What did you mod today?

Convoy Extendable COB Lantern.

Man that is super cool there is so much packed into that thing

Not so much a “mod” as info, if anyone’s interested…

Decided to take the bus to work vs driving, and some bozo sat down next to me practically on my holstered ’502 in a nice Jetbeam holster, ripping it (only saw it when I got home, as lard-ass was pressed against me the whole time).

Wellp, ain’t gonna risk losing the light+holster, and the ’502 is kinda big to have bouncing around in my pocket, and the attached clip would (imo) have it be too easy to squish out of my pocket when sitting down, so decided to bag it and carry a new UT20 instead.

As usual, all the come-with clips from practically every light out there, are the same, letting the light ride waaaaaaay too high, but the deep-carry clip you can get at FT fits absolutely perfectly. Even the gloss matches almost perfectly, not too shiny and not too matte. Booyah…

Now… if only I could transplant the tailcap from a light without thumb-cutouts, I’d be in Hawg Heaven…

It’s time to dust of my modded Roche M170 with XHP70s and do something else with it. Original build thread here, pics dead though: Mod: BMF SRK v2 Roche Edition (Rebuilt into triple XHP 35 HI)

I never liked the XHP70’s tint or donut hole, and never bothered putting MT-G2s in it because the deep reflector makes it a little too throwy to be of use for my underground photography, so I never really used it. As it is rather throwy I thought I’d go with the flow and ordered some XHP35 HIs for it but I didn’t have a 4S driver for it at the time. As I’ve been busy with other drivers it’s just been laying around collecting dust… until now.

Here’s my new SRK style driver:

I made it both 2S2P and 4S compatible. Only battery pads + and - are “live” the other two are isolated and are to be connected by soldering wires. Here I soldered a wire between pad 2 and 3 making is 4S. To make it 2S2P I need a wire between 2 and +, and one between 3 and -. The only hardware difference is a single resistor.

The driver is a fully adjustable constant current without PWM from about 40mA up to about 8.4 amps. For low moonlight modes I use 10 bit PWM so it can go really low. I’m no electronics guy so I need easy use regulators for constant current, so I went with 12 x CAT4104s. One is adjusted with a 256 step digipot from 40mA to 0.7A, the other 11 have fixed resistors at 0.7 amps each and any number of them can be turned on or off. The 4104s may not be the best choice, but they are easy to use for an electronics noob like myself, and are very small considering they can handle 0.7 amps each. They work fine from 2.7V (haven’t tested lower) up to 25V so they are rather flexible too, but they do come with a price tag. It’s all just part of the hobby though, I’ve just wanted to make my own fully adjustable constant current driver for my SRK lights for quite some time now, and the 4104s do the job. I stuck an old re-used FET on it for testing, but won’t be using it for the XHP35 HIs, they have been reported to sometimes die above 3 amps.

I didn’t have any centering rings that work with the reflector holes, so the LEDs aren’t very well centered. The beam looks OK to me on a white wall, but I’m no beam profile snob.

I got rid of that horrible side switch I used in my original build and replaced it with my favorite lighted switch. It was a little too bright at 12V with included resistor, so I added a larger resistor to damped it a bit. I really like the protruding switches but it didn’t fit so I had to drill out the hole a bit. I made a little bit of a mess so I covered the mess up a little with a rubber washer :blush:
Firmware flashing the 1634 is done by my usual acupuncture style method:

So here it is in it’s new configuration… A fully adjustable constant current driven triple XHP 35 HI SRK style light… For a SRK style light it is really thowy now. Not sure I’ll find any use for it, but it was just something I had to do.

Convoy S2+
Optisolis 3200k Rfc00 on XM board
AK-47A 1x7135 flashed with Crescendo (with almost everything removed except for batt check, goodnight(which seems not to work), and turbo, and no memory
LEDiL Boom White


Carved out for the wire, it does sit perfectly flush when compressed


Beautiful! What do you use it for? Isn’t it a bit weak?

I reckon it is around 100 lumens based upon drive current and lumens in the datasheet. It is not overdriven at all. It is a super high CRI midpower violet-pump LED. I just built it for fun and the love of high CRI, I am sure these can be pushed harder with better heatsinking (waiting for a proper PCB)

Another wee pocket rocket today, Tank 007 TK-703.

