What did you mod today?

Fixed the optics position in my S42.

The light will never be any good because of the messed up user interface, but the extremely out of focus optic certainly challenges the UI in things done wrong in this light, I have rarely seen an uglier beam profile.

The focus problem is because the optic rests on two small opposite ridges on the inside of the head that are too high up. Because removing plastic is easier than removing aluminium, I filed a bit off the optic on both sides to make it sit deeper, closer to the leds. I broke off one of the legs of the optic in the process, but in the end the light closed up fine.

Because the optic now falls inside the head, to make the glass lens still clamp the optic in position, I added a paperclip ring on top of the optic (a silicon o-ring did not work, it twisted out of position when closing the bezel)

The paperclip does not spoil the looks of the flashlight.

And the beam is as it should be.

Nice job djozz! I like your ingenuity of using a paper clip and it looks good in the flashlight.

@djozz
Do you think a copper plate between shelf and MCP could do the trick to get the LEDs in the right focus position?

thanks this was my first TIR light and I thought the Beam is OK
I did glue the paperclip only on 2 sides where the optics is filed down because otherwise it blocked light from the TIR

after I modded the TIR I could see it does throw better and beam looks better overall
if you need a driver how about a TA one I can make you one with Narsil just for material costs, the light is great with Narsil

Yes, that is thw other way around to get leds and optic closer together, someone posted already that he had done that succesfully. I will look that post up.

Good that it worked!

About a new driver: I’m not sure that can be done while saving the internal charging function? I don’t think that could accept to have a flashlight with a charging hole that is there doing nothing (and fancy aftermarket cover for that emty hole :party: )

(back in the days when I wanted a flashlight for actually using it, a random hole in it would be perfectly acceptable, but that was a looooong time ago, I aim for at least perfection now, and of course never get there)

Hi djozz, do you have a ballpark measurement of how much you had to sand the optic down? The beam looks great by the way.

It can be done with charging working but its not easy

You could alter the charging hole to a reflash hole

@glide
someone wrote he changed the focus by 0.8mm

Thank you joechina.

I already assembled the flashlight but 0.8mm sounds about exact what I filed off the optic.

I can partly see what you did there, that looks like a fantastic modding job! (did I mention that I’m lazy? :party: )

Edit: I just read Toykeepers review of the D4, and my lazy me (plus unavailability of the many hours it will take to do the mod) will just wait for Hank to sell them, it has everything the S42 should have had without difficult modding :innocent:

On my S42 i just wanted a simple ramping , so i made a fet driver with TK’s ramping .

It’s a little ugly too , pcb wasn’t cleaned at the time i took the photo :stuck_out_tongue:

i filed about .8mm and it has improved the beem a lot! Optics seem to fit ok without adding anything. Glass tightens up against it fine and works good. Thank you again for the tip.

I could not resist… (SM353 R9050)

if you dont put anything between TIR and glass there is a gab and the tir can get loose
another option would be a tiny amont of glue to the TIR legs

I got back the dead Nitecore P12 with lifted off solder pads on driver and it has a really hard life. The factory scraped it where they asked me to repair or do something with it. And I made for them a Convoy M1 as a replacement. So then I got the dead flashlight to keep it and do what I want with itbecause it was cheaper to them to buy an M1 then pay ma to repair hours of the dead light. And I don’t thought it will be reliable as new.

I scraped off some solder mask and put some wires in the vias of the other board to make the area bigger. And the center 3 solder joints also got 3 wires to be more stiff and not peel off the pads.




Because the positive trace was so thin to the switch pcb I added a from the IC legs to the switch board.


And it runs after 5-6 hours of figuring out how to solve it and repairing

But it looked awful so I decided to remove the anodising with drain cleaner.

Still has anodising on threads so it can be lock with tailcap.

It came out good. This is my first ano stripping so I’m happy with it. It need a polishing and it will be nice.

A nice dedicated job Zozz!
6 hours of work on a single light sounds familiar and can indeed only be justified as hobby. :smiley:

Thank you! It really Is. I needed to buy a bigger flashlight part sorting storage box because I have too many leds, drivers and lighted tailcap stuffs around.

How’s the beam?
I thought you said that the CW tint was going well with the color of the body? :wink: