Solastorm T4 Red Thrower

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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Solarstorm T4 modded with a Luminus PT-54 Red LED.

The reason why I wanted a powerful red flashlight is because my 2 year old boy loves to go outside looking for animals at night. We tended to always make the deer walk away with white lights. The solution… Red! From deer, possum, armadillo, skunks and foxes, they stay right where they are. Even the deer on my front yard don’t seem bothered with us standing 30 yards away, but with the white light they always walked away. Success! :bigsmile:

I bought the light from Banggood, which took about 10-15 working days to arrive. At $29 it was a bargain!

The LED comes from eBay, bought it a couple of years ago. I think you can still get it from the same seller on eBay for $16. It is no longer in production.

The reflector is a smooth SST-50 reflector from Fasttech. Nice throw and plenty of spill. No complaints here.

I originally wanted to use the stock T4 driver, but ended up blowing it somehow. I am getting good at that… It did pull 13-14A with 3 IMR’s prior to blowing tantalum caps, so I decided to go with a regulated setup. Started with a SRK 7135 board, which was sanded down to 43mm OD and 7 extra chips were added for a total of 39 chips, 13.65A. The driver stays cool even with the low vf of 2.6v on high. LED current is right at 13.5A.

Next, after removing the stock pill (press fit), I placed the reflector in the light along with the bezel and lens and from the driver side I measured the depth the LED needed to be. From that I began to machine the new pill. I chose to have the reflector rest on the pill vs. the LED. I also wanted to maximize the surface area of the pill against the rest of the body in order to dissipate the 36W. After adding a 3/8” copper rod through the center of the pill, the final pill thickness is around 3/8”.

The thick copper PCB is case positive, so a thick enough layer of Arctic Silver Adhesive was used. I didn’t have to use Arctic Alumina. Also, 120w of soldering power is what it took to solder to the + contact.

I used a modified STAR mom as the firmware. Show of moon mode at PMW 1 (phase corrected) and 3 other evenly spaced levels. Credits to JohnyC and ToyKeeper.

The 2 trees between the 2 larger trees are 100 yards away. The iPad camera didn’t capture what I was seeing. I can see trees out to @ 350 yards at a different location. I will get some pics.

Here is the same spot with an Olight SR51, XM-L2 U2 1A dedomed running @ 6A max.

My son now only wants me to use the red light! 8)

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what a cool light!

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Nice build. Could you possibly link us to the exact reflector? I have some “SST-50” reflectors and they’re no where near that large.

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Thanks!!

This is the reflector I used. Link.

5

Wow nice build. Would love a light like this

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Really nice. My mind went straight to the T3/T4 when you brought up the PT54 the other day. I see you were already there!!

Do you have any other red emitters to compare tint with?

Are you actually happy with the beam, or do you see room for improvements? I have a Red XP-E2 and a Deep Red Rebel, both of them are in SMO P60’s - and I find the spot to be much brighter than the spill with both. I’ve been thinking of trying an OP reflector, or some DC Fix, or ??

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Thanks Wight. Unfortunelty I don’t have any other red emitters to compare it to. :frowning:

As far as the beam, there is room for improvement in regards to focus. The led is a little too deep, eventhough I recessed the reflector to just shy of touching the protective AR glass over the emitter. I think I can bore the reflector hole some and bring the emitter withing the reflector without touching the contacts.

I like the combination of spill and throw from this setup though. The PT-54 is 5.4 mm2 vs the XP-E2 at 1mm2, it is hard to see from the pictures but on high the spill is enough to cover 30-60 yards ahead. I’ll try to get a better picture with a SLR. I would try an OP reflector next instead of DC fix.

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Very nice and just a little different.

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Thanks for the info. I assume you pressed in the little copper chunk in the center? It didn’t click the first time I looked ;-).

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Sweet build. Those leds are insane at that power level. I have a hunter friend who asked me to build him a red light a few years back. I was able to get a Trustfire X7 clone for cheap and one of these leds. Even at the stock driver drive levels it was insanely bright. Needless to say it was later modded. I was hesitant to give it as much juice as your setup so if I remember right it howers at around 8 amps with 3 cells. He uses it on a hunting rifle for wild pigs in Sweden and he loves it. I remember I directly drove it off a single unprotected laptop pull once while on the table. Maybe for 0,002 seconds or something ridiculous like that just to "see" it.... I did. For several minutes :-p

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That is correct. Drilled a 3/8” hole, then smashed the copper rod with a hammer to slightly increase its od. Hammered the copper “chuck” in place and machined it back flat on the lathe. I guess it works! If there was ever a light that needed a step down turbo, this would be one of them. It does’t get warm/hot slowly, it gets HOT fast.

Thanks Ledsmoke! I played with the emitter some too. :slight_smile:
On a freshly charged 26700, it did a tad over 14A! It melted the solder off both + and - contacts in a matter of 2-3s!

I’m not using this one for hunting… :smiley: 300 BLK + Surefire SOCOM = :bigsmile:

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Love the JB Weld and liquid electrical tape…very cool

Holy smokes that is ALOT of 7135’s!

Nice!

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I am really tempted to buy one of these leds and do a similar build

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I like, I like :slight_smile:

15

Wow.

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Really like your build and for sheer RED power the PT54 is a good emitter! Have built flashlights with red pt54, xrc, xpe2 and the deep red rebel. Tint on PT54s and the CREEs are similar. Modded a JacobA60 with a red xpe2 noctigon (MTN) and a 5x7135 driver. Use a xbow with a P60 501b DD Lifepo4 at about 8A and a TR1200 aspherical DD with three 4/3AF nimh cells @ 12A rifle mounted. Built a green PT120 maglite driven at big As with 4 D nimh.

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Thanks! Yes the PT-54 is awesome to play with. The positive case, hard to solder PCB, and the high Amps needed makes it a little more challenging, but the outcome is pretty cool.

Next, I will try 16A pulsed. Just to see what happens… I need to do it with f>240Hz, duty cycle < 60%. Does anybody know what that would translate to on a attiny13a program? I probably need to increase the total current to 20A or so and use PMW to reach 16A.

I would love to see what 30A on a PT-120 green looks like, I bet it is wicked bright!

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I bought one of these leds - I am thinking of installing it into a Jax z1 zoomie… not sure on driver… could always run a lifepo4 26650 if voltage is an issue too

I saw the 30 amp phatlight leds that the seller is also selling

30 amps sounds dangerous…. I like it :slight_smile:

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I really like the Jax Z1, the PCB will have to be recessed some to get full focus though, thicker PCB and a thin layer of AA or AS. btw, an IMR will pull over 10 amps in DD! I would try the stock driver (buck) first and see what it can do with 1 or 2 cells. Another good/bad thing about the PT-54 is the low vf, so you will have full output until voltage cut-off. A C5 will last about 15 minutes @ 10A.

I am definitely tempted into getting one of the green PT-121 monsters and put it in a Courui! I am putting a CBT-90 in it first though. :bigsmile:

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excellent… thanks for the information.

I also have the courui d01 and I am still deciding what to do with it lol… those cbt90s are cool - I remember masha made a cool mag build back in the day with one of those :slight_smile: