Soldering wires to a star, a little differently? - Video

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
7

Some days I don’t shake, some days I can’t hold the iron still with two hands. I try to pick the steady days for videos.

8

Thanks for sharing! I’ve taken some solid core copper wire and hammered it out before, but it looked a mess. It did the job, but if you thought regular wire insulation recedes a lot when heated, wait until you’ve hammered part of the insulation thin too, and watch your uninsulated end of wire magically double in length!

9

May be easier to just use solder braid, but, like the flattened wire idea. Tin wire, flatten, then bend where only original insulation may touch the star. The wire butt soldered may break away as me clumsy so would be nice to keep the wire in one piece and flattened on end.

Thanks for video!

10

Good work and good video OL. Thanks. Unlike the nickel banding or copper braid, your sheet copper is unlikely to shift around once the light is assembled. (so no need to glue it in place, that seems like a big advantage)

11

a very good idea, thanks for the video, going to use this method some day!

12

Neat trick !

13

I don't really have the bandwidth to watch many videos. From what I gather of the comments, it sounds like you are flattening a thick wire (tin, flatten, bend). Great idea. Will definitely need to try to keep that idea in mind.

14

Great video!

15

I am using a small piece of flat copper sheet stock about .012" thick and butting the wire up against it, so that only the thickness of the sheet is on top of the star.

16

So after being skeptical this was any better than my nickel band method I went ahead and tried this on my EagleEye X6 yesterday night and it worked great. Its sort of different methods for different applications, not really competing methods to do the same thing, this way wouldn’t work if the holes in the HS wern’t spaced ~16-20mm apart but in lights like that of works great.

Thanks for the new technique O-L!

17

Wonderful, just wonderful.

I think you've mentioned it before, but now it makes more sense with the video.

I am going to try it as well.

Thanks.

18

Thanks OL, very instructive. I’ve used copper tabs for some time, tinning all the joints in advance really speeds up the process and avoids overheating the LED or driver components.

19

Great solution of an annoying problem.

20

Thanks for taking the time to show this.

John.

21

Where would you acquire a thin sheet of copper from?

22

O-L wrote:

I am using a small piece of flat copper sheet stock about .012" thick and butting the wire up against it, so that only the thickness of the sheet is on top of the star.

Ah, very good idea. Thank you.

23

I was logged in when I searched so it may not work for you, just type “xxGa copper sheet” in eBay in whatever gauge you need.

Edit: I always buy my raw material’s (such as copper sheeting/rounds) from Etsy

24

+1 Etsy is where I get my copper sheet. For thicker stuff, I just flatten out copper couplings.

25

Wow - I gotta try this. I usually solder the wires on the LED last and keep the wires the shortest length possible. So my method, you have to de-solder the LED wires first to remove the driver. I think using this method, you must have enough play in the wires to solder the driver connections with the MCPCB mounted already, then have to have enough pill space to fit the extra length of coiled wire. Not sure how you can do this in many pills with 18 AWG wire. Think I'd like to see a part 2, showing the driver being soldered and how it all fits/assembles together.

But this O-L method is a hugh benefit for HD2010's, because basically you can't have any bump up on the connections, specially if you de-dome. I'll have to try this.

26

Great idea! Thanks for sharing :slight_smile: