What did you mod today?

<—- grew up in a Lumber Yard, have done carpentry and cabinet making as well. I DO understand! Creosote in the eyes is no picnic either…

Riiiiight. You can’t fool us, Dale. What kinda flashlight is this going on? :wink:

Ok, but really… what’s it going on?

A flashlight holder ——- HaHaHa

I have gone out to the shop with a few flashlight components in hand and made a complete light with no plan at all, actually seemed easiest that way. Little things that you head out thinking “This won’t take long…” those are the bears that drive ya nuts! Turning a half inch rod down to a 6mm guide rod, piece of cake right? Wrong! I started at 9:45 in the morning and had the captured spring in the gun at 4:30 that afternoon. UGH! Ended up taking it back out there and cutting a bevel on the slide facing side of the nut, for sanity reasons. No idea what this piece of metal was in a previous life but it’s some hard stuff! Should have just walked away and retrieved the bar of Titanium…

I thought the shavings that were wrapped around the piece just cut me, came in and cleaned it up, looking down into the cut and didn’t see any issue, got the bleeding stopped and went back out there. At around 8PM I noticed a little chip embedded in the end of my thumbnail, eyeballed it (with an aspheric lens of course!) and pried it out of the nail so I could grab it, out slid this nasty curved piece of SS that was deep enough in my thumb I missed it entirely! Felt wonderful! :smiley:

But hey, I got the part that I couldn’t find offered anywhere. LOL

Yesterday I got some new Murata 21700 VTC6A cells in, wanted to test them to see how they compared to 30T, 40T and such…. took the battery tube off my Ham’r and tested the fresh charged 21700 cell powering 17 emitters. 31.8A, not bad! Not the best, but not at all bad…. put the battery tube back on the Ham’r and danged if it wouldn’t work! Been troubleshooting that one ever since. Got it back together today and have it working but at a lower output and without a functional ramping to Anduril. Makes no sense, stepped mode works, all the blinkies work, Candlelight is fully functional as is Lightning mode. Just no ramping. I now have it assembled without the 4 slaves, the original Q8 driver is powering all 17 emitters from a single SIR404DP MOSFET. Still does 20,000 lumens on 4 Samsung 25S 18650’s. Danged if I can figure out what happened to the ramping….

Only posting this for Kawi cause I would not call this a successful mod, heh

Dragon driver + first gen MTN 3XP with 2x amber XQ-E

it’s crazy how much this looks exactly like a BAT flying at you

LH351D 3500K (which I do like) but it seems the secondaries stay on when main LED is on, guess I messed up something.

better luck next time! will probably rip this out and figure out a better host for the newer 3x XQ-E board.

Not a mod but - Ordered something and got the wrong product. Long story short, I have something to give away. Would rather post here because this thread is what got me hooked on this forum

Anyway, first one to respond who wants a brand new in box Uni-T UT120A, it’s up for grabs.

I will take it :-))

:+1:

That is a neat multimeter, I use one too. I like that despite the small 2032 button cell, it does (up to 200mA) current measurements, and especially the micro-amp measurement is nice.

I have had 3 of the old Thorfire VG-10’s, not the VG-10S’s. I really was not sure what to do with them, but I know that I hate the XM-L2 1? leds, my first thought was to throw in an XM-L2 T6 4C (my standby XM-L2. The cold, crappy XM-L2 in the chassis do not throw well, they have a horrible tint and just drag a really good light down. So, this morning I opened one up and found the usual aluminum XM-L star, at least it was DTP. I had a couple of L1V2’s in 4000k, I know only 70 CRI, but it is a thower not an EDC. So, mounted one up on a KD star, found the right centering ring and wrestled the o-ring back in between the reflector and the body. Wow, it is really nice! One minor issue the sinkpad was a tad thicker than the crappy one in the light so the bezel ring stands just a whisker proud when tight. Next time it is apart I will file the bottom of the star down just a little. But, with a good cell I am getting a nice smooth 3.34 amps and a wonderful warmish output.

Since I was on a roll, I put an LH351D in my FW1A. Modified a really old XP footprint DTP sinkpad to fit the light, that little screw in the led shelf is a pain… I felt the SST-20 beam was to tight for EDC, the LH351D fixed that. The hotspot has an off color corona, but it is not terrible. Went with 4000k 90 CRI. Does not get as hot with this LED either.

I really wish we could buy the factory stars for the FW1A and FW3A. I want to stay with white ones in the FW3A so as not to affect the tint of the output on low power modes.

A ’351 would probably look nice in that VG10…

Thanks to 80T’s post I was able to mod my Utorch UT01 with the GT Micro driver and a LH351D 3500K.

I tried to get Anduril on there but I had some weird issue where it would work fine then strobe and become unresponsive after a minute or so. Reverted back to the stock firmware and it seems to be working now.

Does just under 1,000lm with a Vapcell button top. The reflector in this light is really great and forgiving when it comes to focusing.

I changed the LED one of these $10 Olight HeadLights ( H04 Active) to a XPE Green —- It was my first time changing a direct to circuit board LED— I used a heat gun on the underside — it seemed to warp the board slightly —- I’m wondering if the board would hold up better using a hot plate —- I was skeptical about succeeding after heating this board—it worked fine while apart on the bench —- every time I put it back in the plastic housing it wouldn’t work —I guess on the 10th try I held my mouth right and Walla it worked perfectly —-One of those days I guess —Lucky me my stepson needs 4 more —yippie

I think I’d use the hot air from the top on that one, no copper board to heat up and it’d keep overall heat down for the integrity of the board. Glad it’s not me… :stuck_out_tongue:

Modded my s mini ti. 3000k 85cri xml2, glow behind the optic, trit in the pocket clip and an epoxide magnet tail.

Now all my EDC rotation lights are around 3000k. 3000k rainbow:

I’m worried I’ll mess the dome up on the emitter—I’m thinking about putting a small disc (10mm) of aluminum on my hot plate and that way it just heats under the LED

Yes you should use a hot plate if it’s a single sided board. If it survived your first try then it should survive more even heating. You could also use the hot plate to just pre-heat it and hit it with hot air briefly (with flux to speed up the process)

Oh, you mean you can damage the dome with hot air? Wish someone would have told me that a couple of years ago… my hot air station only goes to 480C though, maybe that’s why I’ve gotten away with it…

Hot air and silicone, yum.

thats a great idea… you could accomplish the same with hot air blown under the LED. Suggest you try air temp down around 250C

Im pretty sure the dome will come off if you heat the LED from above w hot air… that is my experience anyway, using 400C hot air (bad idea)

nice mods!
my EDC atm is a 3500k E21a… in V11r

Im really liking the 3500k E21a LOT!