With all the excitement here about doing mod jobs on BTU Shockers, I am wondering about if a TK75 would be a good candidate for a mod job and what it’s potential would be.
Would it mod as good as a BTU and perform as well. It would be nice to have that much performance in a light that didn’t weigh as much and could use 4 to 12 batteries.
If Tom or someone with good moding experience thinks it would be worth a chance, I would be willing to offer my TK75 up as a test light.
The head is sealed, not easily modded.
Does that mean there is no way to access it? What happens if someone breaks a lens and it needs to be replaced?
Anything that hapoens they want you to send it to them. They dont want people opening the light. Fenix told me this directly.
It has been done yes. Vinh has recently done one. It’s has a triangular pill that all three LEDs sit on. And he found out it has a plastic reflector.
It would show gains, but likely not as much as the BTU. The TK75 all ready had great heatsinking, so it would like just gain going up the two emitter bin steps. I’m guessing it would have about a 15% gain in lumens and about a 25% gain on KCD going with XM-L2 U2’s.
Here is a photo from Vinh’s recent TK75 upgrade -
that is some good news. but also dissapointing as well. good that someone is finally able to mod a tk75….outstanding light and function.
but was hoping for more of a increase after modding.
so how much % increase in kcd and lumens does the btu shocker get? just so i know a better comparison.
Most BTU’s are getting roughly 20-25% gain in lumens and 30-35% gain in Kcd. Thats without boosting the amps. Not sure on the boosted BTU’s since I haven’t seen numbers for them yet.
The extra gain % for BTU vs the TK75 is likely that copper Sinkpads and good thermal paste should help the BTU much more. From my testing it looks like Fenix did an excellent job on managing heat from the factory.
But I might be wrong and you might see equal gains with the TK75. Modding TK75’s is a very new thing and very little info it yet. Unfortunately Vinh doesn’t use meters or lightboxs, so he doesn’t know how much gain that light got.
And no it isn’t my light. Unfortunately.
ok cool, then the tk75 gain is kinda minimal.
not necessarily, the answer is, no one has done this and posted reliable test data before and after, you could try to mount three 16mm sinkpads/noctigons rather than use the fenix mcpcb, but again we have no idea how bad/good that mcpcb is in the first place, also the cell extensions dont I believe increase voltage available, only capacity, and how hard are the tk75 emitters driven?
the short answer is, yes it can be modded, we just dont know the gains yet. Fenix’s are also a ball ache to get inside, hence some peoples dislike, I wouldn’t buy a muscle car with a welded up hood, I dont want a torch I cant take a look at easily either.
Well, been looking at vinh's mod and I'm thinking the TK75 was probably opened with strap wrenches, like vinh, myself, and a few others have done with TN31's. If that super-sized triangular star is direct thermal path copper, there's probably no gain using 20 or 16 mm copper stars, so the only gain you get would be from the emitter upgrade and maybe replacing the wires to heavier gauge will help. If a resistor mod could be worked out, then maybe you could get a good bump. I'm thinking maybe only a 12-15% gain in lumens without the resistor mod, but still that could be 2,800 to 3,100 lumens, or thereabouts. This is all guessing at this point without knowing the facts, like gords said.
Certainly if I did one, I'd publish before/after results and any/all details. It's a little scary though to experiment on someone else's TK75 though...
Wish I had test equipment so I could let everyone know. Just received a modded TK75 on Friday. Didn’t see it stock but I’m floored with the results.
Got any other power flooders/throwers to compare it to?
Wonder what is the current through LED. I bet it is around 3A to 3.2A.
I understand you being a little scared about working on my TK75 but you need not be. I completely understand the risk and if you feel there could be a reasonable improvement I am willing to take the chance and send you my TK75 for a test run. No hard feelings if the whole project goes bad. After all, it’s only a light and I can always buy another. Let me know if you want to give it a try.
Boy, this sounds tempting... I'm overwhelmed right now with mods though, and have been turning down new requests.
I do, but they aren’t stock either so there is no basis for someone else to compare in beamshots or anything. I owe this forum a lot, and some of that pay back will be beamshots from all of my lights whenever I get some time and one of my cameras charged up.
where did you purchase a modded tk75 from?
Vinh…
Dedomed XM-L2 emitters with an upgraded power side to the switch, the LEDs direct bonded to copper, larger guaged wires throughout, and maybe a couple of other adjustments. I have some powerful LED lights but this one is BY FAR the best when it comes to flood and throw.
He estimated the color temp at about 4k and the lumens to increase 10-20 percent even with the dedome. He didn’t know what the lux was, but I’m going to guess anywhere from 150k to 200k but it wouldn’t absolutely shock me if it was more. This thing throws far and a very large beam of light as well. I have a light, that will do every aspect of what this light does better; but none of them come even close to ALL of the performance attributes that this light contains. This light is in my top 3 and might be my favorite, but that TN31mb and the 5,000 lumen solar force 5 LED modded light are both beasts as well.
wow, so even with dedomed xml2’s, this thing still floods huh. impressive.
this would be very entertaining if Tom E does decide to do his own tk75 mod…