A Perfect Dedome?

Yep, it’s that easy. No magic involved, just drop it in and wait. I never left one in there for less than over night so I can’t say what the minimum time is, but I forgot one for about a day and a half and it was fine. Sometimes you have a little silicone left around the wires etc… I just left the extraneous bits that weren’t on the phosphorus. One time I carefully pushed some small bits off with my pocket knife but I don’t think you need to. Most people have gasoline in the garage and with gas at four bucks a gallon you could do thousands of de-domes for a fiver.

Hey guys on my earlier comment about where have you been I was trying to kid around a bit. I should have put some kind of smiley in there and didn’t, so here it is!. :slight_smile:

Oh sorry, didnt' mean health risk, I meant long term issues with the emitter. I'm thinking this: take it out of the gas, solder the leads - poof! Or leaving the gas on to evaporate, maybe it would leave a film of chemicals behind, causing bad effects weeks/months later? -- that kind of effect. By "care/treatment", meaning clean-up, spray treatments (LED seal or whatever). But what you are saying nothing is needed, and after one year, no long term effects. This is getting better and better! Looking back now, why did I go so off track? This seems to be the best and easiest way by far, at least for me and many others I assume. Now it seems like the only issue is deciding whether to do it or not - yes there's some risk of damaging a $10 LED (plus s/h) you waited 4 weeks for (the risks though seem less than I thought), but you also have to decide whether the smaller tighter beam, less light in the flood, warming the tint is worth it for the double effect on candelas. Making that decision is easy easy once you understand all the pros and cons.

That's the 'planned obsolescence' fuse.

Well then, mine will not be going ‘obsolete’ by itself then :smiley:

Putting a XP-G in gas oil for 24 hours works fine.

The dome did not fall off by itself though. What happened was that I thought it had not worked so when I took it out of the gas oil i poked the dome with my finger to feel if it had gone soft at all. It had not really but it just slid off!

I then sprayed the die with electro cleaner for a few seconds and that removed any gooey stuff that was left.

Initially worried that I might have broken the bonding wires with my thick fingers I hurried to test it out with a battery and it works.

Thank you very much to the OP and all others who have contributed to this thread and the knowledge we now have. TY! :-)

will the electronics cleaner do the de-doming i wonder?

No, they are made to not mess up plastics and similar stuff.

how about WD-40?

Very unlikely. WD-40 doesn’t attack silicone very well - if at all.

This stuff would probably do a great job. It dissolves Silicone amazingly fast.
http://www.techspray.com/download-tds-document.php?pId=153

At $35/pint plus hazmat it also dissolves your wallet contents amazingly fast. :wink:

I found here on a dutch forum that an electronics guy used petroleum-ether to remove silicone remains. I have some here where I work, I will give it a try. The composition is not far from gasoline, but it is much cleaner. It is even more equivalent to Coleman Fuel (which is also much cleaner than gasoline).

sounds like it is equivalent?

coleman fuel is pretty cheap around here (~$10-$12 a gallon). Which makes me wonder who pays $10 a quart for naptha (same thing different label).

its also a solvent/thinner for plasti-dip :stuck_out_tongue:

I doubt that it will work. It is a pretty mild solvent. Good on sticky residue from tape and tends not to harm most plastics. I use it for polishing plastics and LED display windows with red jewelers rouge.

I tried lacquer thinner the other day. Oddly enough (imo), it seemed to be less effective than acetone.

The petroleum-ether I have here says: 100-140°C. I may have some Coleman Fuel as well somewhere. Perhaps when I can find some time and enough spare leds I will do a 'great dedome test string' one of these days..

It seems like it is not necessarily the most agressive solvent that works best on led-domes, I'll try it anyway .

Anybody de-domed an XRE? Same process?

Will the metal ring come off without damaging anything?

metal ring doesn’t come off with acetone.

good luck getting all the silicone out of the inside of the ring, and enjoy the ugly artifacts that the inside of the ring makes….

I’ve done a few XRE and XRC, just grab the metal ring with a plier and pull/twist it off.

After, before soaking in gas, or instead?