The Khatod optic is considerably taller than Carclo’s, I had to make a new bezel to allow it to fit. But I like the result, a tighter beam profile from the taller individual TIR in the optic.
I also like a 35mm Khatod I used in the Maglite ML25LT, nice look from that one as well.
Yeah, I looked at both and Khatod is 5.5mm taller. I guess I’ll have to try out both of them and see if 5.5mm+ longer light makes any difference when carried in pocket. Thanks. 
The way my little quad has been riding in the kydex styled belt sheath the battery tube is more or less suspended and the head/bezel sits downhill with contact to the sheath. Sweat seems to pool in this bezel area and is wreaking havoc on the bare aluminum, white corrosion and pitting already taking place. I checked around and tried to get some information about getting the aluminum parts anodized but it would seem the companies that do this don’t want to mess with a small project.
So, this afternoon I re-made the bezel from Grade 2 Titanium. 
So now the little quad is made from Titanium, Tellurium Copper, 6061 Aluminum and brass. 
And the carbon fiber print Holstex material sorta resembles the kitchen sink… 
Very nice Dale. How was the titanium to machine?
With a new carbide tip, not all that bad. My boring bar has an old diamond in it (diamond shaped carbide insert) and it was a chore to use. Once I figured out the problem was the year old insert and switched to a different cutting tool with a new insert (don’t have a new insert for the boring bar, hindsight) everything went remarkably well. Even cutting the internal threads went quite well and it threaded onto the copper surprisingly smoothly.
When finished, the piece was super hot! Made the mistake of trying to pick it up after parting it off (which also went well with a freshly sharpened HSS blade.)
I need to address the opening for the optic, it’s a bit on the narrow side at 20mm, should probably open it up to 22.5mm or thereabouts so the TIR’s in the optic are more exposed.
I got a new base for my cross slide and they don’t drill/tap holes for the end cap where the threaded feed bolt and wheel is, so it wouldn’t lock and some of the cuts wanted to pull the slide away, got frustrating, need to center punch, drill and tap for those 2 bolts to lock that end cap on. Wasn’t expecting to have to do that.
At 41 degrees Celsius in the shop, I was ready to quit after 4 hours. (105 F for me, the old mercury thermometer I put behind the lathe shows both F/C) When I came in my mom teased me that I’d pee’d my pants, I was soaked with sweat top to bottom. Drank 3 quarts of tea with supper. Such is life in the summer in Central Texas. I noticed it was 88 with a heat index of 93 at 11:30 last night, supposed to be even worse this weekend…
You could look into powder coat instead of anodizing. It’s not terribly expensive to get into doing it yourself as long as your doing parts small enough to fit into a standard household oven.
Don’t forget n10sivern will do cerakote as well. Titanium is nice (I know you love it, Dale) but it looks mismatched with the Aluminum.
Yeah, now I’ll have to get a piece of Ti I can cut a new battery tube out of. Gonna be a bear boring it out for the cell even though it’s only 18350. Might just go all copper instead.
I vote for all copper Ti isn’t very friendly with high temperatures .
Thanks Dale for the explanation. Again very sweet job. :+1:
Hi Dale
Just caught this thread for the first time, love how you used the quad PCB, just the kind of build that we had in mind with it, happy with the thermal performance?
beautiful work
Cheers
Mark
Mark, thermal performance of the mcpcb seems to be just fine, the XP-G3’s put it to a pretty good test as they really put out a lot of light and heat.
But, alas, I have killed DBC-02. 
One of those scenarios where you try to fix/improve one thing and it leads to another which leads to another and things didn’t work out. My Bistro driver wouldn’t work in moon mode, so I went to build a new driver and found my brass retaining ring not fitting snug when screwed down to press the driver in, so I thought maybe ground was an issue. I built the new driver, and a new brass retaining ring, and put Nichia 219C’s in it. All was well except the new driver was doing the bump to moon when trying to hit Turbo thing. Yuck! So I tried again with the brass ring by boring the dual piece copper pill for a Ti battery tube and that failed, the tube is too large for the inside copper piece and ruined the pill.
SO, I made a new one piece Tellurium Copper pill, a bit larger in diameter than the Titanium bezel and with the Ti battery tube threaded into it, and a Tellurium Copper tail cap. Ultimately I went with 4 XP-L V2 1A HI’s in this one and built yet another driver with the A6 firmware and ATTiny13A for reliability. Still doing something around 2200 lumens off the little 18350, still with a Cutter quad mcpcb and Khatod optic.
Guess it’s now DBC-04, as 02 died. lol
The battery tube is made from welded Titanium Grade 2, 1” in diameter with thin walls. So it’s larger inside than the 18350 cell. I made an insert from black Delrin so the cell fits nicely and doesn’t rattle. Sorry for the low pic quality, been a long couple of days in some intense heat, I’m bushed. Met with some frustrating turn of events doing all this, found I still have a 1’ long bar of 1 3/8” diameter pure copper that is unusable… it’s full of hard/soft spots that either resists cutting and gums up, really ridiculous but it just won’t machine. The Tellurium Copper is so nice, shame I have to make a boat anchor of this bar of pure copper, totally sucks. Spent way too much time and effort trying to force it to work, changing inserts, from sharpening HSS to using new carbide, just flat wouldn’t cooperate.
I’ll probably remake the head for DBC-02 and revive it, not interested in messing with it in the heat we’ve been having.
That is just incredible!
Luv your work Dale, that is an incredible amount of light out of such a small housing or to quote one of my favourite lines from Blazing Saddles, ‘how did he dance with such tiny feet’
Cheers
Mark
That is a beautiful light, Dale! I like it a lot better than the ’02 actually. :heart_eyes:
Bummer having a bar of copper that can’t be machined. It would make me sick looking at it. :confounded:
I discovered that my battery tube is a bit long, barely allowing cell contact. So instead of cutting off any of the Ti threads I merely soldered a brass button on top of the little Efest 18350. Now I’m seeing 2360 lumens out the front from the 4 XP-L HI’s. Not as much as the XP-G3’s were doing but the beam is whiter, and tighter as well. It’s probably not pulling as much amperage from the small cell either, so I’ll take it.
(stole the brass button from an old LuckySun D80 driver. )
I like it better too. Nice clean looks — almost retro — but with a big kick in the output department.
And now it is done.
The tube was slick and difficult to grip, so I cut some very shallow grooves for traction.
The 4th fin was over the threads to the tube, not really needed, so I trimmed it off and re-shaped the junction of head/tube.
Now it feels better in hand and has a smoother more finished look about it.
Done.
(Until I get another wild hair probably! lol)
what an Artisan! Amazing!
Groovy