Old Lumens inspired minimag > Nichia 219 mod

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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A big thanks to Old Lumens and his fantastically well documented Maglite mods that were the inspiration for this mod. I've wanted to do a maglite mod for ages and getting a flashlight appreciating cousin in the Secret Santa for this year's early family Christmas was just the excuse I needed (and provided an excellent excuse to do some other Nichia 219 swaps :)).

The light is direct drive with a machined pedestal pretty much identical in form and function to the copper ones OL makes, with a 16mm Nichia 219 from Illumination Supply and Carclo narrow clear (10003?) 20mm optic as that's what I had laying around.

pedestal before being cut off its rod (scrounged from an old piece of lab equipment in the skip)

cut off, tapped and polished. If I were to do it again I'd stop being a cheapskate and buy some AA as the screws caused no end of problems.

Other end of pedestal, showing the hole into which the isolating washer is going to get pressed.

all the bits for the pedestal, including the washer and a small piece of unknown metal (brass?) for the +ve contact

+ve contact soldered up. Conveniently the end of the rod I scrounged was drilled and tapped already, so the wire is going straight up the centre of the pedestal.

Pill wired up. -ve wire added later to improve contact with the pill/ head.

Other end of the pill. This actually came out as I intended, which was a pleasant surprise!

Pill pressed into the head, with a thin layer of thermal paste, after literally HOURS spent grinding down the threads with my dremel. I really need to get a better lathe chuck :)

Showing the added -ve wire a bit better. No pics of the head before I put the pill in as I was too shagged out.

bottom of the pill. Isolating disk just clears the battery tube. Also sanded down the end of the battery tube so it completes an electrical path from LED -ve to pill to battery -ve.

Finished! Added some OL inspired polishing touches using a few pellets of NaOH and Mother's Magic Mag Wheel Shine

Sneakily put back into the packaging so it looks like I'm just cheaping out on his present by buying a $8 minimag from Walmart :)

No beamshots I'm afraid, as it was raining biblically after I finished it then I had to wrap it up and pack it into the car. I think I have some XM-L/ Carclo narrow beamshots around somewhere though. Really nice beam pattern, mix of spot and flood. Not as throwy as my Nichia modded RC-G2, but a more even beam. Joe was very happy with it, especially as his previous torch kicked the bucket only the week before. It was lovely and bright with 2 alkaline cells and pretty dim with NiMh, but that's to be expected. Nice to have the option though.

I really do need a better chuck and boring bar though...

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I'd love to check out your photos but I get a 404 error on every link I checked.

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sorry about that johnnymac, had a brain fart and did web links instead of image links. All fixed now :slight_smile:

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Nice job, Matt! 8)

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thanks! It was a lot of fun and great to use the lathe again.

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Not as easy as they make it look, is it?

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Hey, Cool! Glad I inspired you, to get after it. Wink

What I like is that everyone can use their personalized approaches to something like the Mini-Mag.

Thanks for posting the thread showing your work.

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Nice mod. Scrap from the bin like you have found is the best material of all. Mr Lumens strikes again aye.

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not even close, no :smiley:

thanks! I can see why minimags are so popular, they’re such neat pocketable little torches. I just have to resist the siren song of “triple nichia 219 minimag” now…

thanks, that was a piece of luck. It was just a hair larger than the ID of the head so I had to take barely anything off at all. I have quite a bit left, if anyone ever needs any.

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Nice job, I’m actually seeing my first triple being a 20mm 219 with optics, but in a trustfire t2, I’ve become very attached to this little light and I’m not technically even supposed to be playing yet, its being wrapped up for Christmas.

My two year old loves it to bits. He’s like a mag pie around shiney stuff so he’d love that minimag.

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thanks! I’ve tended to stay away from 20mm triples as they’re quite floody, but for close up or EDC work they’d be just the ticket.

As for your 2 year old, there’s not much that can go wrong with a DD minimag. Just loctite the lens retainer on as you don’t want him popping that out by accident :slight_smile:

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thanks, that was a piece of luck. It was just a hair larger than the ID of the head so I had to take barely anything off at all. I have quite a bit left, if anyone ever needs any

That's all you need to build a light. Well done.

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Nice build!

And as somebody pointed out above, builds rarely end up being as “easy” as initially thought, but that does not mean they are not fun to make :bigsmile:

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thanks, I’m sure that the next one would be a lot quicker, if I ever made one :slight_smile:

next projects are a couple of work lights for the lathe, which should be fairly “simple”!

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Having the lathe allows for a lot more creativity, doesn’t? :wink:

You can now design and make all sort of spacers/adapters/pieces to make things work the way you want :bigsmile:

Will

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I think a lathe would just put me in the poor house.Wink

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it certainly does! There’s a lot of stuff I can do now that I only dreamed of before. It’ll be even better once I figure out how to attach a vertical vise to the cross slide, then I can do pretty much whatever I can think of :slight_smile:

without a doubt! Just tooling up a lathe I got for free will take ~$150-200. Still, if you’re going to use it, it’s worth it!