What did you mod today?

There have been a few threads pop up lately regarding collars and RLT. Since I’ve been locked down in the house I thought I’d experiment a little with a UF-1504. So, this whole project probably took no longer than 20 minutes. Sanded both ends of a Maglight AA Mini reflector as it was the smallest reflector I was willing to destroy. Obviously not spherical, but it looked pretty close. I didn’t bother smoothing out the sandmarks as you can see. Put a coat of flat black paint on the outside.

I did no tuning or calibrating or anything like that. Just sanded it and guessed it looked about right. Light has a dedomed XPG. Took readings at 10 meters with an HS1010.
Without collar: 308 kcd
With collar: 384 kcd

I swear this light used to put out about 400 kcd when I built it 5 or so years ago. I probably haven’t touched it in as long. I was thinking of replacing the led sometime in the near future. Anyway, I’d say score with the Maglight Mini reflector. Once you Dremel off the outer edge it fits nicely in the 1504 pill.

Nice. :slight_smile:

Nice mod Willy

any artifact rings around the hot spot?

Nice bump! Maybe elevating it a bit will get better results, but still a cheap bump.

Thanks. It’s not ringy at all after I painted everything black. There is one very faint large outer ring, but I’m not sure it it’s possible to eliminate it. I did notice the led seems more defined on a wall shot with the collar. I can even see the outline of the square pad.

I will try moving the collar up a bit and taking more readings. This light is reading very low for some reason. Maybe because it has sat for so long. I think I’ll try sanding the solder blobs on the ends of the springs first.

Cleaning the lens and all electrical contact points could really make a difference. Once you have it all tuned-up I’d love to see you repeat your w w/o collar readings. What cell and driver are you using?

I got a SBT90.2 in a 1504 pill - it does 500+ kcd. Would be interesting to try a DIY collar on it...

Niteye Eye10 Rotary

219b 3000k 9050 D200 (trailhunter LED),
Upgraded mcpcb, reflector and centering ring (moderator007 finds),
Driver has Strobe at double twist,
Sapphire lens (Archibald Tuttle tip)
Remove detente ball and spring, relube with Nyogel 767a high damping grease, and install glow marker (tx pinkpanda) on tail.

Whats not to Love? :slight_smile:

What’s up with this reflector showing 4 bright spots?

It seems that quad effect is related to having the camera closer to the LED than the focal distance of the reflector.

Notice that reflector in the Eye10 is not all lit up, because I am holding my iPhone really close, hoping to show that the LED centering, turned out Really Well!

I checked and the same short focal distance quad effect happens with other lights… once I pull back to fill the reflector with the light of the LED, the effect disappears

this is a reflector from a Maratac CR123
up close:

farther away:

this is a reflector from a V10a
up close:

pulled back:

Yeah, but I would expect it to show more or less a ring. I guess large die size (and therefore more pronounced squareness) relative to ref size plays a role here…

BLF GT White Flat 1 WHY! PITA :person_facepalming: (Got bored, waiting on parts for a 90.2 build)

2S2P to 4P Carrier mod… simplicity at its finest…

Mtn. SRK/M6 Linear Driver… 5.2amps Big Spring….Simple 3 mode…

Hmmm so far so good… 725lm….680lms until batteries are DEAD!

Let the games BEGIN! :smiley: :+1:

Nice work KB!
Any throw numbers?

I’m curious to know numbers too. Great mod btw Kawiboy :+1:

here is an example of the beam from the stock reflector, that I removed

and an example of the beam from the upgraded reflector, that you noticed has the quad effect

this reflector has a smaller hole at the bottom, both LED are 219b

He just wanna make us beg... K, i'm begging...

Just over 1.3Mcd so far. Looks like more to be had. Got 13500 LUX at 32.4ft. Prolly need to measure further out, but it’s raining now, maybe after or later tonight?

. I came up with a new or better way to shim the reflector up… and keep from spinning the shims and the big spacer bar, to keep from sheering the leads off… got real lucky didn’t fry the driver :person_facepalming:

. Also just a couple thousands off center JACKS the spot up, with this tiny emitter to this big ass reflector it is a BIG DEAL. I maybe have .009” slop in the mcpcb diameter to the centering block I.D. Got a couple Idea’s on how to tighten it up, so I don’t keep losing it…after bumping it around during shim changes…


Don’t let the pic fool ya… that spot is just a Micro Dot… unbelievably small…

Haha…shit, you can see how small the beam is narrowing down at that range :open_mouth: …… :cry: Kind of sad, I’m just doing this for something to do… it will all come down and go away, once I get my parts… It’s been fun… :smiley: :+1:

That tree looks like a big candle :laughing:

Nice work

Might be a first for KawiBoy1428’s local fire department. “I was just shinning my flashlight up in that there tree and it caught fire”. :smiley:

I grabbed a Convoy M21C with the intention of finding something interesting to slap in the host. I only played with it for a few minutes before tearing into it. The SST40 is a good performer but I don’t really care for the tint.

I have been wanting to try a Luxeon V 4000K so this was a good opportunity. I figured with the relatively large die and medium size reflector it would make a reasonably throwy beam; great for my nighttime trail walks. The M21C has very thick walls on the head and it takes a long time for it to heat up. Perfect for sustaining high currents for a long time.

I used one of the nifty remote MOSFET drivers from led4power. I don’t know if it really makes much of a difference as far as thermal performance but it’s something different at it looks neat so I figured I’d give it a try. I set the driver to CC mode with a max of 7A.

The M21C is designed for a 22mm driver but the LD-B4 is only 20mm. This means I had to solder the driver to the retaining ring. This isn’t really a problem, but I wanted to solder the wires onto the MCPCB first because the head is very deep and I didn’t want to be fiddling with all those tiny wires down inside there. After soldering the wires to the driver, I gave it four or five anti-clockwise rotations before screwing the driver/retaining ring into position. I was worried I’d twist off some of the tiny signal wires but it ended up working out just fine. There was plenty of space in the cavity for all the extra length of the wires.

I really like the Luxeon V. The tint is very neutral; not pink but doesn’t appear green either. It’s very uniform with minimal tint shift across the beam. It’s not high CRI but colors appear natural. The hotspot ends up being just a hair tighter than a C8+ with XM-L2. :+1: