What did you mod today?

Reflowed 2 * sm403 and 2 * sm503 (from virence.com) and installed it into the grey D4. Changed lens to carclo 10621 narrow spot. Also flashed anduril.2018-06-27.EMISAR_D4.hex. Result: beautiful ~4600K, to my eyes slightly below BBL.

Album with pictures

Hi guys!

I hadn’t touched a light (other than using them) in a while and got the itch to mod something. First off sorry for the low res pics, having a flagship phone with an amazing camera is no longer something my wife and I care to partake in, to much more important stuff in life than keeping up with Samsung / Apple… Hints why I have to take pics outdoors lol.

So first is my OLD 47’s quark, this light was my EDC for YEARS till the driver stopped working, well I lost my S41 EDC I had replaced the quark with in a tree a few weeks ago (BTW I’m an arborist now, fun career change) so I had to order a replacement and it’s on the slow boat so needing a suitable EDC and wanting to revive the trusty old girl I built this

Looking elegant as ever lol


Specs are shaved down 20mm driver with bistro, N219b 4000k emitter on noctigon shaved to 14mm, tail spring bypass (no driver spring, just a button contact). Best part; no more bright “pre-flash” at power up in moonlight mode!

That was the most recently put together one, this next one is the first light I had built in probably 2 years. This was a rebuild after the 22 to 17mm driver adapter PCB I originally used gave out.

My JAX Z1, now sporting a real 22mm driver from MTN running bistro with an SST-40 6500k (definitely not my tint choice but shear lumens are fun), mcpcb soldered to pill.


Next was just to see if I could, another old old 47’s (again from back before they spelled out 47’s), this time a Preon P1 that had lived in the ash tray of an 02 Subaru that hasn’t ran since 2015 sitting in the sun with an alkileak in it… Managed to clean it up inside first then I swapped a xpl onto the tiny 10mm MCPCB then that’s where things got complicated, the stock driver circuitry remains but controlling is it the low voltage variant 13A wired dead bug style onto the factory boost driver. As was the original it’s AAA primary / NiMH only but atleast it’s setup with a usable UI with 3 well spaced modes and no blink crap. As far as the technical aspect it’s without a doubt one of my most advanced builds just cause of size alone, the wires to the pins on the dead bugged ATTiny are iterally only a few mm long each.


Note the red dot is on the glass, not the reflector. It was an indexing mark I just haven’t alcoholed off yet.

Next I finally replaced the P60 on my AR15 with a convoy M2. It’s a basic build with an XPL, dual (and bypassed) springs at the head and tail for shock resistance and my same old gun light UI (single mode unless you double click faster than 0.1s then it comes on in a variable 18-22khz strobe)

Forgot to take a pic of this one, I’ll edit it in later, maybe, if I remember to get to it.

Finally, like the Preon above this was another “just cause I can” build. Olight S10 triple with 2 XPL for brightness and a Nichia 219b to add some CRI with diffuser film on the glass plus a wide, frosted optic to try to mix the beam as much as possible. Unmodded driver as I didn’t have any complaints about the UI and was more concerned about usable runtime than brightness plus that allows it to run safely off 123 primaries still, something not typically possible in a hot-rodded triple.

On the modding topic I have a few more builds in my queue:
I need to rebuild my old Sinner Al custom host, it hasn’t ran for a year now but with a little help from Sulman I’ve managed to source a new Judco switch and plan to go to a single emitter behind a TIR once that switch gets in (really had to do some begging to digikey to let me order a single one and they can’t give me a tentative date when I might expect it. Had I needed 5000pcs they’d be here in a week lol).
I also have my lumintop SD10 BLF edition on my bench now, it’s become a favorite work light of mine and in my work (tree climbing) when I do need a light I usually need a heavy flooder so it’s being converted to a triple with a ledil CUTE triple and one of those 35mm triple XP noctigon with 3x XPL’s. I don’t mind the UI so my plan is to play with the stock driver at first to retain the battery options, if a resistor mod doesn’t net me enough of a current boost I’ll consider replacing it once it’s running.

Nice mods, Cereal_killer. How does S10 beam look like?

Nice! :+1: I’m glad you gave it another try.

Build a wall mount for my new lab power supply

replacing the old 40V 5A

new features for driver testing

also it can measure the voltage on the crocodile clamp build like a Kelvin clamp not on the voltage output therminals
Build them myself from a 2.5mm² wire soldered to the clamp and 0.35mm² wire for voltage detection

connected a pretty full battery carrier to it

Simple but eyeball saving emitter swap.
I love flashlights everywhere so I couldn’t resist these inexpensive, roll your own 18650 power banks with built-in flashlight from ebay.
UI is HI/LOW/Flash so that’s a pain, but it’s better than nothing and handy in a pinch.
Tint was so purple it was unusable. Couldn’t find 5000k but found a 10 pack of 4000k emitters for $2.08 from aliexpress.
Looks much better in person, but here’s a cellphone pic:




Got mine at my local OSH. They aren’t great quality snap ring pliers but they did the job.

One option: If you find your snap ring pliers or needle nose pliers aren’t fitting in the holes in the ring, just enlarge the holes.

You can do this by hand with a hobby pin-vise drill, or by using a power drill with small drill bit.

Got a D4 Ti from Emisar with 219C emitters and a short tube for 18350, of course I had to flash the driver with Anduril and go with 18ga leads while I was in there! Ultimately this proved too much, making 3964 lumens pulling 25.2A at the tail… it’d burn the fingers in about 7 seconds in Turbo! With the short tube and smaller cell it’d still make 3001 lumens. The ceiling on the ramp, in default levels, allowed 2000 lumens so this was a nice compromise.

