A Perfect Dedome?

Another one of the benefits of using thinners. When I pull mine out, the thinners evaporates almost instantly. No residue or smell. It’s great!

Djozz,

You are the one of “pencil beam haters guys” :). I have all types of flashlights.

Well I just want to say few words to you and other guys that are sharing same opinion with you.

There are no thing as unusable light. You just did not find use for such lights.

Pencil beam?
I will give only one example(there are more but I don’t have will for describing). Your flashlight is perfect riflescope reflector light, although I prefer aspherics beam better(I described several times why I prefer aspheric, especially for hunting).
Distant spotting and small size light is very important for this type of hunting. You can not mount bigger reflectors like Olight SR95 TN31 on your rifle.

Your tuned Jacob from picture(you did not have to cut reflector in order to perfectly center the beam) really can throw claimed numbers. It can throw even more than that with XP-E2 with slightly larger hotspot than on your picture.

But really nice job. I recommend only gasoline de doming for XP-E2.

Yes, I think it’s the same.

There was someone who mentioned spotting buoys in the night when on a boat, pencil beams reach far and do not put out distracting light nearby. So there are indeed one or two applications, so I'll change my opinion of pencil beam flashlights to 'fairly useless' . Did I also mention that they are fun? I think that 'useless' and 'fun' are very close to each other .

LOL

+1

So true...

I live in California where the gas has lots of additives so I use white gas (Coleman stove fuel). It doesn’t smell as much. I grind down the SinkPAD if it’s going into a pill that only holds a 14mm then reflow on the LED. I had LED’s slide off from the heat melting the solder from grinding. I then put them in a small jar of white gas for at least 24 hours up to 7 days. Bump the dome with a tooth pick and it falls off. After an hour I test it with a small cell with test leads to see if it works, solder it into a light and burn off the smell.

I think that you are not serious man talking like that. But you are from Amsterdam so that is ok :slight_smile:

Fun? If you call 600-800 meters distance spotting fun than fun it is. For me this is some serious fun, joy and need.

To carry one small Nightmaster V2 in jacket pocket or 1,5-2kg flashlight with belt around my neck :Sp?

Not to mention that you will see further in the night with such flashlights. KCD values sometimes means nothing it is important what you can see in the night.

Well city guys in their suburbs really don’t need such flashlights I will admit you that but you would change your mind on “pencil beam” on one of my live presentations of flashlights.

Rubum:

Don’t do that. U can never get rid of smell like that. I know because I tried. Use Isoproply alchol emitter bath after de-doming. It kills any gas smell + it cleans surface.

Yes, for me as a city guy I never need a flashlight, the last power cut here was 10 years ago and if you look at satellite images at night you can see that in the Netherlands there is no place where it ever gets really dark. So for me flashlights are a hobby and I like to explore the limits of what can be made of them, and the concept of really needing a flashlight is quite alien to me, I am quite (but happily :-) ) surprised if anything new that I build is actually something very useful for someone. So thanks for pointing out the usefulness of pencil beams, it makes the hobby even more fun knowing that .

If it’s not really dark, then logically one avoids more ‘light pollution’ in the form of fat beam and spill. So there’s another use for a skinny thrower. :slight_smile:

I made a short video doing a hot dedome here...

Anyone ever try a silicon digestant like Dow Corning DS-2025?

I have some on order. I’m looking forward to seeing how well it performs. Seems like this stuff would effect the perfect de-dome: unlike solvents, digestants leave no traces of silicone.

There's only a residue left after using gasoline if you choose not to flick it off with a toothpick. No matter how many times you try to reinvent the wheel the end product is still gonna be something round that rotates around a central axis. Gas works, is readily available even in parts of the world that don't have indoor plumbing, doesn't have to be ordered from some specialty supplier, and won't harm the LED.

Mfrey…

I think all should stick to gasoline. After gasoline bath use Isoproply alcohol splash cleanup and surface is clean as it never been de-domed after all.

Stick to verified things.

You should all read this funny post in this thread. This was hilarious to me :smiley: It has deep message. It is about different ways of de-doming. I will quote it:

“There may be an even better way. All you have to do is build a rocket to launch the LED to fly close to the sun to heat up the dome, then a super-intelligent robot can poke it with a pin and peel the dome off. Do you think that might work better than just dunking the damn thing in gasoline and then a few hours later like magic you have a freshly de-domed LED?”

I’m going to try it. Worst case scenario, I’m out $5. I think it’s going to work beautifully.

Hey Mfrey,

I was apprehensive about using petrol (gasoline) to do any dedome work.

I’ve dedomed 6 emitters, with only 1 failure, and even then, it wasn’t down to the gas, it was down to two gold wires coming away with the dome, and it was a difficult XR-E emitter with the small metal ring anyways, and I’d hung the emitter upside down in the ‘dedome tank’ (a small jar for making home made jam), so when the dome fell away and took all the ‘goo’ from underneath….the wires fell away too. I suspect a sub-standard, or even a counterfeit Cree emitter quite frankly!

I’ve even dedomed an XP-E………tiny thing it is, turned a Small Sun ZY-C10S into a laser!

Just grow a pair and do it! I used a razor blade to score the domes several times, it speed up the process.

To clean, I use a 35mm film roll canister, filled halfway with methylated spirits, don’t know what it’s called over in the States, and swirled the stars for a few minutes, then I used, well, an old tshirt cut into squares, I can feel the emitter edges better you see, I removed the excess spirits, then I use a hairdryer, set at cool, at around 30cm away from the star, and blow dry it for a few minutes on high speed.

No gas smell, and a nice clean, bright star!

Hope this helps my friend.

Rob

I have used gas and it works pretty well. I agree. I’m trying the DS as an experiment. I won’t belabor the point but this stuff was formulated to do exactly what we want a solvent to do for de-doming: quickly and completely remove cured silicone without otherwise damaging the substrate. It even washes off with water when it’s done.

I was going to post results afterwards but folks seem resistant to something new, so anyway…

I don't think anybody here is resistant to anything just because it's new. Personally I'm resistant to things that don't work as well or aren't as convenient. If this DS were available at every corner store in the world and cheaper than gasoline I'd be all over it.

Say someone proposed switching all road vehicles over to square wheels, and had proof that they work just as well as round wheels as long as you cut all the roads with the appropriate washboard pattern so the ride is as smooth as with current-tech tires, and maybe they even give better traction as long as the wheels & road surface stay in phase. Better road-holding, fewer traffic fatalities. That would be something new, right? Would it be silly to point out the shortcomings of square wheels?

Well, I am curious about anything new, useful and not so usefull the like, so I'd be glad if you try out the silicone solvant and post about the results :-) (I'd also like reading that post about experiences with square wheels and zigzagged highways ;-) )

Please, let us know the results!! This is exactly part of what BLF is about - experimentation, R&D to find better solutions. At the time, I thought gas was the best easiest way, that's why I started this thread, but records are made to be broken.