What did you mod today?

It’s been a while since I started to think about this, but as I am not a chemist, I took a while to perceive that I had at home all I needed!
So, today I decided to mod the Sofirn SF10 host!

Materials used: 1 glass; caustic soda; cold water; latex gloves; tweezers; goggles; plastic tape!

Before and after :sunglasses: I like it more now :blush:

Inspiration:
Anodisation removal on flashlight battery tubr - YouTube (Thanks djozz !!!)
removing anodising

wow nice work MascaratumB

can you tell us more how u did it :slight_smile:

Edit: typo :smiley:

Sure;) I followed djozz video in some things, so the process was quite simple, despite the precautions that must be taken.
In detail:
1 - I took everything out of the flashlight (internals, o-rings, clip)

2 - I put black adhesive tape on the threads to avoid water from entering, BUT during the process I ended up taking the tape out because this particular host can be ALL stripped, inside and outside, as there are no ways to make ‘shorts’, and the threads don’t allow physical lock-out. They are not anodized.

3 - I put some “pearls” of caustic soda (I had a bottle of drain cleaner, to clean the kitchen or WC pipes) inside a glass and added some water. I mixed it up smoothly (already with gloves and googles, to avoid skin contact).

4 - Then I started to put the flashlight parts inside the glass and checking how they were! I often cleaned them with flowing water to check the state, and re-inserted them on the glass. I also used an old tooth brush with the solution in the glass to “polish” the knurling in some points. ALWAYS WITH GLOVES :wink:

5 - When the parts were all “de-anodized” I washed them with flowing water and dried them with kitchen paper. After this, I lubricated the threads again and put everything back on its place :wink:

I took few photos as I was with gloves and with caustic soda on the hands so… :smiley:
Here they are :

Hope this helps, but feel free to place any doubt :wink:

thanks man.

im going to convert all by black flashlights to white (without being racist) :smiley:

I’ll probably end up trying to make this in other lights as well!! Even my girlfriend said this light was prettier :blush:
Please be careful with the “needed” anodization, like threads or other important parts! :+1:

OH: One thing I forgot to mention is that I made this in my kitchen and I kept the exhaust ON to help on air ventilation!! The smokes and vapour and smell is quite nauseous!!

I got my first BLF Q8 in yesterday. It looked fabulous and worked the same, making 5409.6 lumens right out of the box on a set of Sony VTC5A with copper buttons soldered to the top. But of course, I felt like 5000 lumens was too weak, so…

I started off with small changes and checked for the differences with freshly charged cells. Like, I swapped out the screws for brass ones. Boom! 328 lumens for a mere brass screw installation. So I tried an UCLp lens swap, not so much gain, only 41 lumens, not worth buying a lens for. Then I pulled the pcb with springs from the tail, removed the dual springs, and re-flowed them onto a copper sheet cut to fit the tube. That netted another 93 lumens. So then I put 22 ga wire bypasses inside the dual springs. Tedious stuff, that! And it made the single most difference, 1214.4 lumens gained for the effort! :smiley:

Then I decided to get real, I pulled the driver, replaced the leads with 18Ga Turnigy wires, removed the MOSFET and used a premium Vishay SIRA20DP, swapped the XP-L V6 3D emitters for new XP-L2 V6 1C. And a whopping 3000 lumens gain!!!

Yes, the Q8 started at 5409.6 and did 5213.64 at 30 seconds, now it makes an outstanding 10,212 lumens at start with a drop to 9,177 lumens at 30 seconds. I don’t have a way to measure amperage, but I don’t think I really want to know…. :wink: (of course I know how, I just don’t want to!) [based on previous experience, amperage is going to have to be up around 28A to maybe 30A, ridiculous, I know]

Nice Work MascaratumB :+1: same as mine here, Stripped with Caustic Soda, I also shorten it a bit. :slight_smile:


Nice work there, too :smiley: I guess I won’t shorten it due to batteries and springs, but thats nice :wink:
I also thought about a illuminated tailswitch, I’m going to buy one for this and maybe for other lights :stuck_out_tongue:
And then, driver and LED modification!
Thanks for sharing :+1:

Swapped a V6 bin LED for a V6 bin LED and gained 3000 lumens… :smiling_imp:

Since you did it all at once, what is your gut feel on how that 3000lm breaks down?

