Thanks for the link Jerommel, I ordered one!
( giggles )
So, I want to bite the bullet on getting a few H03Rs to mod. The loctite on the head treads still bothers me. Does anybody have further comments on this? I’m not feeling comfortable having a 50/50 success rate on opening them up? Its 1 thing getting them open and spending time cleaning the thread, its another thing spoiling the thread.
If you heat the body there is no failing if you dont do anything stupid
The tube has flat sides so you dont need force to depend on grip of the knurling, resulting on crushing the tube
If you use a bench and small wise its really easy to open up
The head has flat sides as well easily get torgue applied
I used this to hold the tube with wood pieces to protect the tube in a horizontal orientation
And this to grip the head with cardbox to protect the head
I have opened about 6 or 7 of them now.
I line my vice with thin cardboard and clamp the head in tight. The switch boot has to first be removed. You may want to remove the lens as well and maybe the mcpcb as well. I have not bothered to remove those and have been fine so far.
I then soak an old leather belt in water and put it to the side with a pair of channel lock pliers.
I heat the body/head joint with a heat gun moving the heat around for about 30-45sec. The body should be too hot to hold all the way to the end.
I then hook the belt around the light near the joint and pinch it tight around the light with the pliers. The pliers only pinch the two ends together and are not used to grip the light. The belt will grip the light as you roll the round forehead of the pliers back onto the belt. This creates a strong strap wrench.
It takes a good bit of prying/rolling the pliers to get it to move. Once it starts moving, don’t stop or you will need to reheat to get it to move again. Most likely you’ll need to reheat a couple times anyway.
This works for me but these are the best tools I have on hand. I’m not sure if a good strap wrench will work well enough or not. If you have questions, I can try to take a picture of what I do and post it later.
I have not tried gripping the tube in the vice. I may give that way a try next time.
The vise on the tube with wood spacers worked great, just do not crush the tube by overtighten it
The spacers were as long as the smaller diameter of the tube so I used the full availiable lengh to hold it orientating the light horizontal
Have you managed to crush a tube to this point?
If you do the light vertical in the vise you may damage the tube if you overtighten it, the 4mm plier wood gives you a good grip when it compresses a bit and starts to make cracking noises while the knurlink of the wise punshed in it
I was far away from forces that may damage the light as the tube has flat surfaces, the soft wood starts to get compressed then you stop to tighten more
Opening my Nitecore P12 which was a beast to get open I did not crush the head witsh a aligator wrech even if I was concerned, but I did badly damage the anodisation
But the skilhunt tube is more fragile as a P12 head, so just tighten enough that it doesnt rotate while twisting the head
I did tighten the lens and round side in the small wise as I did not manage to get the switch cover off
Thanks for the feedback Lexel / LightRider. I’ll just have to bite the bullet and get them!
Hi Guys
I’ve added 2 x R200 as a resistor mod over the 2 x R082. Before the mod I’ve measured 2.7 amps, after the mod, basically the same. I made 100% sure theres contact between the resistors. Mmm, what am I doing wrong. I presume if I saw 2.7 amps before the mod, I should see around 3.6 amps after?
nothing wrong with the resistors
The inductor, resistror, diode and FET on the driver paired with the springs have quite a high resistance and the light is going practically to DD on Turbo,
unfortunately they do not use a separate low resistance FET to bypass the buck part of the driver in 1S mode,
so that its hard to get close to 3A even with a high drain cell
only way to reach full brightness is with 1 18350 like Aspire you dont loose too much capacity
For that reason I have build a TA driver with NarsilM for mine
If you wish I can build you one as well
Thanks for commenting Lexel. Interesting that LightRider claims to have bumped his current from 2.4 to 3.2 amps by adding a R100. Both R200’s in my case made no difference, started on 2.8 amps, did not move a bit. Thanks for the offer on building a driver. I have the necessary hardware to built a 21mm FET driver. I was hoping to keep some of the standard features like LED in the switch & lockout. Will just have to give that up for now. Appreciated…
I’ve done quite a few of these lights now. 3.3 was the highest I’ve ever reached. However, I can usually get 3-3.2 every time. Even with lower resistors, 3.3 is the limit.
