Hey everybody, I’m here with my daily list of modding questions! Thanks to everyone helping me out continuously.
I’ve been modding an E3 with an H17Fx driver (wow it’s so awesome), DTP MCPCB, and LH351D 5000k emitter. I thought the hard part would be all the hardware stuff, but it’s gone smoothly. Though reflowing the LED to the thicker DTP MCPCB was definitely harder than with a thin aluminum one.
The hard part is that I cannot for the life of me get the LED centered in the reflector. I had destroyed one butterfly spacer trying to sand it down a bit (broke) and had to widen the opening for the LED bc the LH351D is slightly bigger. I’ve tried sanding/widening an oversized C8+ reflector gasket as well. The thicker MCPCB is clearly causing a space issue, and I’ve tried adding an O-ring to the bezel to help with that. It seems I can get the LED centered and tightened if I take out the GITD O-ring between the bezel and the glass, but the glass shakes ever so slightly and clearly isn’t waterproof.
I am looking for any/all solutions you have to offer! The light works perfectly with my poorly modified gasket and isn’t shorting out. The beam doesn’t even seem to be very effected in such a shallow reflector with the LED off-centered. But. It really bothers me! Even if I could get it kind of centered I could live with it.
Looks as if the centering ring is your problem. It isn’t fitting around the LED. It’s hard to tell from the picture but after I zoomed in on it it also looks like the centering ring doesn’t fit the reflector opening either. You will play hell trying to get that centered without the right ring.
The space issue can be solved with thicker Orings. I don’t know that light but if the MCPCB rely’s on the reflector to push it down onto the shelf/pill then that will be extremely important to get right for heat purposes. You will cook that emitter in no time if it doesn’t have any thermal path. The lens rattling is a sign that the reflector is not pushing down on the MCPCB.
I wonder if these are probably the same as what was in there before. I would still have to widen the opening for the LH351D to fit properly in the gasket.
I also replaced the thinner aluminum MCPCB with a copper DTP MCPCB, so I’m assuming I will actually have better heat sinking than before, right? I will make sure that it’s all pressed down in the end, anyway, as I want it to be reasonably waterproof.
LOL, been there done that. Some of my most horrible work was done at 2am. Have to wake up in the morning and fix my own doings.
I have gotten emitters fairly centered with a ring thats close but still not correct by using little bitty pieces of plastic as wedges. Put in between the MCPCB and the body of the light to help get the whole board more centered. Might be a last resort.
Ya, I hear ya. Should the LH351D fit in the same spacer as a 219C? It definitely seemed like the former was a bit bigger when it came time to put the spacer around it.
