Sometimes I find myself, with a mini mag host…
I’ve tried some reflectors, and at least two TIRs,
some 3mil. some 5mil. XPL2,
some beers,
well today it’s aspheric, lens scratched up the most,
it’s not bright, wont reach far,
but still I must post….
3000k 5mm LED ground and polished plus some silver marker sloppily applied to kill an artifact
Head [dis]assembly.
Took me a while to realize how to make it turn on and off the original way, but it does.
retro?
Cool. 
A narrow-beam 5mm variant could be quite efficient in this setup.
Which lens is that? I wanna upgrade my minimag like that
22mm should do it.
Agro, true direct drive 
any inefficiencies are to blame on the LED, abused optic, or host itself. 
id30209, with regular batteries or NiMh it’s pretty much a moonlight mode that lasts a very long time.
I’m feeding this one one LiFePo4 cell with a dummy cell, 
3.2v 400mah but starting with 40ma draw it lasts long enough for me.
I meant that typically aspheric lights are very inefficient when focused. Optically inefficient.
But 5mm LEDs come in narrow emission variants that could avoid most of the light losses. And despite the fact that the LEDs themselves don’t tend to be efficiency leaders, the whole setup could be fine.
I planned on doing a simple mod of switching out the butterfly XML reflector gasket on my clear S2+ to an XP gasket. The LED was perfectly centered, but I didn’t like how it looked.
When I took it apart, there appeared to be a gap between the LED MCPCB and the pill. When I removed the LED, the thermal compound barely spread. The wire holes in the pill were not chamfered enough to allow the MCPCB to lay flat so I sanded them down.
Everything looked good, but the Samsung LH351D 4000K 90+ CRI beam was still poor (though better than with the original smooth reflector). There were a lot of artifacts and I thought about installing a frosted lens. Then I noticed the reflector looked pretty smooth at the base given that it was OP. I had another spare reflector from a triple build and there was a significant difference between them in regards to OP and how the base spans out (left is the old, right is the new).
The new reflector made a huge improvement! My mod started out as simple, but after several hours I ended up with a much better flashlight.
Story of my life NeutralFan…
“Honey I’m going out to the shop, shouldn’t take but a few minutes!” … 3 hours later, dirty and bedraggled, I stagger in with a grin on my face. 
Or in this case, 4 days later and some 26 hours of tedious work later…
That light Dale: 
Next year I also join the contest
I bought my mini Lathe mill combo a few week ago
Looking forward to seeing what you imagine up, gonna be good as you’re crazy talented!
Thanks! I have a few idea just need to practice because I haven’t used a lathe in 7 years.
There she is:
It can grab a Convoy L6 so size is limited but so many good lights under that size.
Congrats Zozz. You’ll surely find many uses for this tool.
The spending has only just started.
Nice Zozz! I don’t know lathes but I’d like to
One day….
Jealous of your cave too.
lol nice, what driver??
How long before it burns your hand?
Dale, that is just a work of art! That is a beautiful light!
Not much of a mod, but really tested my patience! I stacked a second current sense resistor on my S12 driver. Could not find the right physical size so had to go one bigger. The first attempt resulted in assembly and current check, still at 6 amps. 
Took it all apart and worked on the stack a little more and now I get 9.1 amps!!! The Nichia 219C’s at 4000k now look much better and it really does not generate that much more heat.
I really like this light, could almost bring myself to test EDC it.
Nice! I’m holding off getting the S12 sofar, but it really has great potential!
It really is super compact and not quite as floody as one would expect. I really do like it, just would like ramping firmware. Does not need a side e-switch, IMHO.
Some remarks:
*the screws but also the threads in this light are made of cheese, use a very well fitting screwdriver (I had to drill one screw out, so now the head hangs on 3 screws instead of 4, which is no problem at all btw)
*there are no o-rings anywhere, just some grease in the fittings.
*the 3000K SST-20 works very nice in this light, but I regret the White Flat, it does not throw all that better than main led (it is in place of the UV led so it may get less current) and the beam is ringy.
*the ledboard fits over the edge of the driver board, but is also fixed in place with two pins that are soldered inside two small holes in the ledboard.
*it is a bit tiny in there , at these times I admire tterev’s mods even more.