The NarsilM in this light gives you all features you want
Thanks for adding some info LightRider 
Hi Lexel
I’ve been out of building lights for a while, again… I need to catch-up on the latest firmwares etc. Can you maybe give me a bit of background on NarsilM, or give me a link? I’m still running the traditional attiny25 based FET type drivers, in many sizes. Its important that I can program my drivers myself, thus I need an open source solution, attiny25 (not 85) would also be great, but if I need to move on, I need to move on. I think the next move would be a multi-channel setup, regulated for low modes, FET for turbo, but, I’ll have to also look into temperature compensation. Would appreciated if you shed some light on my comments.
For now I’ll just do the traditional FET driver setup in my H03.
Much Appreciated.
I wrote NarsilM and it's open source, based on what TK, JonnyC, and others have done. It's also the foundation for the Emissary D4 firmware.
It's evolved from just mode sets to full smooth ramping during the Q8 development, most enhancements coming directly from BLFer input. It continue it's evolution. V1.0 is available now, V1.1 shortly I hope. 1.1 is the baseline for the BLF GT buck driver at this point.
I've worked, and continue to work closely with DEL, who at this point, seems the most knowledgeable resource we have on driver development - the electronics design.
It requires a ATtiny85, best MCU available that is pin compatible to the 13A, and supports 1 to 3 output channels.
Thanks for some more background Tom…
(1) Will NarsilM work on the traditional FET drivers, as mentioned above, running a Attiny85 instead of 25?
(2) What do you think is currently the best (lets just say most effecient, most versatile) FET driver, multi channel, also doing temperature control? I try to keep things simple and it would be great to standardize on a single driver design, different PCB sizes. That is, specifically for DD drivers.
(3) Did anything interesting happen on the buck driver side the past 6 months? I’m still struggling to get Richard’s 26mm MTN-MAX driver going. I started to communicate with him a few months ago to diagnose the issues, but I neglected to continue the conversation. Will try to pick it up with Richard again, soon.
Appreciated…
By the way, if I may give some comments on the Skilhunt H03. I got the H03 & H03R… and, I must say the H03 is as close as spot on (pardon the pun, hehe…) to me as a headlight can get, for now, if you take quality, features & price into account. The H03R has a too intense / small hotspot. The light distribution of the H03 is very nice and wide, how I believe a good headlamp should be. It has some good internals DTP MCPCB, U4 LED, nice clicky switch. It has nice features - pistol grip, pocket clip, comfortable headstrap, robust anodizing and a good standard UI, even though I’m not going to use it. If anybody would ask me for a headlight recommendation - definitely the Skilhund H03. Its really good…
Oh boy, not enough time to answer all in detail now.
I have one of these H03's but didn't have time to mod it yet, though I am using it as a headlamp on occasion. I have a fully modded H15 though - switch on top end, 14500 size, and love it! Awesome with NarsilM and the switch LED support. It still could be my favorite small EDC, though the OTR M3 is darn close.
For 85 upgrades from 25's, there's lots of board/driver designs out there that won't work well with the 85, barely work with a 25. DEL introduced circuit design changes that much improve the drivers for both 25's and 85's. 25's are dependent on components working on the edge or outside their spec's.
But NarsilM/85 do all the typical FET only, 7135 only, FET+1, and FET+1+bank support.
NarsilM has both configurable time and temp sensing output reduction, but doesn't regulate output back up when the light cools down.
Unfortunately Richard seems unconvinced with Narsil, and told me e-switch lights have a very low demand compared to power switch lights, so, he hasn't been willing to provide it, but truthfully, his board designs are somewhat outdated anyway - he hasn't been updating his designs based on all the new R&D results DEL has done. I can't explain it all, but I'm sure time wise, it's a huge task for Richard to take on, and be able to keep up with the tech. There's more complexities with e-switch lights, specially throwing in a switch LED, etc.