What did you mod today?

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
6576

I dont remember the donut hole even looking as pronounced when I had no film so i’ll give it a shot. If all else fails this will probably turn into a triple with a spacer down the road. It’s an X6 after all :slight_smile:

I do agree this LED is almost too difficult to work with but I think you are being a little unfair with the CRI/tint. Mine is doing over 2,000lm with a single 18650 and the tint is very even across the entire beam. I dont perceive with my eyes anything I would typical call above BBL either. Sure it’s no 219B or Optisolis but the output is ridiculously high for what you get.

For me this will be a test for a future Q8 build. If we can make the Q8 reflector slightly OP then you could tint mix and move up to 12V Luxeon MZ’s with the upcoming carriers. I would imagine it could be low amps and 9,000lm @ 90CRI.

6577

I’m a bit spoilt lately with flashlight builds that go over 95 CRI and below the BBL, but admittedly they do not make close to 2000 lumen.(with a spring-bypassed tail from another C8 and a 30Q battery I see 10.3A and 1830 lumen at 30 seconds, and pretty stable at that)

6578

Well the gloss spray paint didn’t do enough. I suspected as much cause it just takes the sheen off and doesn’t actually dimple it much. I went with a new scorched earth method: 320 grit sandpaper. You can see the sanding marks everywhere.

To me, this is better than diffusing the lens but only by a little. It retains some hot spot and has a noticable spill. The spill doesn’t really fade out though. The remaining beam outside the “hot spot” is pretty even all the way to the edge. I’m sure I could spend more time re-polishing it but I probably wont bother. It’s good enough until I have a better use for this light.

It’s still not recommended though cause the hot spot turns into a bit of a star burst pattern from a distance. I think it’s pretty much only going to look good under a TIR unless you want a completely floody beam.

6579

My SMO C8 reflector didn’t go well with the Luxeon MZ… Plus I find the tint quite green.
I ordered a Convoy M1 host to see how it goes with the smaller reflector.
We’ll see, but maybe I had my hopes a bit high for this one

6580

With my xhp50 C8, I have tried diffeeent OP reflectors to find a good one.
I think I have a good reflector from fasttech.

6581

The Eagle Eye X1R has had some great deals going, comes with both tube sizes, and is a nice lightweight angle light, and very decent quality. I recently completed a full mod on one, 20 mm MtnE MCPCB, 351D 4000K 90+ CRI, 22 mm DEL driver sanded down to ~21 mm to fit, Infineon FET. For this mod, the tricky stuff is:

Here's some pics of the mod.

Stock setup:

Stock switch board:

Smarts on the back side of the switch PCB:

Stock LED setup:

Removing stock driver:

Here's the rotary tool work. The stock shelf extended to the blue edge, so it had to be cut out maybe ~2 mm so the replacement driver mounts on a thin shelf and can clear the SMD's:

Also the other side was a bit too thick for the driver's SMD's:

After sanding (sanding bit on the rotary tool):

The MtnE 20 mm after filing out spaces for the screws. The screws don't hold down the PCMCB, just keep it from spinning:

351D 4000K, nice reflow (maybe I'm getting better?) with trimming the excess:

New populated switch PCB. All parts removed, replaced LED's with pink ones and using 2 10K's, but probably could have used higher values - it's fairly bright:

The head modded parts at this point, sanded the surface as smooth as I could get but there is the slightly depressed spot for fitting the USB charging circuit there with the blue anodizing shown on the MCPCB mounted surface. I can only assume they were slightly off in clearances:

The new front end stack:

Driver installed with extra length on wires for driver re-programming, using the stock spring with a bypass:

On an Aspire 1100 cell at 4.19V, measured 4.8 amps, 1120 lumens at start (probably a little lower than my normal (non ANSI) numbers.

On a 30Q at 4.19V, measured 6.36 amps. Lumens is difficult to get an accurate # with a right angle light in my PVC light box.

No pics of the beam/tint, but very happy with it - nice milky white, nice soft hot spot with it's OP reflector.

6582

Nice milling work to get the driver to fit. It looks like a real nice light now.

6583

Thanx! Took some time but not really that bad as I thought. Just had to check clearances closely. The driver s now unglued, but the batt tube holds it down - not idea for when changing tubes, but so far working ok.

6584

Tom E, you’re the first person I’ve seen calling X1R lightweight….myself I consider heavy weight to be a killer misfeature and I never used mine because of that. :frowning:

6585

Tom E did you thought about keep the charging somehow?

6586

I dunno, compared to the PL47, or the D4Ti I worked on today it's super light weight. My regular head lamp is a spark SX5 with a 26650 and built like a tank, but of course the batt is on the rear so it's well balanced.

I'ts been eliminated, as in many of my other mods. Would love to have been able to keep it but not in this light. The EE X6R and X7R I've modded was able to keep it in tact. Don't know enough or been able to spend time on USB charging circuitry to consider including it. If you know of any public OSHPark driver design that is our BLF FET+1 and charging, love to know.

6587

My new Eagletac G25C2 "Evilboy"
HA3 (Sanodal Red B3LW) , Cree XHP70.2 6500K , W1900 circuit board from eagletac t25l-r, Ledil IRIS XM optics

6588

That is a cool build Hemionline! The large TIR looks good in there. But I always thought that HA3 only could be done in black.

6589

Sorry older post from Dec 12th, but oh no, didn't hear bout this, so I may be the last hold out. My conversion factor is/has always been 0.34.

6590

I have a conversion factor of .345 on my box Tom, not making any changes until at least 2 more of the brothers boxes are tested… the calibration light’s are in manxbuggy1’s hands as we speak and will be going to robo819 next, he has their original box. If all 3 of us show a similar result with the calibration lights then I won’t be changing my multiplier, but if we show discrepwncies between the three then I will do some appropriate tweaking. Maybe robo819 can forward our set of calibration lights to you for a fourth brother’s box test? Perhaps you could forward them to Richard for a fifth test? I haven’t spoken to Richard about testing his yet, keep forgetting. At some point in the rotation I plan to sign up a manufacturere and send the calibration lights to be tested on a name brand manufacturer’s set up, see what that shows… am working through robo to try and get MaxToch on board as they build a large percentage of their lights for Military and Police use. If I can get this testing done we should then have a good read on exactly where our brothers boxes stand.

For the record, robo and I went in on these calibration lights together. Robo’s box, the first from the brothers, has a .50 multiplier so it’s different from yours mine and Richards.

6591

The unfortunate part of all this is the sphere/tube calibration has probably already surpassed the cheap lux meter error factor.

From djozz last test on meters seems its stil hard to reliably source a good budget.

If that becomes a reality then it would be worth all the steps you propose Dale.

6592

Thanx Dale for the update! I'd be interested in the rotation. yeah - totally agree about the manufacturers. Still don't understand why I see some with what appears to be high end integrating spheres and why their numbers are closer to yours and mine then what the calibration lights are getting.

True, the meters are the variable. I now have 3 of the LX1333B meters, one example, and all 3 have different readings. The two newer ones read higher, so i still use my older original in my PVC light box. Still have the tint factor variable in the meters as well from djozz's tests.

6593

I keep telling everyone that it’s not a carved-in-stone kind of thing, always going to be variables… we measure more for a reference point so we can see what our mod results are.

With a so many single point variables (cells, chargers, lenses, emitters, meters, etc…) we’re never going to match across the board. Use em with a bit of educated precision but don’t get so hung up on the numbers that you can’t enjoy a good light…

6594

Hey Tom? Richard is on board too, so David will send them to You, then you can forward them to Richard, after that David and I will send them to a Mfr for the last leg of their journey. They will be on their way to David tomorrow morning. (Me, David and Rick all live in Texas so there shouldn’t be delays getting to David from Rick)

The plan has been to leave the cells in them so all testing is done on as similar a base as possible. I charged a brand new 30Q for the S2+ and the small light has an Imedion AAA low self-discharge NiMH in it.

6595

Ok, all sounds good! I'll probably test them with 2 meters so I have a backup, 1 set of calib settings per meter. I'll check the thread on the light specs, but what I'll probably do is after I do the calibration, I'll build a similar spec light or 2, measure them, then I'll basically have my own set from then on.