I was bored and decided to mod this little one bought time ago. I was rather displeased when i saw how it was made and with lack of easy mod options i left it on the backburner.
Today i finally decided to give it a try in true budget fashion (dirt cheap mod).
The almsot blue emitter had to go. The plastic reflector broke with disassembly and althrough i managed to glue it back it was still far away from what i liked from it. The driver is a joule thief style and draws around 400mA from an alkaline AA (don't use ni-mh's with joule thief type of drivers as it will suck it dry beyond repair).
Parts used:
1x 20mm 45 degree (made for cree emitters) frosted tir optics
1x 20mm o-ring (19 would be far better)
1x 1 osram warm white golden dragon emitter on 16mm star
1x 18mm coin (or a metal washer of similar size)
Modding it was rather easy. Unfortunately i did not take any picture during trial & error so i'll try to explain how it was made.
The original emitter was removed. An osram led on 16mm star was fujik glued onto a 18mm coin then altogether superglued on top of the plastic pill and then the emitter was finally soldered onto the wires from the previous led. In the meantime the glue cured i used some nail clippers and snipped away the outer ring of the tir optics. That meade it 18,5mm in diamter. Sanded the edges with some sandpapaer to make the adges smooth enough that i coul be fit into the head. Insterted a 20mm o-ring and then carefully pushed the tir in place. Then i took some wire and soldered it onto the negative part of the driver and bended around the pill. Did it twice. Thsi would greatly add reliability since the pill relied on a rather flimsy retaining ring to contact the negative portion on the driver pad. Then i inserted the modded pill into the flashlight head and put the silly retaining ring back on top.
Tried it and worked rather well. What do i think of it now? It's still a lousy flashlight but has some good points.
Nice floody warm white beam and low consumption with the ability to suck dry all alkalines that stopped working in other appliactions. Current draw on na non fesh AA alkaline was 370mA. Brightness is around the 45+ lumen mark or more.
Beamshot.
The camera will be retired in a fews days since a new one is on the way (canon A1200, simple point and shoot). This nikon camera was junk and recently the focusing mechanism failed completely. It's good only for macro if you manage to guess the exact focused distance which ain't easy at all.
That's all. :) Nothing fancy. You might find some inspiration to mod your own rather junk flashlight you have laying around and never bothered to touch. :) I love to play with TIR optics all the time. For longevity i would reccomend adding a 18mm front lens before inserting the TIR to protect the TIR from scratches. Being a frosty one i did not bother at all. I tried with an original for osram designed 25 degree lens and it was much brigther. However it proved impossible to center it perfectly so the beam was ugly as hell. Tried even gluing the tir onto the emitter but it never held enough to be able to insert it in the head alotgether. :/
A good AA driver might be best but then it would require to fabriacate a metallic threaded pill of 18,3mm diameter i'm unable to make (no suitable tools) since there is neraly no heatsinking at all in stock form.