copper 
depending on price else ill go aluminium
Again have some xp-g3s. 3C tint now.
Can be shipped together with 3xp/xp32/tpad quad boards, but bare only for this moment.
$2/pc.
Combine shipping with any other parts from this thread.
Aw gee, I just today asked Hoop if he had any interest in making some aluminum SK68 and/or “#3 zoomie” pills.
I know it seems odd to put that work into improving $2 flashlights, but they’d make much better gifts with better pills.
So you have none of these, or have any left?
Nobody besides me is interested? Oh, sad, if so.
I have made them for myself in triple configuration and even build one light. It is little useless because triple conv. requires host cutting and there were no o-ring grooves so light becomes non-waterproof.
I have sent lots of them to one blf member, unfortunately havent seen if he had build them. Right now have 5 such pills (for triple, that needs host cutting). They are not pretty look and seems that I had done some expiriments with them. So they are free.
Do you mean a triple in a SK68?
I find that idea scary (grin) and don’t think I’d attempt that.
They’re not waterproof anyhow because of the slider.
I was curious about single-emitter SK68 pills
(recently I can find SK68s and “#3 zoomie” flashlights for $2 apiece if I am patient and look on eBay and AliExpress.
But those pills are some soft gray metal, uneven, so an emitter won’t even sit flat in contact around the edges,
and of course 10mm square Luxeon Rebel boards touch only at the four corners, on hollow pills.)
How much single sk68 pills do you need?
I will try to make rough drawing today or tomorrow.
I don’t want to push you into doing this if nobody else is interested in them!
I’d buy a dozen, couldn’t use more soon. See if anyone else is interested to make it worth doing?
I’d wish for pills with solid back planes to mount the LED on so I could use the square 10mm Luxeon Rebels.
But if they have ledges I can stuff in a copper or aluminum disk with some thermal epoxy, I’ve done that with ok success before (and just drilled my own holes for wires)
But before you spend any time and effort on this — I’m just some guy, I would not be making these up to resell, but to give as gifts
I’d be putting in BLF 15mm SK68 drivers if I didn’t keep the originals, and “anything has to be better” LEDs.
One annoyance with improving SK68s is that it’s hard to solder drivers to pills — I just dropped one and had the driver edge solder crack off the aluminum pill.
No problem for me, but a fairly common failure when they’ve been given as gifts so I end up redoing that solder bridge.
I don’t know a simple good way around that problem of grounding the driver to the pill that’s idiot proof against dropping them.
Anyone has a solid Cu pill for a ’98 and I’ll kiss ya on the mouth.
Love the flood from ’98s, and would love to push a coupla amps through a nice 4500K XM-L2.
Al would be okay, too. Beats the dinky hollow-pills that are in there now…
PS — for this kind of gift-giving, I like the “#3 zoom” better than the SK68.
Fewer sharp corners, more pocket-friendly. Also takes the 15mm SK68 driver and same emitter
And when a millimeter is filed off the slider, bringing the lens right down to the LED, they give a generous flood, while the narrow beam isn’t affected.
It’s almost impossible to solder to Al. The metals are too dissimilar, and won’t “stick”. Plus, the briefest exposure to oxygen would lightly passivate it.
What I’ve done is to solder-fill the vias/passthroughs on the edges of the driver (those “ridges” where the boards snap apart, usually), and then press-fit the drivers into the pills so that it’s literally a friction-fit. Not perfect, but seems to work for me. Too much solder, though, and it won’t fit at all.
That’s why I like Cu or at least brass.
I would be in for 2 sk68 pills.
Yep. Solder blobs weren’t the right approach.
Lately, I’ve also soldered a tiny copper wire to both sides of the driver, flattened it with a tap (it’s soft already from heating) then squeezed that into place.
Same idea as filling the vias — make the ground ring around the driver electrically contact the pill ….
No problem. You is not first who is asking about them, and 10pcs is enough quantity to make small batch.
I understand that everyone wants solid plane.
SK98 is much less popular than SK68. Also they are not so cheap and closer to better 18650 zoomies in price
I enjoy them myself. Once they almost burned my jeans pockets internal (with trustfire 14500 cells). But they are not as good in heat spreading as sipik with solid pill.
Also I think that we can move pcb shelf a little to have such zoom out and zoom in beams as you want to.
I think there is no need on driver soldering in such projects. You can solder driver to copper pill using torch but it is not safety.
To other ways:
- Press fit. Driver place is 0.2mm smaller than driver OD, you need to file driver until it enters in its place by half around and then press it inside
- Pill rim press. In fact with 15-16mm driver place rim is thin and you can simply bend it inside to hold driver.
SK68 $2 chinise clone single led solid shelf copper pill interesting list:
- leroycp - 6pcs
- hank - 10-12pcs(?)
- pscal - 2pcs
hm, I’ll go with “whatever” in the end, but curious.
On all the ones I have the side groove on the large diameter is used to hold either a rubber ring or a metal spring — that’s what gives enough friction to keep the sliding part from slipping back and forth, just enough contact (with a little lubrication) to make the focus change smoothly and stay where it’s set.
With that setup there’s probably some slop in the inner diameter of the focusing sliding part, filled by the ring/spring.
How would you focus the light if it’s just two cylinders one inside the other — thick grease? But that would goop out onto your hand, when the slider was full forward (narrow), I’d think?
If you mean the side groove just above the threads, I don’t see any use for that one.
Yes, my mistake, I used drawing of triple with fixed position and forgot about head fixing.
I will check how does it works with 1 o-ring exept of two in stock.
“#3 zoom” (left) and SK68 (right)
original pills
Looks much better than clone pills.
Yes, will copy one groove for 20x1.5 o-ring.
What about pcb shelf position?
I can’t speak for the ’68 as I don’t have one, but at least for the ’98, the piece with the front lens slides around the pill from the back end, and has an inner “ledge” to keep the pill from pushing through the other end. The pill then screws into the battery-tube.
This inner ledge keeps the slider+lens from being pulled off the tube completely. I think you’d need to keep the outer threads on the pill.
(Someone correct me if I’m wrong.)
On the X-section drawing, also, you do want a depression cut out for the single emitter board to sit in.
(That’s been hard for a lot of manufacturers to get right, they cut the bottom cupped or domed, and too thin, if they have a ‘solid’ pill at all)
16mm boards should fit into that depression, flat back against the flat part of the pill, with a little bit of play but less than a millimeter or so around the edge, since the depression cut won’t have perfect right angles between side and base)
(A 10mm square Luxeon Rebel board will also fit nicely into that cutout — diagonal measure of that board is (square root of 200) = 14.14mm again leaving a tiny bit of play at the corners.)
We can probably drill our own holes in these things, or I can anyhow.
You don’t want the pill to have the completely flat top surface that people use for triples.
That’s true for the SK68 as well. So yes, that puts a lower limit on the diameter of the pill.
The metal of the pill hitting that little ledge inside the slider is what keeps people from pulling the slider off the flashlight.
But you’re not making the sliders — just have to make sure the pill fits into the wider diameter (front end) of the slider and stops at the ledge inside the slider.
You can’t remove the slider until you unscrew the pill from the battery tube
(both the pill and the slider can rotate)
Then you can remove the slider with the pill still inside it, loose
Then you can push from the driver side to push the pill out the front (threaded) end of the slider.
If you push from the emitter side the pill slides back til it hits the ledge inside the slider and stops.
Sometimes it is hard to understand you guys.
Drawing that I have shown have external threads.
Lower part of bezel, that slides together with the lens, is hold by pill`s largest diameter (it should be about 21.0mm) (there is step inside lower part of bezel).
PCB depression (I thought this is thermin from geografics), o-ring grooves, holes…going to be too expensive as I think.
Pill with flat surface is good for those who like:
- different pcbs (first time I have made some pill to fit 16mm noctigon and realizes that sinkpad requires 16.5mm place), even 20-21mm
- polish this surface
- use extra copper plates to make precision focus adjustment
Anyway I still havent received any info about this pcb shelf position. Im sure here lots of users that have tested SK68 with different leds.
Yes hank your description of slide boards are right.