Focusing lens beam shots

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

Recently I bought a lens from DealExtreme that focuses the lens like the flood-to-throw lights do (except you can't go from one to the other). It gives a horrible beam pattern and pretty much any light that hits the reflector is wasted, but the light coming directly from the LED gets a tight focus that has some pretty good throw. Ideally, you could black out the reflector and just get the tight spot, but that was more than I wanted to do.

Here's my Ultrafire WF-504B with a Cree XR-E R2 LED. This light already is pretty good thrower. Here is a shot with the regular lens:

And here it is with the lens

Now here is the Ultrafire WF-502B with XP-G R5 without the lens:

And here it is with the lens. The 504B projects an image of the LED, but with the 502B the shape is not as distinct:

Okay, here are all zoomed in details of the fence post for all 4 pictures above:

With a regular lens the XP-G wins easily (502B XP-G R5 and then 504B XR-E R2):

But with the focusing lens the XR-E R2 wins, lighting up stuff beyond the fence (502B, 504B):

2

Huh, interesting, that is a strange looking beam. Thanks for the shots!

3

The second pic from the top looks something like a time tunnel or portal.

4

I just finished doing what you did except it played around with it until the beam was vrey nice looking. It's quite easy for anyone interested. Just use matte black auto engine spray paint and paint the reflector. Get a very small brush and also paint the top surface of the silver aluminum rings that goes around the base of the emitter. Finally just get some Scotch "Magic" (translucent) tape and mask out the back of the aspheric lens except for the center portion.

Now it will still throw just as far but there will be no artifacts, rings, or stray light to make the beam ugly.

Drop in a forward clicky tail switch and it's even more useful as you can use it as a momentary switch as well as continuously on.

One trick I learned regarding DX is to order spare parts and for cheaper items order two of everything. With the $2.00 aspheric lens if you have two you don't mind taking a change on screwing up on or when you make changes to one you can pop the other one in to see if you've made an improvement or not.