Tonight I just completed a couple new Micro Mags commissioned by a fellow BLF'er. I've done a few new things with the pills in these and I am pretty happy with the outcome and figured I'd share the new techniques I employed.
I'm going to start with the pills on these...
To start with I took a standard pill then added copper to each side. I used a section of heavy walled copper pipe, sliced it, then flattened it. I ground 4 disks (2 for each pill) then soldered the plates to either side of the pills emitter backing. This increased the thickness of the pills most critical area to 3mm. IIRC the pills weighed in around 11g before components were added.
Here is the front side of the pill after copper disk was added...
Here is a rear view of the pill after adding the extra copper...
In this shot you can see the thickness through the wiring holes. Front to back it's now 3mm thick.
Here is after the emitters were added.
The next move made was to add a coil of copper wire to fill the threads in the pill. This does two things. First it helps to remove dead space and increase contact with the head walls of the torch. Second it adds more copper for increased heat wicking from the emitter.
After adding the copper to the threads, I filled the threads with solder. This bonded the copper to the the pill threads and further filled the gaps creating a solid wall to the pill after carefully filing the outside of the pill smooth. Unfortunately while making the final touches with the file, it slipped and grazed the emitter dome. I had to unsolder the emitter and it was a bitch popping the star from the Fujiked pill. Once off I was able to replace the emitter with another I had on hand. The driver is fully potted and the remaining space in the pill is completely filled with Fujik.
Was all the extra attention spent on the pill worth the time involved? You tell me. Each pill now weighs in around 15 grams. Very solid chunks of photon emitting power.
Here are the shortened bodies and the bored heads ready for the emitters.
Side shot of the lights test assembled prior to the receiving their internals...
A close up of the head and tail sections...
One last shot before final assembly...
Here is the pill inserted into its torch. Each pill is Fujik'd for being pressed into the head. You may have noticed that this is the pill with the replaced emitter.
The completed torches ready for testing...
It's alive! Each torch is driven with a 3-mode 2A driver. I have found that 2A is the sweet spot with these as your average 14500 only pushes 2A anyway. When I first started making these I used 3A drivers but my Trustfire Flames only pushed 2A. Visibly there is no difference in output between this and my 3A versions. The low is lower this way and medium is perfect for indoors.
The red one is roaring to go too!
I always add a custom lanyard when I sell these...
All packaged and ready for boxing and shipping.
Thanks for looking! Hopefully it gave you some ideas on pill improving.
Johnny