What did you mod today?

:smiley: :+1: that is the least of the bad habits that I see on BLF at times.

Wait, how did you know about potassium cyanide silver plating? :slight_smile:

Nothing so exotic/toxic. It was a physical-chemical application (electroless) as opposed to an electro-chemical application using a mixture of Sodium Chloride and Calcium Carbonate (reducing agent) and Silver Chloride (silver source). The pre-mix can be purchased commercially from Cool-Amp here.

As opposed to electro-plating which typically runs 5-10+ microns thick, this physical transfer process only deposits 1-2 microns. Just enough for a protective layer, good enough to protect and patina, not nearly enough to protect from repeated physical handling.

Sorry BlueSwordM, my anodizing and plating days are behind me. Haven’t had any thing to do with passivating or cyanide baths in over 30 yrs.

At the risk of raising more heckles from copper fans, here’s another -

Thanks for the answer. I may try the potassium cyanide method at some point but it may be difficult to find the stuff and then convince the owner that I’m not going to kill myself.

Stock driver, yes. My 14500 is a bit old so only manage to push 3,2A with the stock emitter/driver. Stayed the same with the Black Flat, but it’s enough really !
The Black Flat has to be fed with the same amount of current as the White flat, so the sweet spot is at about 4,5A.
The stock MCPCB is DTP copper, with a 3535 footprint and 14mm in diameter. 16mm won’t fit.

Two days ago I received, late at the party, my Fireflies E07 from Neal, black, purple aux leds, SST-20 4000K. It appeared the updated version with slightly bevelled edges.

It is as beautiful as in any of the pictures I had seen, and an extremely handy size. And my first Anduril light, still have to play around with all the options. The SST-20 works very nicely in this optic, it makes a pleasantly distinct and, for this size little TIR’s, reasonably narrow hotspot.

To swap a few leds I opened it up, and although the optic had all its legs, it was not perfect inside: one screw completely worn out (these screws are made of very soft steel) and extremely short ledwires, I had to (un)solder very carefully to not strip any further of the insulation and risk shorts. The ledboard sat completely flat on the shelf and there was enough thermal gooey.

To improve the tint I swapped 3 of the 4000K leds for 2700K ones from KD (their so-called JA3 tint that measures exactly like their JC1 tint :weary: ). I hoped to end up at my favorite CCT, 3500K, and up/under the BBL.

This is the result.

First for comparison the tint of the original 4000K SST-20 (measured from the Sofirn C01S, same size TIR, forgot to measure the stock E07)

Great tint IMO, but with a duv of 0.0031 it is a bit above the BBL and it has the well-known slightly green hue without any rosiness.
Then the tint from the 2700K led, as measured in the hotspot of a reflector (should be comparable)

And here’s the result for the mix, almost precisely where you expect it (E07 at 170 lumen, so about 600 mA distributed over the 7 leds):

Almost on top of the BBL and also by visual inspection a really pleasant balanced tint (although not pink, but I do not appreciate too pink tints).

To my surprise this mixed flashlight has a consistent tint going to higher outputs. Here it is at 1300 lumen (default top of the ramp):

And at turbo 4000+ lumen:

All in all, I call this succesfull and I have added a very nice flashlight to my collection that was immediately useful yesterday when I went out in the dark with BLF-member Nicolaas for some thrower beamshots. It lit up the trail very nicely, although at turbo, the 3300K is a bit too warm to my liking (on all other levels, 3300K is perfect).

Brought my clamp meter from work this weekend and I tested the current on 3 of my S1R Baton II lights.

Low = 60mA
Medium = 200mA
High = 1.6A
Turbo = 3A

The lowest Turbo reading I got was 2.93A with a relatively discharged battery. Hope it’s a good reference for those who plan on swapping emitters.

For a twist, I did some work on my light box today. I had taken apart a 26” Sansung fluorescent tube monitor and it had some really neat diffusion sheets inside. So I cut a couple of panels from this material and fitted then inside my tube box. This diffuses all hot spot, nothing but diffused light hitting the meter. My multiplier using the Maukka calibration lights changed from the .345 I’ve used for years to a new .436.

An example light is the FF E07 with 6500K XP-L HI emitters, the factory claims 6900 and I get 6627.2 on a fresh charged 30T. Straight out of the box, one of very few stock lights in my possession.

I’m not familiar with the calculations. Does this mean that values in your posts of the last few years were 20% too low or were they 20% too high? Or is there a square root or a second power somewhere in the formula.

I installed one of Lexel’s Aux boards into my D4! It was more tricky than I expected, but super satisfying.

Thanks Lexel! And thanks to everyone here for all of their support!

Very cool. Pics of it installed but disassembled? I assume you flashed new firmware such as Anduril (to gain aux control)? Or are they on all the time?

He changed to more diffusion is all you can really infer. If you read some of his posts since getting maukka lights he mentions both sometimes

I was building a lot of lights for the brothers R some years back when they built their own light box and calibrated it with a very large collection of name brand ANSI rated lights. They built me one to use as a benchmark in the building of their lights. I was using this P-Trap light box long before anyone here had a Sphere. When Maukka got his sphere and offered to build calibration lights it was in an effort to bring everyone together, a chance to be on the same page as it were. I was comfortable with my light box as it matched factory lights quite closely over the years, but people griped and complained and whined and moaned so to get compliant and find some peace and quiet I quiesced and addressed the modern times.

I am sure that now I will consistently be under the factory ANSI ratings, but I have come to realize that the masses at BLF believe far more in Maukka’s sphere than in MaxToch’s, or Nitecore’s, or Fenix’s, or… well, you get the picture. I was within accepted levels of deviation before, but slightly on the high side of that standard by the measurements of some companies, now I will be as much or more on the low side it seems. And so it goes… I have lowered my standards to be compliant with the masses, effectively insulting the level of work that two people I respect and admire did in the building and calibrating of my light box.

Henk, it was a variable… some lights were in the 9% high range and others were spot on according to the ANSI ratings of the factory that made them. So, depending on whether a light was a thrower or a flooder, a minor player or a powerhouse, the range varied. I put in the two diffusion panels to equalize the effect and find a constant middle ground.

(one could infer that I was on muscle relaxers with a strained lower back and bored)

Thanks! Here are some pics:

And yep I flashed a customized Anduril to get all the fancy effects. Though I already had it, because I love Anduril lol

The two people, (manxbuggy and his brother) did their best and built a contraption that produced miles better results than what our eyes can do, but they simply did not have the knowledge and equipment to make it measure lumens very accurately. If we want to use the lumen unit to describe the amount of light coming out of a flashlight, I think it is a good idea to approximate the lumen as closely as we can, and maukka has the equipment (professional sphere and verified calibrated tungsten light source) to get closer to the truth than with the tube-style light measuring devices and an average over a number of flashlight manufacturer’s claims (whose measurements can hardly be called independent, and I pretty much doubt how serious their equipment and method is).

I really think that your equipment is adequate as a way to measure light output of most types of flashlight, and as long as your calibration (whatever calibration in fact) is constant over time, it is an useful way to measure differences between flashlights, but if the aim is to approximate the lumen (which is a S.I. unit), maukka’s approach is simply way more accurate.

Remember though that I matched factory ANSI ratings for years, factories that showed a massive Lumisphere that put Maukka’s to shame. Just saying. (Yes, remember the huge green sphere that appeared to be at least 3’ in diameter? Professional as run by the engineers that design the products.) (Maxtoch has a huge Military and Police contract, as well as Firefighter and Search and Rescue)

Interesting how assumptions are made, without even knowing the people involved…

It could even be argued that the very style of the calibration tungsten bulb is SO different than our actual flashlights that the methodology is skewed… but whatever, it’s a hobby not a company and even Maukka is limited by the ever present budget monster.

The original intention of the home light box was not targeting accuracy, merely giving a tool to indicate if the mods performed were worth the gains or if something was missed or not functioning properly. Simple then, made so much more complicated now.

It took a few years for me to discover that manufacturer claims (also Fenix, Nitecore, SWM etc.) of flashlight output were considerably higher (up to 30% in some cases) than what the german TLF members found in their own pretty serious attempts to measure flashlight output. Maukka’s contribution to this forum confirmed this, so I’m pretty sure that he is on the right track and many manufacturers are wrong, even if they claim ANSI-conform measurements (is there even a body that checks all those claims?) and show a huge sphere to impress their readers.

The calibration with a tungsten calibration lamp in combination with a sphere with a professional coating is perfectly correct, no skewed methodology here.

You can dismiss a method for it not being perfect and then you miss that it is a big step forward to previously existing methods on the flashlight forums.

As I just said, originally it was never about accurately measuring the light output but a tool to aid the modder in getting more out of a budget light. A check point out of the box, and continuing check points along the way during the mod to ensure the work done produced viable results. EXACTLY how many lumens the light makes is really, in the end, irrelevant. All the variables knock the numbers down in a constantly descending curve anyway. Ball park figures, for the end user, are all that is truly necessary. Remember, the percentage of difference between the home built PVC P-Trap light box and the very expensive professional sphere are most of the time simply not visible to the eye anyway.

Measuring a side emitting low output tungsten light with the same equipment used to measure forward emitting LED light, apples and oranges. Science says light is light, of course, and Photography favors the golden hour, but what are all these millions of flashlights actually used for? Finding the keys dropped in the grass? Science application overkill. Using NASA grade equipment to go for a walk. And yes, I know, I could well have donated the funds required for me to play with all these flashlights the past five years… the incremental decension into a bad habit is rarely recognized as the wrong path.

An interesting read… Integrating Sphere