mod-finished!: UF-1406

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

No, this is not the Uniquefire UF-1405 which is the real deal, it is its little 2x18650 brother. I wanted the UF-1405 but Fasttech did not want to give it to me despite that bought it. So I am stuck with the UF-1406, which is a very cool zoomie on its own (were it not that there is the 1405 also , sorry, I will stop here...)

I might as well mod it, see how far it goes. With the aspheric lens with effective diameter of 45mm it is in the same performance ballpark as the Jax Z1 (41mm lens and twice the price) but the lens has a shorter focal length and has not that nice AR-coating. With its thicker lens the 1406 should have a comparable throw as the Jax but with a bigger hotspot ->more light at zoom-in. I'm thinking dedomed XP-G2 on a 'NANJG-92' (Qlite with FET instead of 7135 regulators).

Luckily I had worked late last night so I had two hours off from work this morning. A very rare occasion: girlfriend and little boy out of the house and access to the disc-sander, drill-press and bandsaw that live in a small workshop/corner in the bedroom. (normally my hobby hours are late at night when my girl-friend sleeps there, we do not have an extra room for a workshop)

First that battery tube will have to get shorter. I hate having to use a dummy.

If I remove the bit with the wafer-pattern, that I do not like anyway, it is exact the right length I think.

Gone. Now sanding the edges on the disc sander to make them flat and at right angle to the tube.

I am going to use 2.5mm diameter nails to reinforce the joint.

cut down and sanded:

Three 2.5mm holes were drilled with the drill press, and three holes on the other side. I'm not a machinist, and sloppy on top of that, and had not much time to do it exactly right, so the holes were of course not lined up very well . I had to divert to 2.2mm nails to make it fit.

I used Arctic Alumina Adhesive to glue it, because it is what I have and I know it sticks very well to aluminium (so I have learned by bitter experience).

Inserted the pins, and hammered it all together with a block of wood between tube and hammer. The joint felt very solid after that. A cosmetic touch with a black permanent marker got rid of the visible white glue remains. It is all far from perfect but it will do fine :-)

Now look how cute it has become

Compared to the UF-T20:

It even works very well on 1 battery, but the internals need to go. To be continued.

2

Did you breath out a sigh of relief when the nails lined up?

Great mod.

3

Thanks.

the holes were not that far off, so I knew it was going to work one way or another. Come to think of it, I could have used one thicker nail and two narrower ones, that would have made it even more tight.

4

I might have opted for a alignment sleeve but this is a nice creative project.

5

I dub the “The Uniquefire UF-1406 Runt” :smiley:

Awesome…simply AWESOME!

6

Daring project. If I didn’t have access to machine tools I think I would have relied on adhesive alone. Good adhesive, of course.

7

Any adhesive that you can walk away from isn’t a good adhesive…

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9

Naaww.. How cute!

I mean.. *cough* Fine work there man. You have earned yourself a beer.

10

I made a sketch of the optical lay-out of the UF-1406, to get an idea if improvements can be made there. In grey the zoom-out position of the lens, in orange the zoom-in position. The squares are 10mm.

It so appears that the black anodised screw-in ring that pushes the led-board down blocks quite some light: part of the light between 90 and 120 deg. emission angle, and everything over 120 degrees (see the yellow ray traces). This is not much of a problem because it is the part of the light that would not have come out of the flashlight anyway, blocked by the inside of the head: in zoom-out outside the lens, in zoom-in before the lens.

I don't see much room for improvement apart from making the black ring a less shiny black to improve the beam, as was already beautifully done by LSX in his UF-1405 mod.

11

Orsm machine work. Your finishing is astounding. Thanks for sharing.

12

That is very cool, I really like it short like that. Should make a great thrower. Looking at it up against the T20 I would think that hitting 200kcd wouldn’t be impossible.

13

My UF-T20 with dedomed XP-G2 at 3A does 108kcd, optically this flashlight is quite the same but with twice the surface area lens, and with the XP-G2 at 4A instead of 3A, I expect close to 250kcd.

14

Nice, I don’t think that is impossible either. I did an aspheric lens in a ZY-T08 once with an XP-G2 at 5 amps. If I remember right it was about 300kcd maybe a little less. I always think I’m going to get more from these Aspheric lenses than I actually do though. I’m working on a courui big head with an Aspheric or I will be when I finally get the time. I have all the parts and stuff ready to go. I like these laser beams but then again I have a use for them. I like going around looking for deer on the large open fields near my house. I get out to the edge of a field and zap them with it. It freezes them in place so I can watch them for a while. Fun stuff.

I really dig your mods on this one. That is still a size that can fit in a coat pocket easy. That is what I think makes it so cool. You can walk around with it and if you need something to really reach out there you have it. Or you can just walk with it on flood. Something you can’t do with the fixed lens ones I build.

Good luck on it, it looks great already.

15

I'm glad that you (all) like it sofar :-) . The rest of the build will be nothing that has not been done before I think. I am mostly curious about the performance in the end.

16

I made the driver, indeed a NANJG-92 driver made from a qlite revA, as invented and described by comfychair. I'm very conservative and still do not trust myself building a BLF 17mm DD driver, although I have all the parts in house. And I find it sort of neat that the NANJG-92 can be made without reflowing, just a solder iron does the job. I made an 3D animated gif of the build (a BLF-first! ....and probably last, making the gif took more time than building the driver :tired: ). Try to parallel your eyes to make the 3D work:

17

Fantastic work on that GIF!

Dont know why, but seeing it rebuilt like that step by step put a big smile on my face. :)

18

Darrn, I can only series my eyes…

19

Sorry for posting in your topic but does anyone know where I can get a 58-60mm aspheric lens that doesn’t cost $1 per mm of Ø?

20

I know where you can get some that are around $5 per mm… will that do?