After noticing in my EC11 x-ray picture that the 7135 regulators appeared to be mostly empty inside, I ran an experiment to see how much of the package is empty plastic, and how tall the internal wirebonds are. I think this information will be useful in some very space-constrained mods such as the EX11, which is what the board I used was designed for.
I tested these two types of 7135 regulator. I have been unable to find manufacturer info about these, so I call them Crappy Sailboat (left) and Raptor Claw (right). Crappy Sailboat is terrible and won’t dim very low due to slow turn-on, and I have been having a really hard time finding Raptor Claw anywhere (if you have any you want to sell, contact me please).
Here’s the test setup - it’s the main board of my MELD-EX board for Nitecore EX11s, with regulators for R, G, &B. It’s programmed to just run lava lamp mode to see if the colors are working. There are two Crappy Sailboats and one Raptor Claw.
It’s wired to an XML color with all the wires going to the back of the board to leave the top clear.
The regulators start at 1.60mm tall. I turned it on and started filing.
The first one to die is Raptor Claw, at 1.03mm.
It is destroyed, as expected, by breaking through a wire bond, which you can see clearly.
The first Crappy Sailboat dies at 0.94mm (the one on the right). You can see that I simultaneously broke through two wirebonds, and at this height the other one (left) now has one wirebond exposed, but not broken. This is encouraging information about the consistency of the wirebond height inside these.
In this image, one of them is still functional at 0.94mm tall. I replaced one of the dead ones to get a height comparison.
Based on this test it looks like you can get away with sanding down to ~1.1mm with Raptor Claws and ~1.0mm with Crappy Sailboats and the regulators will still work.