So I pulled the stock (quite thick) MCPCB with it’s Nichia’s and replaced it with an T-Pad from Cutter and 4 XP-L2 5000K emitters that I sliced and diced…

Now it only pulls 13A on the 18350 cell and still makes 3957 lumens! :smiley: The heat is better managed, it’ll still get very hot but it takes longer to become critical and the driver has time to start stepping output down. Out of curiosity I put the longer tube back on and tested the VTC5A that allowed 3964 on the Nichia’s, a whopping 5585 lumens from the XP-L2’s! I won’t be using the light this way, that’s just too much from the small light and the square knurled Ti tube feels and looks great on my black D1s…

I should report this while I’m here I guess. Emisar missed something fairly critical. They drilled and tapped holes in the copper head to enable the MCPCB to be screwed down, obviously intending to shorten two legs on the optics to clear the screws. BUT, the MCPCB wasn’t designed properly. They didn’t leave clearance on the traces for the ground contacts for the screws and if you use screws it shorts (grounds) the negative lead and the light is on continuously, bypassing the switch. This is why some have seen alignment issues, the board isn’t affixed into the head. (Good thing they didn’t do the S41 thing and put the positive trace on the outside!)

This is what led me to use the Cutter T-Pad, it allowed me to screw the board down snug without shorting out.

The slightly thinner T-Pad also allowed the bezel to screw down snug without being a bear to get screwed on all the way. :wink: They made the quad MCPCB nice and thick for sure, but it just doesn’t seem to fit properly in the light as it’s made.

A short on the board’s surface? The last two ‘second gen’ aluminum D4s I opened included non-metallic washers.


Or a short between the screw’s head and the wires’ pads? My aluminum D4s seem to have clearance even with oversized solder joints and the metal washers shifted toward center.

The trace should have an area of clearance around the screw hole but they don’t. Mine not only did not have the non-conductive washer, there were no screws either! This, the more expensive Titanium model.

Edit: The short that made the light operate was through the masking, not a contact issue with the pad itself. I could use a mill bit and cut through the trace around the hole so everything would clear, and I may do that and re-use the thick Noctigon MCPCB when my first Samsung LH351D’s get here…

What about using the other set of holes? Maybe there’s no traces near them?

Unscrew the D4’s stock copper pad, rotate it 90 degrees and then screw it down again.

D’oh! I wonder if that was an oversight during assembly of your Ti model, or if they’re all missing screws.

Were all four legs of the optic intact? That would be a clue.

You may remember that the very early aluminum D4s didn’t have screws. Not even holes for screws. :smiley: Photo courtesy of TK:

My D4 from July 2017 has no screws or holes. It seems the screws were added a couple months after launch:

I’ve had my Emisars open several times to reflash Andúril as TK adds features.


Besides body color, guess how I tell my early and late D4s apart… :wink:

The Carclo optic for mine had all 4 legs intact.

The D4 on the right in your picture has no screws. Screwed down, the “square” arrangement of the LED’s lines up with the switch on top. :wink:

And the negative trace covers the entire outer face of the MCPCB, the positive trace covers the entire inside. So rotating the board in an attempt to use the other optic leg holes wouldn’t work, not to mention the intended holes are elongated and have the outside edges cut out to allow for the screws.

The MCPCB is extra thick, well made, with that exception of not allowing room around the screw hole to avoid a short. Simple enough really, an X-Acto knife can fix it without much trouble. Still, it’s an oversight on Hanks part…

Pic, trace cleared for screws…

I caught up on a few mods today…

  • Finally put Anduril on my Emisar D1. I had been avoiding this until I felt it was stable enough that I wouldn’t really need to reflash it again any time soon.
  • Updated my Emisar D4 lights too, and moved all the “good” parts into one host.
  • Converted the first FW3A prototype into a dev host so I can do optical programming and stuff. It no longer looks anything like a FW3A, but at least it still has the same driver.

Has anyone built a light using the noctigon 4xp 33mm mcpcb and ledil optic? I just bought a couple from intl-outdoors.

32mm Noctigon and Ledil CUTE-3? Absolutely, built dozens of them in the Eagle Eye X6. Neat light when done, one of my favorites.

They have a new quad board in 33mm

LED4Power will also have a few new ones coming out around this same size

I think this board was meant, with Ledil Angie-S optic. Probably not because it has not been listed very long still.

Re-addressed a little Kronos prototype X5, the black aluminum one. This one, as a proto, has no markings on it. I sliced and diced one of the new Samsung LH351D emitters in 5000K 80 CRI, U6 power bin, and on a purple Efest 14500 it now makes 1300 lumens. The tint is nice, beam profile is sweet, love this Samsung in the diminutive X5. :slight_smile:

This one was problematic in that it has no driver retaining ring, had to work that out to get compression from the battery tube for a good ground, other than that it went pretty normal.

Of interest to note, I built the 17mm FET driver with a Toshiba MOSFET (the one that has a metal top for heat sinking purposes) and the original A6 firmware, used 22Ga Turnigy wires with spring bypasses on this…. the top of the head portion is cut off short as I used to have an A Horton aspheric in this little light. Thought about using it over this Samsung emitter but I like the beam profile with the original screw in reflector…

Edit: On second thought, it’s really pretty neat with the aspheric lens in it…

And side by side compared with the beam of the reflector, same level same camera settings (this from my iPhone 8 with a camera app)

The shot with the aspheric looks brighter as all the light produced is going into the square hot spot (or almost all), where the reflector has an aura and spill area that adds light to the hallway and other parts of my son’s room. You can see the beam in the air with aspheric, illuminating the humidity and dust. :wink:

Edit II: My bad, the side by sides with my phone were at
Aspheric: f/1.8, 1/12 shutter, ISO 100
Reflector: f/1.8, 1/15 shutter, ISO 80