Well, you may know the Nichia saga, from the last thread on this light. Up in smoke, as they say. I still need to finish the light, so I am throwing in my XM-L that I have, on the home made copper star. I do plan to power it with more than 3 amps. Not sure yet how hot I will go.
It's still the same Blue Maglite, cut down to a 1D size, but maintaining the side switch. The replacement switch is from ebay and there's a thread on it.
It will be bored for 4AA and will use the holder I already modified with Copper terminals.
Well, most of the important stuff was shown in the video and the other thread. It's just assembly and cosmetics.
I added three 7135 chips to an 8X7135 105C driver, for a total of 3850ma, but that didn't happen. Once everything was together, I get barely 3amps from the tail cap reading. I give up... It lights up, the hell with it. I really don't care about it anyhow. The only reason I worry about the amps or brightness is because so many flashlight people are hung on brightness. To me, anything beyond 200-300 lumens is blinding and I don't like it. From now on, I'm going back to just making the dammed light and that's that. All the testing in the world doesn't stop the fact that I just shake too much and can't see well enough to make good solder joints. Fancy equipment is great, but ya still gotta have the ability to use it.
Here's photos of the light. I will do beam shots tonight and I will do two sets of them Smooth and Stippled. I had to use the shallow reflector. I didn't want to use a short heat sink, to be able to use the deep reflector and I just don't like the head screwed up to the point where you can see the O ring on the body.
That's it. Beam shots later tonight - SMO and Stippled - Same Reflector.
If you turn a 4D into a 1D, there won’t be any knurling, since the smooth tail end section of a 4D is already longer than a 1D is. It would be totally smooth, with no knurling, unless you wanted to do more than one seam and put together short sections. I’m fairly sure of that, but not positive. Been a while since I measured a 4D for cutting.
Yes, to an extent. It’s sort of a hack no matter which way you go, I mean balancing what you want left. Actually, I think I might like one with no knurling at all. Just to have it different. Probably been done though, most everything has been done more than once…