shallow shelf on the inner front rim of the head that keeps the lens centered. No more bumping it around while tightening the bezel.
My order of 3 Cometa arrived. There are quality degradation compared to previous two. Not really very bad, but definitely not suitable for non-modder. From the boxes, they seems to be 2017 production, first two are 2016 production.
Degradation as below:
Latest aluminum disc are plastic and don’t really press on MCPCB as much as aluminum disc.
LED not properly sit on MCPCB
Plastic insulator is very thin and deformed before use.
My First cometa + battery was marked 2016
and disk is Alu(9 Grams) are you sure is plastic?
I have another on the way without battery,
maybe will be the batch 2017 .
