Cyclone C88 with 6xAA -finished!

Yes the price is much better if you can save costs of international shipping for mag and all the parts needed. Also if you can do the parts for yourself.. Anyway, after cyclone will be finished, mag is very close to be another flashlight to mod, guess everyone here owns at least one

Things have moved forward today and finally the ordered battery holders arrived! What is even better - the extension tube was finished meanwhile also and fits the Cyclone very well, have a look at pictures!

About the new battery holders quality - they are the same as the one shipped with Cyclone, as expected, I'm really curious how they will perform in parallel. The extension tube is not anodized yet and I will only paint it black, for testing will be good as it is. Now as soon as I build the batt.holder will do the tests and post the results!

Nice jamio, looking forward to how this ends up.

I would probably leave the tube silver myself, black paint will probably look bad close up

When do you plan to modify the battery holders?

Will build the holder tomorrow and test in the evening, that is the plan.

The battery holder is finished! I didn't want to rush things and rather let the glue dry during the weekend. Here are pictures of how I made it, maybe it'll be usefull for some of you

1 - cut these metal sheets as marked (be sure to cut the right ones, one on (+) and one on (-) side, as the arrows pointing)

2 - remove the metal sheets on the other sides
- now I soldered to each one little brass pill for better contact, but this is optional
- prepare two about 12cm long wires and solder blue to (-) and red to (+) sheet. The blue is soldered on top side (as seen better on next picture) and the red is soldered on the inside - it is better for (+) protection against accidental short circuit with flashlight tube or driver

3 - drill hole in the plastic wide enough for the (+) cable, put the cable through and glue both sheets back to plastic holder

- here is detail of how the blue cable is soldered, unfortunatelly I forgot to take image for the red cable, it is soldered from bottom of the sheet

Now on the sides that will be glued together:

4 - cut small groove for blue cable, ideally with A shape so the cable 'click' in - this will help later at gluing
5 - bend the cables as on picture, cut for proper lenth and solder them to parts cutted in first step

6 - clean both plastic surfaces (I used alcohol),
- apply enough glue in the middle of both plastic parts, also coat cables with a little glue
(the glue layer will be about 3mm thick when both parts are glued - the cables are glued in between and their thickness make those 3mm, so the best is apply enough glue in the middle and when both parts are pressed together, glue will fill the space)

7 - carefully put the metal sheets on place, each on opposite holder, (easy because cables are long enough) align cables and press both parts together
- fill the glue where its still missing and remove excess glue

Freshly glued, I used white Mamut glue from Den Braven, holds like crazy and the work is very good with it

While the glue was drying, I also soldered the springs to the contacts

And, final 3s2p holder - just added red/blue insulating tape to the ends to avoid accidental wrong inserting

All parts are the original used in holders, there were only little brass pills added on each end and springs were soldered. I'm very curious how many amps will this modified holder be able to provide. I didn't test it yet but will do it very soon... Now the next I want to do is direct-solder led to custom copper heatsink similar to Match's latest test. If all will go well the heatsink will be made this week!

So this is it for now, will post any update I'll have

Gotta give you props, you are making it happen!

Nice neat job you did, I bet it works great. Thanks for posting the tutorial.

Nice mod, good work

Thank you guys, I tried to make it good as possible and went out pretty well, still it could be better

I did a quick test of the holder - driver, led and holder were only wired together (without soldering) on the table as flashlight is still disasembled while I'm waiting for the heatsink. So from 3AA I measured 2.45amps, from 6AA it was full 2.8amps. I don't like that it gives only 2.45amps with 3AA, have to work something out.

Hello, I have another update on this project and I really thought this time it will be completed &with all the tests. But sometimes things go different than one want :~ …and now it just needs more time. Okay now what was done successfully:

Made a custom copper heatsink - it is much more massive than the default one, the heat transfer contact with the body tube is 3 times more than before (I slightly increased the total height and also removed some anodizing inside the tube, for better heat transfer)
I really wanted the led to be directly bonded to copper heatsink but didn’t wanted to solder cables to those tiny pads on top of led base, so I did it similar way how lambda is mounting the leds to heatsinks, thanks for inspiration! :slight_smile: (or I think I saw it there)

Soldering the led was very easy as both parts fit very well, first presoldering the middle part with tiny layer and then add the led and cables:

…and after all this was finished, I was not carefull and scratched the emitter badly :cry: It still works but it really needs to be replaced. I changed my default t6-3c led for u2-1c and unfortunatelly had only 1, so now it has to wait till I get the new one. I should be more carefull until finish, I know……

I know how you feel about damaging the emitter. I managed to just touch one with the soldering iron leaving a small black spot on it. luckily it scraped of and seems to be ok. Looking forward to the completion of this.

I have read about some guys here that had success with polishing out scratches in the dome of an XM-L with a q-tip and plastic polish. May be worth a try.

Well done, can’t wait to see the end result!

I would certainly give it a try but I’m not sure how to do it properly, do you have a link?

I read it here, not much of info though. Maybe send him a PM.

I hope it works out for you, very nice build!

Thank you for this advice, it worked! It is indeed possible to remove scratches from led dome with wet q-tip mounted in micro drill, however must be done slightly and q-tip must be always wet. I had not plastic polish so I used a tooth paste and even with it the dome now looks much better! For the Cyclone I’ll go with new emitter as I already ordered one, but certainly will not throw this one away and will use it in other flashlight.

Looking forward to the updates.

Was it expensive for you to get the extension made?

I was just thinking to myself it would be really nice if the whole middle section was 1 piece/tube, then maybe strip the anodizing and polish it all up or paid the head and tail and have gold/silver.

No no, it was not expensive, extension tube was made for about $10. With more pieces at once the price could be better, but I was glad the man was willing to made me only 1.
I didn’t updated the first post yet, but if someone like the extension tube just machined without anodizing, this could be the price + shipping. Without anodizing, I’m able to get even 1 piece only.
Btw. you posted in earlier post that you like the flashlight with silver tube, as on picture - I still didn’t painted mine because I’m liking it silver too :slight_smile:

that’s really impressive work, especially on the direct mount LED. Did you mill the post hole in the star? The battery holder is a very neat piece of work too, well done!

Well I thought this was the easiest way of how to bond led directly to copper and still be able to use it in c88 :slight_smile: I drilled the hole with micro-drill in the star first and then used mini-files to finish the rectangle shape. I wish I had the milling maschine :slight_smile:

The battery holder - I’m sure it will be able to give 3.5+ amps as it is, with default springs used, but maybe I would think of upgrade it later with copper parts, or at least with better copper springs to lover overall resistance - does anybody know where to get thin copper plate and gold plated springs in size close to original ones?