Resurrecting a dead 3D Mag

This is an old beater that's been rather abused... outside looks halfway decent, but it's been attacked by leaky batteries, and had a broken bulb holder/tower for years. Good thing I never throw anything away, huh?

I had a chunk of aluminum left over from... well, who knows. And since 5/8" copper pipe is the same size as a 16mm MCPCB, figured why not hack something together. I have purposely tried to avoid other D-cell Mag build threads just to see if what I come up with is better/worse than what's been done before.

This required ZERO mods to the host, other than cutting off the original plastic bulb tower, and removing anodizing in the tube from the circlip out to the end, so the new pill has good contact for ground and heat transfer. The pill didn't come out exactly the size I wanted, so it's not a pure press-fit retention, but instead is captured by a big c-clip inserted from the front, so the bottom flange on the pill is trapped between the original Mag circlip and the new one. There is NO groove cut in the battery tube for the new c-clip, it's a tight enough fit that it ain't going anywhere on its own but can still be removed later by pressing from the tailcap end with a piece of pipe. The switch comes out like stock, the switch mods are just to remove the original BAT+ spring and fill the spring holder with solder, and for the topside of the switch I used the original chromed-brass lower spring cup with the O.D. flared so as to be a press fit in the top of the switch body. Nothing goes flying across the room when you take the switch out, and there's no fighting with extra wires soldered into the switch or any other messy junk like that.

Pictures!

This was in the early stages... the setscrews were meant to allow adjusting the pillar height for different reflectors without removing the pill from the tube, but the first attempt at making the holes in the body line up with the holes in the pill failed miserably... as did the second attempt. So I gave up on that, and slathered the copper pillar with solder, and filed it down just enough so it's a press fit into the pill. It's still adjustable, but it'd require a bench vise or hydraulic press:

OK, here's a tip: It is impossible to solder the driver into this thing, I had to remove the copper ring (.080" solid wire, flattened to be the same thickness as the driver board, and it fits into an undercut groove in the base of the pill like a snap ring) and tin it, then try again. STILL wouldn't solder; the iron would melt it just enough to weld itself into place and then dump all the heat out and just sit there. I finally had to blast the tip of the iron with a torch, and then bridge a little of the gap, then re-blast, solder, re-blast, solder some more...

Emitter is XM-L U2 (looks to be 6500k, compared to a known-5000k XM-L), the original one from the Solarforce S1100, on a 16mm board with the copper rivets thru the center pad, StinkPAD style.

Keepin' it simple, power from 3 plain alkaline D cells.

Used this reflector from Fasttech...

Fitting the reflector into the unmodified Mag head was pretty straightforward... chop off the threads at the base, open the ID to fit around the copper pillar, trim down the thickness of the outside threads so the Mag bezel would screw on. Used a glass lens leftover from... something. I think an old dead Magcharger.

A centered LED, in a Maglite?!

Bad pics, but trying to show the range of focus adjustment, from as far out as it can go and still cover the o-ring, to fully seated:

I didn't check current at the LED before buttoning it up, but tailcap current is 1.80A with relatively fresh but not-quite-new Duracells. Driver is a 3.04A 105c. Kinda weird having modes on a big D-cell Maglite. I haven't played with it outside yet but it looks to have wider spill (duh, 52mm reflector) than a typical P60/XML but a much smaller hotspot, so even with the textured reflector it'll likely throw better even though it's probably making less overall light.

Very unique solution! I like it a lot. :slight_smile:
If you want more juice you can use 4C or even AA NiMH in a snap. Less of a snap for AAs, though. Flip the tailspring around, bend the very end of the spring so it bisects the spring, add a 1ā€ (I.D.) PVC tube and youā€™re in business for using 4C.

Yeah, I thought about other batteries but this one is going to live permanently in my car, so I want to K.I.S.S. It's plenty bright enough for that, and I left the driver set to enable the much-hated blinky modes. It's about 3 times more light (and about a thousand times nicer beam!) than a stock 3D LED Mag but yet not so much of a hot rod that it's likely to break down after 5 minutes of use. After 20 minutes on high you can touch the copper tower with your finger, it's barely above ambient temp. Can't do that with any of my LiIon lights!

