Resurrecting a dead 3D Mag

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 won’t force ‘Off’ 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 18650’s with 2 DX 20330 drivers wired parallel. These newer high current drivers didn’t exist when I built it. I have seen some mods that pushed it to 10amps with a sst-90 but I don’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. Alkaline’s can’t push high currents anyways which I guess you found out. It’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: I’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 I’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, I’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 crazy…. 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.

Well that's interesting. I managed to build something that wasn't better than the stock light! The sexy D-cell LED reflector really does not like the big die emitters - it loses all its throw, and still has not much usable spill. XM-L works better in the shorter incan D-cell reflector, and the little XP-G2 in the incan reflector beats the pants off the XM-L in throw. I don't have a setup yet to check the XP-G2 in the stock LED reflector. Maybe I should build one of those.

But... the copper pill XM-L works awesome in a LED MiniMag with 3xAA NiMh.

I’m so jealous :stuck_out_tongue:

That’s hawt.

For similar drive levels, the XP-G2 will create higher lux than the XM-L and XM-L2 in a given optic. MRsDNF’s Mini C8 builds represent this relationship well.
Mouseover for XP-G2, mouseout is XM-L:

While its sweetspot is slightly trickier to find, I’ve found the MagLED reflector rocks with XM-L and the incandescent one frankly sux in comparison when used with LEDs. Since it was designed to accommodate the radiation pattern of a filament, which emit light in essentially 360, the incandescent reflector’s focal point is ~1/4” into the parabola. This creates wasted reflecting area when LEDs are used—when viewed head-on, there will be a visible deadzone around the emitter. In addition to improved corona size the deeper reflector yields significantly improved tint homogeneity between hotspot, corona, and spill compared to the shallower incandescent reflector. If you go with neutral XM-Ls (~5000k and below): MagLED reflector redirects more of the cooler light emitted at angles close to the normal (with respect to the die surface) into the hotspot and corona. The shallow incand reflector allows the cooler light to become spill light, while reflecting a greater percentage of the warmer yellow light emitted at greater angles (WRT the normal), creating an unnaturally yellow hotspot and cold spill.

Mouseover is MagLED reflector, mouseout is incand reflector. Otherwise the same light (Mag 2C XM-L T4 5A3)