Lumintop Tool (AAA) Mod

Great light! I will try to copy if I get back to doing SS-5039s. (But I am not keen on programming my own chips. After a hundred or so computer languages and systems, it isn’t fun anymore.) It is almost an A6 that fits on a keychain.
This is the light of the future. Flashlights will continue to get smaller and brighter.

Amazing mod!

Nice, well documented mod !

What was the procedure to remove the “guts” from the light head?

To remove the pill, reflector and glass, you first take off the head. Looking into back of the head, there is the battery contact board with two holes for unscrewing the pill. Use something with two ends that can fit in the holes (e.g. tweezers or needle-nose pliers) and twist counterclockwise. Keep going until the pill is unscrewed. The reflector and glass are held in by the pill and will just fall out. Be careful not to touch the inner surface of the reflector.

Removing the tail end is very similar; unscrew the aluminum retaining ring, then push out the other parts of the switch by pressing on the button.

Thank you! I thought that must be it, but twisting the battery contact board sounded risky. So I wanted to make sure before I tried it.

Gearbest have a flash sale on the Lumintop tool now only $11.99 i think it is the cheapest i have seen them for yet.

Great price! I bought 3 more. This has become one of my favorite everyday lights yet!

I have been waiting for my tool since July. Every time I contact about my ticket/order they say the item is very hot and they do not have it in stock. Just be forewarned it may take a very long time.

i know that lumintop do not have stock atm…
restock is expected in one week or two (Lumintop not gearbest!)

I just realized that the Lumintop Tool have the exact same pill as my Olight i3S.

That means this pill must be some standard AAA sized of the shelf component, i wish we could buy such pills so i could just do some different versions, without having to buy several lights or take them apart to try a new set up.

And even better someone could be making Lumitop/Olights drop ins with upgraded led+driver :slight_smile:

This. In for three.

Interesting observation, didn’t realise that, presumably the OP reflector is the same as well?

Possibly if you post an image of it outside the light we can check, preferably with the measurements also.

If it is we can can probably change hosts with the same pill assembly :slight_smile: that would be very nice, to be able to use the same light engine in two of some of the best twisty & clicky 10440 hosts.

But I just have to clarify my statement that they have the same pill, with they look to me like they have the exact same pill, based on the pics in the OP and Vinh’s picture of his Toolvn from his skylumens store. But i don’t own a Lumitop Tool myself yet, so i can’t be 100% sure yet.

It was Tom E’s mod of his Illumina Ti in djozz Nichia 219C that first made me realize the possibility, because that pill is almost the same also.
The only difference i can see visually to the Lumitop tool pill is that the tool pill has two notches on the top.
But who knows the threading could be different if we are unlucky.

Great build, it has inspired me to try this out myself. I’ve only done a LED swap to nichia219b and the tool is already one of my favorite EDCs.

Were all the driver components hand solder-able? Also, I noticed this new driver does not have the holes to remove/install the pill. How are you removing the pill for new mods?

I just finished this mod up with the mtnelectronics 11mm fet driver, nichia 219b on a 10mm sink pad. Everything went great, my pill was glued in originally and was a pain to disassemble. I took the pill and turned a small piece of copper and pressed it in, then I turned a shoulder on the pill itself about .040”deeper for the driver to sit a little deeper. Then I left enough leads on the LED wires so I could turn the driver up on its side and spread out some needle nose pliers to turn the pill to thread it back in. Works amazing, I love this little light!

You used a pre-made driver rather than building on yourself? You didn’t use a FET + 7135?

This mod requires a lathe? or is there some other way to make it work?

I have the copper tool which is screaming for a 10440 in there since it should dissipate the heat a little better than an aluminum one.

How did you remove the glued in pill?

I got mine out of the tool cu tonight, it was not glued in. Basically the pill is pretty standard aluminum pill (in an all copper light boo!).

there are 2 slots maybe 3-4mm cut into the edges of the aluminum heatsink. The driver board is not fully round, but rather it has two wings that sticks into these 2 groves of the heatsink. So when you rotate the driver board, it rotates the pill.

My tweezers were not quite small enough to fit into the circuit boards holes, so I started working it loose with a dental tool instead. This slightly enlarged the two holes and then I was able to spin it with tweezers, switch back and fourth with the dental tool I was able to rotate it out.

The driver wing to wing is 12mm and the rest of the boar seems to be just over 11mm (my caliper ares reading 11.15). The PCB is reading in at 1.26mm thick.

I’m thinking this driver might be a good fit and it already has the wings, but not sure if it is 12mm wing to wing or 11 and 12mm wing to wing as it would be a direct fit. There’s also a note in the driver description that suggests order the .8mm version for the tool, although my tool’s PCB is measuring thicker?

Which board thickness should I order? Also what is the difference between guppy drive v1 and v2?

I would also like to add some copper for building up the thermal mass, but not sure how to solder that in there but also keep the wires from melting?

Thanks in advance!

For the Tool I found that I had no need to cut extra slots into the pill as the driver just needs to sit in there loosely. Contact with the ground ring is made by the battery tube compressing directly on it.

The board on my custom driver was 1.6mm thick, so the Tool will do fine with those, although you’ll find a bit of a gap between head and battery tube when assembled. I would go for something thinner (but still thick enough to have the ground ring sit above the edge of the pill).

The linked driver looks good, I’m guessing a perfect fit for the Tool, even with the holes to help with unscrewing the pill. Worst case scenario, you should be able to file it down to 11mm (leaving 12mm for the wings) with ease due to the generous borders. Do note that the driver comes with an MMU version of the Attiny13 rather than the standard SSU version so you can’t use a SOIC clip to reprogram it yourself quickly.

EDIT: I did need to cut in an extra slot, but potentially, with more filing down, one would not need to cut an extra slot in.