I have a less beat-up 2D Mag I'm considering for something like 2x 32600/32650, though that would be beyond what the stock switch can handle.

Oh, I knew I forgot something - this driver I know has a low battery warning, I don't know if it has a low bat shutoff. So not ideal for alkalines. I've looked all over and the alkaline-specific drivers I have found are for 1-2 batteries only, haven't seen any that are speced to work with 3x at ~4.5v. If anybody has recommendation for a better suited driver than this one I'm all ears!

I think on Low and Medium modes the 105C wonā€™t force ā€˜Offā€™ on you. I could be dead wrong but I swear I tried a 2D Mag build that had the same driver with 2D alkaline and it light up fine.
Edit: confirmed that 2xD alkaline (not even close to new) light up with 8xAMC Nanjg 105c in an XM-L Mag. Only 2 modes: presumably Med. and Low, as the first click did not fire up High. The second click and all clicks afterward let me switch between Dim and Dimmer.

Cool mod .

During the planning/building phase of this I checked tailcap current in direct drive and it was the same, around 1.8A. So some of these 7135s are going to waste, if I keep this driver in there I might as well steal a few of em to use on something else.

Wow comfy, that is very creative. I love that tower you made. It looks really professional.

Heh, not hardly... maybe in a post-industrial Mad Max kind of way. I didn't realize until after I'd got the top snap ring pressed in that I'd forgotten to clean up the machining/file marks. This chunk of aluminum's been through hell, it was the guinea pig for figuring out my new drill press & end mills, so it's been grabbed by tooling and flung across the room, covered in vise-grip toothmarks, and so on...

Nice. Unique build.
Beamshots?!

Hi comfychair,
The stock mag switch can handle 5 amps reliable or mine has anyways. I built a sst-50 2D mag running off of 2 18650ā€™s with 2 DX 20330 drivers wired parallel. These newer high current drivers didnā€™t exist when I built it. I have seen some mods that pushed it to 10amps with a sst-90 but I donā€™t have a clue on how long they it lived.
I built my father a 3D mag for Christmas with a similar setup to yours. I used a amc7135 1.4a no modes for reduced output for a longer run time. Alkalineā€™s canā€™t push high currents anyways which I guess you found out. Itā€™s hard to beat a mag host.

Eh, no need for beam shots really, it's a lot like a P60, but the hotspot is about half the size and slightly more well defined, but nothing like a dedicated long-range thrower. It's very smooth. I thought this reflector was too short & stumpy to do anything useful, as it's shorter than even a stock incan Mag reflector, but it's a nice middle ground.

I have an assortment of 50-52mm reflectors on the way, if I find anything interesting among them I'll post a comparison.

I did a quick & dirty test with a single 18650 and it's not noticeably brighter. I'm sure it would show up on a meter, but not much different just judging by eye.

That would be great. :bigsmile: Iā€™ve been kicking around ideas for a couple old incan D mags. I really like reflectors that can fit a whole led star in there but Iā€™m looking for an Intense hotspot so its as disorienting as possible if its ever needed as a deterrent on strobe.

Is it hard not to damage the chrome plating when opening up the led hole?

No, not really. I mount a small cutoff disk in the drill press, set the depth and lock it down, then just move the reflector around by hand to make the cut. Rough edges clean up easy with a half-round diamond file (pull only). Cleans up nice.

Great build! I took a simple approach and used a 3x18650 dropin with a super wide OP reflector. It is one of my favorite flooders and it still has 40kcd throw.
If I see a Mag on sale, Iā€™ll get it just to do a more interesting mod like this one. Thanks for sharing!

Great Build! The nice thing about Maglites is that there are so many different ways to Mod them. I think the "D" Mag is probably responsible for more mods than all other lights combined.

Very well executed comfychair. Its good to see your star getting a work out and an old light getting a new lease on life. I'll get you to work on me next. Cheers.

Recognize this shape?

No? How about now...

Works in the little ones too... thinking it might be better in the 2xAA, with two 14500s in a parallel adapter...

Thats crazyā€¦. and awesome. :bigsmile:

It looks fancier than it really is, it's just pieces of 1/2" and 5/8" pipe soldered together. It's hollow so there's room for the original Mag driver board inside which would be neat if they weren't so stupidly underpowered. This'll just be direct drive.