What did you mod today?

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I did not know how well the lead free reflow solder and lead reflow solder mix. I just burned up a XHP70.2 and that may have caused it.
Is there a way to tell the difference ?
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I should probably specify Boruit D10 vs Nitecore D10. I don’t own a Nitecore D10 - though I do own a Nitecore EX11.2, which is directly related (and 16340/CR123 instead of AA/14500).

The Boruit D10 has an Anduril FET+1 driver currently made by Quadrupel.

That I know of, Cereal_Killer made an Anduril driver for the Nitecore D10, but the board is not public. AFAIK there is not a currently available driver for the adaption. I’ve debated asking about sending my EX11.2 to gchart and seeing if he can puzzle it out, but I currently can’t even afford to ask about it :wink: being unemployed. An Anduril FET+1 (or similar) would be nice for this host. For me, the stock ramping is just far too slow, and I don’t trust the current driver with Li-Ion very much. And as long as Anduril has a separate channel for the single 7135, the minimum output is sub-lumen and good enough for me (evidenced on my FW3A and now my Boruit D10).

In my experience, a touch of good ol’ 60/40 or 63/37 mixes in quite well and drastically improves the performance (melting point and eutecticity) of most of the RoHS-compliant solder I’ve encountered.

However, given that LEDs can be in RoHS-compliant devices, I don’t think they should have an issue being reflowed with lead-free. And the solder mixture of lead-free and not- shouldn’t affect thermal properties enough to burn out your LED. Did it burn up on a long turbo run or very quickly after being powered? For XHP70.2 I’d be more worried about the heat-sinking of the MCPCB, since they can happily consume 150+ Watts.

I haven’t tried DC-Fix, but I’ve tried a pebbled acrylic lens and found the frosted glass lens is still better at allowing some throw. I have a pebbled acrylic lens installed on an S3 with a CREE XM-L2 LED. The frosted glass lens was not enough to smooth out the artifacts. Even with a pebbled acrylic lens, it still has a good hotspot and throw.

Outdoors you may not even noticed a donut hole. I do my evaluations against an indoor white wall, but I may be more of a perfectionist than others.

So, tonight I decided to give something a shot.

Last year I had gchart build me a mini smart tailcap, which I got in October. Today I finally tried to install it.

First, I had noticed shortly after I got it that the fit was an issue. The D25C’s tailcap is… Well, at this point I hate it. The board kind of sits on there loose and rests on a tiny little lip in the body tube at the bottom of the threading. But up at the top where the tailcap board would go, there’s a narrowing of the tailcap’s internal diameter. I hadn’t noticed this or given the diameter to gchart, so the tailcap board didn’t fit up there.

Today I carefully measured and found the difference was about .80mm, and I indeed had an average of about .40mm (barely, in a few spots) that I could file off. So away I went. And I finally got the fit working there.

Next, I went to attach the smart tailcap board, and melted the Omten 1288 just enough to stop working. Nice one, me. It’s okay, I had a spare I grabbed off something. Got the board and the new switch on.

Next, whole stack was too thick. The old configuration had a thin metal washer between the switch boot and the top of the Omten. The new lit tailcap was in its place, but it was just too thick for how this D25C switch assembly is made. Even though I chose the .8mm thickness PCB. By comparison, the washer is 0.50mm - thinner than most of the components on the tailcap board, not just the board itself. I tried to use another, thinner tail switch PCB I had (to gain some space) but the fit wasn’t right for the shelf. And I ruined the second Omten 1288 I had. So, I’m fresh out now.

Fortunately EagTac sells the full assembled switch on a board on their aliexpress store, so I don’t have to worry about melting the next one I put in to get the light functional again. I have to just accept at this point that unless I can find a perfectly sized lit tail more in the style of Convoy’s - where the LEDs are on the switch PCB itself - I’m not going to get any lit tail in this D25C.

Cool thing, though: I got the “bleeder resistor” right with some graphite (pencil lead) on the OTC.

What Scallywag said, they do mix. Not sure about long term effects. But: Thus far I have not reused any LEDs from RoHS-compliant lights.

Also, I can’t see what kind of solder is on my LEDs. Experienced users might, don’t know. Best would be to mark them somehow after an emitter swap. Just use an IR thermometer to see when solder melts on your heat plate.

:frowning:

Last night I modded this little utorch s1 mini. As it came it was pretty much worthless and saw zero use.
I’ve been getting more and more into road biking, living out in the country the smallest “block” I can ride around is an 8 mile trip and I’ve been increasing my ride distances more and more this summer so I converted it to a red light to replace the little plastic-button battery-store bought tail light I had been running. This way I’m able to carry a spare battery on really long rides and actually get some use out of the S1 in the process! I also built a mount for it out of a electrical Conduit hold down band.

LED is a 660Nm XP-G2 on a heavily clearanced 16mm KD board. I also ordered a set of 7135 fet driver boards for it I found in oshpark since I read the stock driver didn’t like low vF led’s but I’ll try it out before even looking into building one of those. It ran all night and was still happy when I got up thismorning.

Hum, very interesting! I may need to try it. I only have frosted TIR, not frosted glass lenses. Obviously the TIR will reduce more the throw

I tried it outside yesterday at night and despite it was not in a picth black environment, I still noticed the hole. It bothers me a little bit, but I will try to reduce it somehow. This weekend I will test it on darker environments to see how it looks and will report.

BTW, before finishing the mod, experimented the S2 OP reflector: the hole was even more noticeable!

Thanks for your input :wink:

Hey, the tailcap board works GREAT. I just need to pick a different light for it. Also you didn’t do anything wrong - everything met the specs I provided, that light was just never going to work. I just have to accept that and pick a different light for it. My Jaxman E3 is already getting nervous…

Thrunite T10T with 620nm XP-E2
AA Eneloop outputs: 0.1, 2, 26, 105 lumens

I have nitecore D10 Q5.
I want emitter swap with stock driver.

What’s the best between 219c 4000k or sst20 4000k.

No easy anwer, both LEDs are quite different in many respects.

modded a Copper Drop Tool Head, running on a Maratac body,
to SST-20 3000k

I could not unscrew the pill, the driver came out, ripping both wires… after that I got the pill out, replaced the wires, and started over.

So the 200mmx200mm hot plate was sighted for $64.99 on the ’zon, with Prime shipping. It arrived today…

Using the hot plate, I finally reflowed the brass ring from my old Supfire M6 driver onto the new one. Generously applied kapton tape to the top side of the driver in the hopes I didn’t lose anything, and heated the whole thing up to 180C. From there, a brief application of the soldering iron allowed me to lift the brass ring free. Basically repeat in reverse order to apply it to the new driver.

Got it all hooked up and no light. Drove myself nuts for a bit, but I eventually tracked it down to the reflector shorting to both LED+ and LED-, cumulatively across the three XHP50.2 3V MCPCBs. I disassembled the head, re-evaluated the underside of the reflector, and decided I needed that liquid electrical tape someone mentioned on here. For now, I used some UV-activated adhesive applied thinly to all six MCPCB soldering points. Given that I killed the previous driver with a similar short (back then, I was planning to use three Luxeon V), one of the Convoy L6 driver swaps I did, and at least one other mod, I think I’m just going to habitually apply the stuff in every single mod I do, so I placed an order. (I’ve tried Kapton tape and it never works out for me.)

While I was doing silly things, I also decided to reflow the ATTiny85 from the old driver in place of whatever was on the new driver. It has NarsilM, so I have to go figure out how that works, but the basic ramp/moonlight/turbo things seem common with RampingIOS and Anduril, so that’s working. The new driver came with some version of Bistro on it, but I’m not entirely convinced it was the correct version based on some un-assembled testing I did. (It seemed like a clicky version of Bistro HD OTSM or something - I forgot to specify firmware when I ordered the driver long ago. Regardless, the e-switch never seemed to work.)

I think my next batch of projects will be learning to flash drivers. I could go for some Anduril, and not just on this light…

Anyway, I need a set of four married 30Qs. I know this light can handle more than the (married set from my MF02 and BLF LT1) four 35Es I’ve got in there now

Went ahead and reflowed my Luxeon V2s into my Sofirn C8F. XP-L2s can take their tint rainbow and go home.

Reflowing on the hotplate was magical BTW, I highly recommend it. I set it to 180 and when it was about there I noticed one of the LEDs on the C8F MCPCB looked wonky… bumped it with the tweezers and it moved. Picked it right up. I was able to gently rub the end of my solder on the MCPCB to freshen up the LED pads, and then I just carefully set the Luxeon V2s on there. One was off a bit and I watched it correct itself. I gave them the recommended “tap” on the dome with a q-tip but none of them ejected excess solder. Double-checked the polarity and then removed the MCPCB to cool.

removed the sst-20 3000k from the AAA Tool head
because it was too green for me.

am giving a 3500k LH351d a chance.

did not want to bother with the hotplate,

the reflow was done by holding my soldering iron to the copper mcpcb

Now that’s my kind of emitter swap :wink:
I find the tint good with dome on or off but prefer the dome off.
To me with the dome on it looks like a beam out of a TIR, makes a defined round hotspot.
With the dome off (shaved) you get a tighter hotspot but it fades into the spill.

yeah, the big hotspot is kind of fun :slight_smile:

I recently modded a drop AAA and tool ti AAA as well. Wish I could find those 1mm thick copper mcpcbs for sale.