What did you mod today?

Right. Not really required if you use GA or similar battery but it’s available so why not

Cool. I put some below the BBL 3000K SST-20’s in my FW3A with a 10507 optic. It’s amazing…

How about a picture?

I’m betting these look very nice in a FW3A.

Must be getting quite hot though. :slight_smile:

[quote=trailhunter]
I finally rebuilt my fw3a with sw40 219b’s. It took a while to reflash the ATtiny85 chip to toymakers andruil firmware as I had to get a better ROIC clip.

I cannot tell the difference in color between my m43 sw45k 219b and sw40. Same luscious rosey tint.


Want more rosey goodness? The FW3A len’s is not the best…UCL lens on the Right

Got just over 600 lumens more in the FW4A with the UCL lens…over the Stock FW3A lens.

Hm. Should measure the difference at a regulated level. Any issue with the o ring or waterproofing you think?

I’ll take a few comparison shots vs my Convoy S3 4000K Luxeon V and post it soon :+1:

It heats up a bit faster than the 7A XP-L HI’s that were in it but it’s hardly noticeable. I would probably have noticed a bigger difference if it had NW or CW emitters in stock form. The throw is about the same as the stock XP-L HI 10511 combo, but the spill is obviously not the same. So less lumens, but same throw, epic high CRI golden goodness. Great LED’s BlueSwordM!

Today i rebuilt a C8 with a 3V XHP50.2, and one of Lexel’s drivers and spring bypassed it.
but accidently dedomed it while trying to fit a gasket which should fit, but just barely did and the whole dome came off
Which was good actually, now the cree rainbow corona has gone and the tint is way better!

The built was not very neat, especially the 18 AWG wires did not fit very well with the reflector, so i had to file down the reflector. After hours of filing it still touched the wires….
I decided to add another gasket, which is not the best looking but good functioning.
now i have a roughly built hot rat-rod.

Nice, I’ve built multiple 3v xhp50.2 in c8 hosts. The 18g wire is a little tough getting those wires through but with fine tweezers, it makes it much easier.

What tailcap switch did you go with?

It’s just an insurance policy. If I accidentally add a vtc* battery, I dont run the risk of frying some relatively difficult to source emitters.

Also if I happen to sell it in the future, the insurance policy goes with the new owner :slight_smile:

Thanks! Luckily I’m all about runtime, so I mostly run NCR18650GA or 35E cells in my small lights…

OK…168/212…939/1102……2809/3107 stock FW3A Triple XP-L HI 1A but with a Carclo 507 from my smallest adapter which seats the FWA3 perfectly on my T/A Maukaka Tube.

But I just looked at my 3 stock len’s and all 3 are different? 2 are Purple one is Blue and one of the Purple has very little coating compared to the other…

So the 2 Purple len’s came out of my 3D GB lights and the Blue len’s came out of my XP-L HI 1A which makes sense since my 2 Nichia’s have the Blue AR lenses which are a bit better than the Purple from what I just seen.

Just a standard (blue lighted) one

It’s weird that the lenses have different coatings for the same light… but I’m not sure I’d normally notice, since I generally remove the AR coating from lenses. Ever since I found a reasonably quick way to do it, I’ve been un-coating all sorts of lenses.

(reasonably quick way = put a polishing cloth on a table, then rub the lens on the cloth for ~15 minutes)

@Toykeeper, have you ever tried denatured alcohol, acetone, concentrated sodium hydroxide, or even HCL to remove the coating?

I’ve had good success with sodium hydroxide for some, but others can’t be removed at all with that method.

I tried a couple types of paint thinner, nail polish remover, vinegar, laundry supplies, lens cleaner, etc… but none of it made any noticeable difference, even after soaking overnight. Eventually what worked was just rubbing the coating off.

Geez 10-15%+ this must be a pretty bad AR coating and a mediocre lens.

Any thoughts on how well the O ring seats with the smaller lens Kawi?

I ordered a lens from Kaidomain and FlashlightLens so when those arrive I will test them in my lights too (including tint).

I mic’d all 4 UCL len’s and used the (smallest) of the 4 at 22.61mm the spec is 22.61mm (+/- .127mm ) so about .0075” a side smaller, yes it sealed up, I filled the bezel with Sparkle window cleaner for about almost 2hrs, no ingress of liquid…YMMV…

@toykeeper

is there a series of clicks I can do to confirm if I have your version firmware installed?

Some comparison shots between the FW3A 3000K SST-20 (BlueSwordM) 10507 and a Convoy S3 4000K Luxeon V. My phone doesn’t have the best camera but I set the white balance to 4000K and the other settings were the same for both lights on all pictures.

Luxeon V 4000k 70CRI beamshot

SST-20 95CRI 3000k

Luxeon V Beamshot 2

SST-20 3000k 95CRI

The difference in color reproduction is absolutely amazing, especially in terms of reds, in which it’s absolutely massive.