This will be an odd thread I'm sure. I'm basically going to give a few suggestions to anyone who wants to build a nice moderate sized thrower.
I have put something like this together but I don't have soldering skills so mine isn't quite as good as yours can be if you do have those skills. If anyone does build this I would be interested to hear how far it threw...maybe you live in a darker area than I do.
Anyway, I did some of the leg work and experimenting so I'll share that.
Here is a link to the basic light:
It is a little bigger than a P60 host but not too bad. It has a diameter of about 40mm. I ordered a 38 mm aspheric optic (as I recall) from KD. I don't still have the sku for that. You need to grind it down a bit but it has some extra material on the lip so that's fairly easy.
When you do that it will fit as a replacement for the original front glass lens and will be at the proper focal point. I think you end up with about a 35mm diameter optic. The actual working part of the aspheric in many of the flood to throw lights is only about 22mm so this is quite an improvement.
This light already uses an XR-E R2 and it's supposed to be driven at 1amp but it's more like 700mA. This is where your skills come in :) Replace the driver and drive it at 1A or even 1.4 A if you take care with heatsinking.
You need to paint the reflector matte black. I just used matte black spray paint. You need to do this to eliminate beam artifacts. You need to leave the reflector in on this particular model as that's what keeps the pill in place.
I also sprayed a little paint onto a small brush and painted out the Cree silver ring around the emitter. You can't do this perfectly so you will get a little on the lower parts of the emitter dome. This will create artifacts as well but there is a solution...Scotch "Magic" tape.
Once you get everything put together mask only the outer edge of the aspheric leaving a large box in the middle of the aspheric with no tape on it. This process isn't crucial as all you are doing is blocking the small artifacts that you created by getting a bit of paint on the lower dome. The central part of the aspheric that is doing the focusing isn't being affected.
The end result is a perfect image of the emitter that will throw a long, long way with no artifacts, rings, or anything else. If you use the driver supplied as I had to do it will still throw a long way. If you can replace the driver and drive it at 1.4A it would be amazing...please post back here if you end up doing this :)
This is also a bit of fine tuning you can do. Focus the emitter on a wall in your house by screwing the head in or out a bit. Then go outside and shine the emitter image on a wall 20 or so feet away. Screw the head in or out again to get a better focus at this distance. Now it's more or less fine turned for infinity.
This light comes with a forward switch and is one mode so it's a perfect candidate. I also have the HS-802 reflectored thrower which is quite a bit heavier and larger but they both throw about the same distance.
I carry this with me when hiking by headlamp at night. When I see an animal just by its reflecting eyes I use this light and can easily identify it.
The hard part with these projects is just doing the legwork. You never know if the aspheric you order will have the correct focal length for a particular light and it's hard to find a suitable host with a properly driven XR-E R2 with a large enough diameter to be better than all the flood to throw lights out there.
This is much better and the lens needed isn't available at DX but but is available at KD.
So maybe I have piqued someone's interest and have done some of the legwork for them as well.
In any event its been a good light for me and if someone out there with soldering skills wants to try this it will be an even better finished project for you!
For anyone thinking about doing something similar with aspherics and the HS-802...don't bother. It's not a good match. The deep head makes it so any aspheric lens you find of the correct diameter will not be at the proper focal point at the front of the head. You would have to somehow mount it way down the head. The head narrows and the aspheric would not be any larger at that point than the light I'm describing. In effect after doing a lot of work you would have an aspheric light that didn't throw any further than the reflectored thrower that you started with :)
I hope this helps someone and at least provides reading entertain for others :)