This light had been sitting empty and dinged up for a while so I installed a new reflector, glass, pill, driver, heatsink and magnetic forward clicky switch. Luminus SST-40 N4 BA emitter
10mm copper Sinkpad
FET 10mm driver
ARC glass
Copper taped reflector
MCPCB, copper heatsink & brass pill soldered
Forward magnetic clicky switch
Stripped ano
10440 compatible
Length - 80mm
Width - 15mm
Weight - 33g
Around 1500lm OTF at startup
1100lm at 30 sec, 957lm at 1minute.

Been a little while since I modded something...

My Makita 3/8" impact gun is nice & handy for light jobs, & you are not dragging around an air line attached to it. The only thing I didn't like about it was the underwhelming light, so I figured I'd swap something better in.

Luckily the voltage at the LED was 3v, so I had plenty of options for a replacement;

I needed a small optic to protect the LED, & I figured I could cut up a triple & somehow make it fit in the rather small space available...

After drilling out the hole in the tool skin, & enlarging the cavity a little with a dremel, I was able to jam everything in there, but unfortunately damaged the XPL2 I had intended to use, as it was very tight in the optic, & I broke the dome off...

I rummaged up an XPG3, which was a little more forgiving fit in the optic. After the stack length of the copper rod, LED, & optic was adjusted to fit snugly in the cavity, the LED was flowed onto the copper rod, which had been filed to fit the thermal pad. The original wires were lengthened slightly, & soldered directly to the LED base.

This was a little fiddly, & took a few tries to get right, & I neglected to take a photo...

Once I was happy with the positioning of everything, I filled the cavity with epoxy & re-assembled the gun;

The light is now much more functional :)

I can see you now walking the streets with your Makita light posing as an impact gun. :slight_smile:

Modified a Lumintop BLF SD10 with a BLF A6 driver running Narsil MQ and XPL led on copper.

Excellent work, FmC! Better output and no more angry-blue tint. :+1:

You’ll appreciate that mod each time you use the impact driver.

A Convoy S2 with a lighted switch (RMM 17DDm driver, Nichia 219C 90+ CRI 4000K LED, Astrolux double spring lighted switch, and an NCR1850B battery to keep the current down). Although the S2 looks a lot like the S2+ from the outside, I found out they are very different inside.

First, the S2 pill doesn’t have any notches to tighten it into the head like the S2+ has. So I put it in a vise and really tightened down the retaining ring just in case I need to remove the pill in the future. I was concerned if I didn’t do this, just the retaining ring would loosen up and I would have a hard time getting the pill out with the driver in the way.

Second, I had to use an extra retaining ring in the tail to make contact with the body since the S2 has a different switch design than the S2+. Luckily I had one that came with an Astrolux switch set: 2LED 17mm DIY Lighting Switch Set For Astrolux SS/SC/S2/S3/BLF X5 X6 LED Flashlight. I sanded it down just enough to give the proper amount of distance between the body and tail.

I’m really impressed (once again) with the tint of the Nichia and due to the extra length of the S2 reflector, it has a decent amount of throw.

Cool. I use a small square edge diamond file for putting slots in pills etc.

What firmware is on that? I could never get my 17ddm to work right with guppdrv and lighted switch.

Same goes for me.
As far as I can remember none of the pills in any S2 or S2+ I bought came with slots out of the box.
The S2 has a short pill and a deep reflector. My S2’s have longer pills and a shorter refletor. The pills are interchangeable between S2 and S2 with one exception: the thread inside the head of the S2 does not go so far in as the S2+. So if you want to put a short reflector inside an S2, you are running out of thread before the reflector is pressed onto the lens.

2800 lumens?? otf?

That’s what it says. That’s at startup from an Amp plus 18350. Bearing in mind my wee sphere is not calibrated, professional or laboratory standard.

I thought about “dremeling” a couple slots in the pill, but the pill wall on the S2 is very thin so I didn’t think there would be enough room (at least with my pliers) to use them anyways.

The pictures are a little deceiving since the retaining ring is thinner than normal in order to make room for the bleeder resistor.

I have Bistro firmware on all my MTN-17DDm drivers. What value bleeder resistor were you using?

Cool, do whatever works best for the situation, just I know what it’s like trying to get a stuck pill out without slots :weary:
I’ve had trouble with those drivers and lighted tailcaps too, used resistors from 400-5000 with no luck. Guppydrv.