18Ga Turnigy wires: x%
Vishay SIRA20DP fet: y%
XP-L2 LED (lower Vf): z%

Yeah sac02, I kinda wish I’d followed what I’d been doing and done one thing at a time and measured in between. The 18Ga wires probably helped a little but I wouldn’t think that’d be a big jump. The FET made a difference, more so than the wires, but in the end I think the XP-L2’s were the major change. 700 lumens between a modded XP-L light (for each emitter) means 2100 lumens easily right there in the emitters. Tom had seen around 7100-7200 which was 1800 lumens per emitter, looks like we can attribute most of the gains to the next gen technology. :wink:

Cheap USB (5mm jack plug) 14500 light running NarsilM_1.2

I sacrificed the charging plug and add 10mm Neodymium Magnet :slight_smile:

Bought from AE for $5.19 each

Got a link ?
Looks like a good mod project

This one.

I bought from this store http://s.aliexpress.com/bAJjQVN7 , price has gone up a bit.

Thanks :slight_smile:

Don’t know if you could call it a mod, exactly, but I’m very very happy with DBC-06.7… 24 hours of lathe work, then final assembly including building an A6 driver.

The emitter is a de-domed XM-L2 from MaxToch, clean job on the de-dome they did. It’s new gen, so it only pulls 4.61A but makes 1652.55 lumens. Final tuning it does 815Kcd for 1974.57M throw, which is 1.122 Miles!!! :smiley:

I made the tail cap (more of a plug) the body (from a single bar of 2.75” 6061) the reflector adapter (from a 4 1/4” bar of 6061) and the bezel (also from the bar of 4 1/4” 6061) The copper pill is 35mm dia and 35mm tall. Cell is the TrustFire 32650 by design, the plug in the tail has long threads to allow the use of anything from a 26500 to a 21700 or 26700, even the protected variation of 32650 works. Lens is a custom order 3mm thick 104mm UCLp from Chris at flashlightlens.com.

I went with an oversized variation of the small 18350 light I built last year where the battery tube looked like twin thread spools stacked, this allows cigar grip even on this 1234 gram light! :smiley:

Edit: PS, if you think turning a 4 1/4” bar of 6061 on a 5” chucked Grizzly 10x22 lathe is easy, you’re sadly mistaken!

1 Thank

Wow Dale , what a beast !

Did you use KD 86mm reflector ?

The hot spot is actually smaller than what shows in that last pic, the tiles in the picture on the wall are 12” square, the hot spot is about 8” at this distance.

Not exactly sure where the reflector came from George, it’s bigger than that though. A friend sent it to me and laughingly said see what you can do with this! He said there weren’t any more and the mfr quit making them. I was planning to build this light already, had the battery tube bored for the 32650 and was intending to use the reflector out of my Olight SR-90 Intimidator since I have the Lum 5-90 in that light. I think that’s what inspired my friend to send this one, going big go all the way… lol

I was talking with another friend with machining experience about the sheer size here, I only had the 4 1/4” bar and it wouldn’t be big enough to machine a head for this 98mm reflector, so he said why not just use it as a stressed member, like Ducatti does their engines? And so I did, threaded the reflector to fit the machined body part and bezel. Out of the ordinary, but then, it’s no ordinary light. :smiley:

So I guess I modded 2 bars of 6061 into a flashlight. hahahahaha

Edit: This pic should show how it all started, the full sized bars are pieced together for testing of an emitter inside the reflector. I used my power supply for this test, but you can see the sheer mass of aluminum I had to carve away, hence 24 hours on the lathe…

Very nice

Thank you CRX, appreciate it.
Sure has been a black hole for my time. lol