DQG tiny 4 18650 triple mod

Incredible mod, I am in awe of your skills as I am of Firelight2’s skill in his mod. I do like that the DQG IV head is not glued like the III was. I do not know if I will ever do more than put a warm white XM-L2 into mine, but this is an awesome mod…

Well written and the pictures are very helpful. The wood block for reflowing is somthing I will use, my helping hands thingy always droops at the worst time…

I use Qtips to press my LED’s down, I have cracked one XPL HI, and so I use the Qtips. I have thought about a spacer and some tape to do triples better, currently my Qtip skills on triples are pretty funny looking trying to hold all three apart at the right distance. It works, just aggravating at times.

EDIT: Did you get an amp draw on the constant on sub moonlight mode? It may be worth just leaving it as a “lit head” much like the lighted tail cap PD68 does…

Very nice mod !
Could you give more info for the driver ? I mean how to connect the the side switch

:beer:

Thanks for the nice replies! I guess I got lucky on quite a few stages in this mod…

@ReManG these blocks aren’t just blocks offcourse. It’s a real high-tech Dutch soldering system :laughing:

I was actually thinking I really need clamps next time. One shiver and all plumets to the ground…

Won’t you easily move the leds with a qtip and risk shorting them out?

The reading on “off” gave 0,025A. So a bit more than sub-lumen I guess. Guess that drains the battery in 5 days. While I wasn’t planning carrying this thermal granade without lockout anyway , I still hope someone has an idea why it’s not turning off…
Maybe a ground problem? Or the “1” level I programmed the firmware is too low and gives errors? I need to redo the “high” anyway, since 40% is still thermally unstable. Will try 30% next time.

@Giorgioskok the microswitch connects to ground (outer ring on driver) and Attiny13A pin #2. This is the “switch” pin in the firmware from Tom E which I flashed to the BLF driver. I soldered it with 22AWG wire, but I guess thinner wire would be easier.

Wauw mooi man!
Very nice!

@Dutcheee thank you for the info :wink:

Very nice mod, dutchee! And well documented as well :slight_smile: I hope you will find why it does not switch off.

I did a few small S2+ triples that draw around 14A, the heat path to the shell must be very well attended to, and the high mode is just not for anything more than a few seconds, the heat also messes with the timing of short and medium presses of the BLF-A6 driver.

And I admire that you got the software part working, it is something I will never master.

Thanks for posting, great mod. :beer:

It’s satisfying to bring together a light which you have modded many aspects of.

Well done.

Now that is a little hot rod. Orsm work.

G'Day Dutcheee,

Great work.

Best Regards,

George

Great mod Dutchee!

Glad you found my DQG Tiny III mod helpful. :sunglasses:

The key to prevent the star from overheating is thermal grease. In a more recent mod I found I could actually get away with basically a hollow pill with nothing under the star… as long as I had plenty of thermal grease at the edges of the star. This is how I did it in my latest triple (Sunwayman C10R running a FET driver, triple XPL-HI and an Efest IMR purple 18500 cell). With the 18500 cell sitting where the stock driver used to sit there wasn’t room for a heatsink. With plenty of AS5 at the edges of the Noctigon triple the emitters don’t overheat and the leads don’t desolder themselves.

Thanks, I really was fulfilling to put all my gained knowledge from BLF to good work. This light would’ve never seen daylight without all the contribution on this great forum!

@ReManG

Some pictures of the intergrated driver/mcpcb of the stock DQG. I think a reflow will be quite a challenge. Besides that, the switch tends to “catch” between the slotted opening in the head, so preventing it from snapping off is difficult. Maybe just in my sample…


@Djozz I’m always awed looking at your mods. If you just follow Hoop’s post and all the liks he shows, it will be a piece of cake for you! I got less lucky reprogramming the original BLF firmware to erase the turbo stepdown for another light I’ve got, so not out of the woods myself!

Thanks about the info about the timing. I thought I was seeing some erratic behavior in the 15sec turbo stepdown. It seems not to step down when (over)heating.

great work!

thank you for sharing :slight_smile:

Dutchee,

Thanks for the driver pictures. I was going to give it a try with a 100W iron on the battery side contact while still in the head. Then attempt to put the new one on… One day, not anytime soon…. Thankfully the NW is a nice tint and not like a greenish one like some other brands have…

Do you think the switch could be desoldered before pushing the driver out? Looks to be a bear either way, but so glad it worked out for you on this mod… that looks incredible. Narsil and temp regulation would be the bees knees for a light like this…

Nice mod, it must have been quite a deal of work to put this together!

Wow, just wow,
nice work :slight_smile:

Great mod!

Great work!
I’m dreaming of build my own triple, dunno when. LOL.

What kind of solder did you use? Switching from lead based to unleaded solder should help both with elevated temperature and thermal conductivity(especially those heatsink plates soldered together). Here is the table of (almost?) all solder alloy types with melting points, and thermal conductivity for more common alloys:

Sn-Pb37 have thermal conductivity of 50.9 W/(mK) with melting point of 183C whereas Sn-Cu3 have 70.4 W/(mK) and melting point around 227C
(pure aluminium for comparison have 240 W/(mK) and copper about 400 W/(mK))

I know that there are some durability drawbacks in using unleaded solder but mainly in low temp environment so not exactly the flashlight related :wink:
I’m not familiar with any issues within flashlights. Anybody have any experience?

Wow, I was totally unaware. I thought lead based solder was the way to go and is what I used. Thanks for pointing this out!

I added thermal paste (sipik) and (more) properly resoldered the two wires. It didn’t happen again, but offcourse I was lucky it didn’t cause a short.

A 20% temperature increase in the solderbond and better conductivity is nice, I’ll scout for some Sn-Cu3 solder!

After 20secs on turbo (stepdown doesn’t seem to work for some reason, not even at 90secs :wink: ) the light get’s too hot to hold. But maybe the solder is nearing 180C right next to the LEDs…?

Does this type of solder need another solder technique, apart from a somewhat higher temperature?
Isn’t solder cracking an apparent issue with these lead free solders in flashlights, since they have a lot of warm/cold cycles?

I think most of us use lead based solder because it’s lower melting temperature and wetting properties is just easier to work with, there’s also easy availability factor and force of habit. No different soldering technique is required(or at least I do not use it) but higher temperature can require more power to work comfortably. With RoHS directive implementation in EU all current LEDs conform to lead free soldering requirements and major flashlight manufacturers should use lead free solder for that market. I am not aware of any problems with lead free solder in LED applications, but I do not reject the possibility. I had no need to reflow LEDs for high power flashlights yet, I did it for single AA lights so I used lead based solder I had on hand. It’s also worth noting that higher required temperature combined with makeshift temperature control (or lack thereof) poses greater risk of LED damage. But then again - pioneers are the ones making history :wink:

There’s also this thread here: Thermal conductivity of solder and pure indium is proposed as a solder because of superior properties (157C melting point, 81.8 W/(mK) thermal conductivity). But it seems it was not put to test ultimately.