So a big thanks to Calvin at Illumination Supply for my Nitecore P16 prize, it's a beautiful light with an awesome UI. Well, it was a beautiful light until I tried to open the head to swap out the cool white LED for a lovely XM-L2 T6 3C which Calvin also very kindly supplied (I had a spare Sinkpad to put it on).
Before, looks good:
After a little too much heating with a propane torch to kill the crazy red loctite, some panicking and then some frustrated wrenching with some vise grips (Channelocks) and a 2ft long piece of hex bar, we have:
and
so that's obviously not ideal. There weren't any obvious drop in replacement reflectors to replace the melted one, so I bought a slightly bigger one from CNQualitygoods http://www.cnqualitygoods.com/goods.php?id=1600 with the idea of turning it down to size on my lathe.
First the head went into some sodium hydroxide to strip the anodizing (thinking about it, it might have looked cooler if I hadn't done this, oh well). Then I chucked it up in the 4 jaw and took a couple of very light passes to get rid of the gouge marks. I didn't have a lot of material to work with here as the lens retainer was very thin on the side.
then some sanding (320, 400, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500 spit'n'dry) and finally some Mothers mag polish
which was almost completely pointless as filing and sanding the fins to remove the marks there messed up the polished surface :(
oh well. Forgot to take a picture of the polished part, I think I was cold. Tell you what though, the lathe makes polishing round things a complete breeze. Next up was the reflector, which I almost screwed up (depth to cut = HALF the difference between 2 measurements, slaps head) but it all came good in the end. Here's it half done:
Trimmed the sinkpad to fit and reflowed the LED onto it. Didn't bother sanding and polishing where the LED would sit as it was very smooth already
LED in place. Sorry about the dim lighting, couldn't be bothered to drag my other lights in to take a picture as this only took a couple of minutes at most.
testing for fit, not quite right so back on the lathe it goes
finally got it right and stuck it all back together
I'm rather pleased with the end result :)
It's now stonkingly bright AND has a lovely tint. I had a play with it on a bike ride the other night and my buddy was seriously impressed (as was I, but you know, I had to act all nonchalant). Throw was great, beam profile was beautiful with a mid size spot blending suprisingly smoothly into the spill. A bit of yellow around the spot, but that might be just a reflector thing (most of my lights have optics). No beamshots as my friend's phone had died from the cold and I was just about to loose feeling in my feet, but it's pretty similar to stock.
It's now my bedside light and I stick it in my Camelbak with a velcro strap as a back up light for night riding, especially as one of my lights seems to be suffering a bit with the cold!
Again, a big thank you to Calvin at Illumination Supply. He's awesome anyway, this just makes him more so :D
