What did you mod today?

Just ran the edge across a belt sander holding it vertically in my fingers. A bit of a twist as each pass is made, about 3 passes and cool it off before the fingers get blisters. :wink: Rinse and repeat for desired result…

Yes, keeping the stock driver for compatability with AA/NiMH/Li-ion

Hi everyone. Today, I did something big (for me). I soldered the MCPCB directly to the flashlight pill. So far, I did it once by soldering the MCPCB to the S2 + pill. But it was much smaller, easier to warm up. Today I did it with Astrolux SS. The first thing I did was change the default ground to a noctigon. Then I put on a solder paste and screwed the pill into the pill. I screwed on the reflector to check if the diode is sitting evenly. Unscrewed the reflector and started warming up the pill. It lasted a bit, because I used hot air, I do not have a gas burner, but I did it. Now I can feel that the flashlight heats up much faster. I’m happy with the effect.

Last night I tried an XP-L2 in the little X5 with a 14500 cell, dang thing makes 2062 lumens! So today I stuffed 3 of em into an X6, charged up my VTC5 cell and it does 3763.95 lumens, which seems a bit low actually. So I’m off to find out why… love these little XP-L2’s. Just ordered 25 of them in 5000K from Arrow…. the sale is on thru the 29th so ya better hurry! (10off coupon gets 10% off and orders over $20 get free Next Day Air!) Yes, I got 25 XP-L2 5000K for under $3 each.

Probably the voltage drop under load, as well as heat.
The hotter the LED gets the less it outputs.

DB…do you have beam shots of the Xp-l2 lights? I wanted to order a bunch but seriously worried about the tint. I don’t mind the tint shift, but my 5000k v4 3c bin has a pretty bad purple tint at the center. Just wanted to know how the arrow batch of xp-l2 are.

Thanks

I got 3 of them yesterday. Currently I’m waiting for the Sofirn C8F host for them to fit.
Today I heat treated my Convoy L2 with a blowtorch. I putted the tailcap side in water to keep it black. I’m happy with results but the tube maybe need a little more heat in the center to make it a little brown there.


The tube needed a little more at first time too:

Looks like a factory finish, great job.

Thanks!
And if you put it on the table with bezel down and tailcap up you get the German flag :smiley:

:+1:

Zozz! That looks fantastic! Love it!

My triple X6 with 5700K XP-L2 is now making 4993 lumens on an Sony VTC6.

The little X5 with a single emitter has a nice hot spot, I’m pretty pleased with it. The triple X6 has a slight hint of that purple, still overall quite nice. I ordered 25 of these L2’s in 5000K, hope they’re satisfactory as I’ll have a few for a while. :slight_smile:

An expensive Tool mod today. Back in May I bought a LG 6060 2mW 275nm led for 20 dollar, and 10 pieces (the minimum amount) of 12.8mm diameter quartz rounds (because glass does not transmit 278nm light) for 21 dollar, both on aliexpress. Very little output but an exotic wavelength, I had to make a flashlight with it.

And a Tool.

Finally got around to do the mod :slight_smile:

Here’s the led reflowed on a 10mm Sinkpad glued into the Tool pill with Arctic Alumina adhesive. The luck was that I got electrical insulation from the board to the body, which is relevant because led+ is connected to the central pad in this led. If that would not have worked, I had to do the build with batteries reversed.

The stock ledboard was cleared from components and a position was found to solder a 100 Ohm led in series with the circuit, no further driver, just this current limiting resistor. The 100 Ohm was the first value I tried and with 2x 10180 batteries in series (it is a 6 to 8 Volt led) I got 18 mA through the led which is close to optimal.


I made a spacer from a piece of iron tubing painted black to go in front of the pill because there will not be a reflector, this is a mule light. Also the quartz disc can be seen, nothing much to see about it, apart from that I sanded it down from 12.8mm to 12.

A magnet went in between the batteries because they are flat-top and were not making contact.

The finished light, the final tail current is 17.7mA on fully charged batteries.

And it works! 2mW is not much radiation but from close distance it easily lights up copier paper and money. Now I have to dig up what that 280nm marker was in the new 50 euro bill :slight_smile:

It took me the greater part of this day to do the build and now my girlfriend is fed up with me absent from the family, so this was the last build of 2017! :wink:

Cool

Cool Tool :+1:

And that is a really nice bake fade Zozz.

:open_mouth: a glowing cube!

A phone shot from my SE, about 10’ from the wall on level 3 of 7 in the X5… this is the 5700K XP-L2 from Arrow.

Hot
spot :slight_smile:

You will find it here.

- Click on ADDITIONAL FEATURES

  • Then on bullet 3, and you will see a short clip

Next year, of course :wink:

Nothing too big ……I simply gave my Thorfire C8s a make over because it had started getting kind of run down looking after having it a long time and also using it a lot.

I stripped all the Anodizing off with some aluminum cleaner (a mild acid basically) and then gave the Bezel a good rub down with some brass and silver tarnish remover to get it nice and shinny, I then lightly polished the rest of the light to give it a more velvet or silky look. I never put a piece of sandpaper or any other abrasive on this one other than the Tarnish remover and used a 100% cotton rag to rub with by hand and was finished in just over an hour.

FET driver … XP-L HI V3 3C on Noctigon and spring bypasses on both ends with 20awg Turnigy.
Making 6.71 amps and 1461 lumens and looks like this…………

(could not wait for the new year :innocent: )
Thanks, I looked it up and found that the 10 euro bill also works:
365nm: 278nm:

Amutorch JM70 with TA driver :

Stock driver :

Had to add an e-switch, glued to the driver. It is perfectly aligned with the rubber boot :slight_smile:

Unfortunately, even with fine tuning of the reflector it doesn’t out throw my Olight M3XS (smaller reflector).
I got around 90% of the Olight throw

EDIT : I put a dedomed XP-L (unknown bin/tint) and now it throws as well as the M3XS !
EDIT2 : Now with numbers :
Stock M3XS : 250 kCd
Modded JM70 : 280 kCd