What did you mod today?

A hand-dremeled carbide insert (started out as a 11ER 60°), squared the end & sides, narrowed it down to ~.65mm, ground large side & end relief angles and put a tiny radius at the tip.
Could have started with a HSS blank too, I just figured grinding this would be quicker.
From there on it was just manual threading, 100rpm, 0.1mm depth of cut. That AW-2007 machines nicely.

Why dreadful? The driver, mainly. Terrible mode spacing (one mode low, the next three between 350 and ~1000 lm IIRC). No LVP either.
The UI wasn’t that bad (nice and simple) , good form factor too but the modes killed it.

Thanks! :beer: :beer: :beer:

Nice tip. I’ll try that one day. :+1: :beer:

Today I’ve tried Optisolis quad in AT40: Amutorch AT40

I got the pair of Eagle Eye X6 hosts in the mail today, already had the quad board from Noctigon loaded with Samsungs and waiting, so I made a nice thick 36x12mm copper spacer/heat sink to fit the 33mm Noctigon board and Ledil Angie into the head of the X6. Worked out really nice, need to build a driver so when a new thermal compound get’s here Monday I’ll be ready to assemble it. :slight_smile:

Edit: I went ahead and built a 17mm driver with Bistro and assembled the X6 Quad, after polishing up the top surface of the copper sink. Didn’t use any thermal paste or glue in the sink as I am waiting on Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive and a new synthetic diamond thermal paste that will be here Monday. A quick initial test with the light dry assembled showed some 3400 lumens on an LG HE4.

Edit II: The epoxy came early, went ahead and re-flowed the 33mm MCPCB to the copper sink then glued the assembly into the X6 head with the Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive and assembled it all….

Bistro was working fine on an LG HE4, but with a Sony VTC5A in place it glitches some of the time. And when it’s not glitching? How about 4616.1 lumens out the front? :smiley:

Edit II: Ok, so I applied the Bistro fix and recharged the VTC5A, now it works solidly and is really amazing…. 5171.55 lumens in Turbo at start. Pretty nice little light! :smiley:

Also got my GT mini yesterday, modified it today. It now pushes 1683.6 lumens out the front on a Sanyo GA cell. :smiley:

Samsung LH351D 5000K 80CRI emitter, domed, on the stock DTP 20mm copper MCPCB. Flashed Anduril to the driver, replaced the FET with an SIR800DP and put 18ga wires on it. 18ga spring bypass on the driver. Removed the pcb in the tail cap and fitted a copper disc with the large spring that came with the light, 20 ga bypass inside the spring.

Yes, I lost some of the tightness of the beam but the color and intensity is so much nicer I can live with the trade-off.

Some revisions to one of my Sipik 58s.

Bezel and optic same style as I had previous in this light, but now redone for a cleaner look.


This is the stock lens retaining ring with the interior widened with a cylindrical grinding bit. The LED-Lenser style optic is from a $10 zoom light from OSH.

The previous bezel and optic I had in this late used the same setup, but looked much messier because I ground the inside edge of the bezel where it meets the optic back. And I’d messed up with the glue and some had run down the backside of the optic creating blindspots in the spot beam. This latest attempt looks much more professional.

Minor revisions to the interior of the tailcap.
I replaced the momentary pushbutton I had in there with a bigger one with a more noticeable click. I also replaced the post in the tailcap with a wire-bypassed spring:

Previously, I had a spring at the head of the light and a post made from 2 copper disks at the back. That setup worked, but I noticed the light dimming or flickering after a minute or two of use. the problem was a bad ground connection. Adding the second spring fixed that problem by more firmly pressing the guts of the light together.

NOTE: This particular Sipik 58 clone is very heavily modified. Modifications include:

  • All anodizing removed and bare aluminum polished up.
  • LED mounted on a laminated copper post on top of a copper Noctigon.
  • Stock 18mm aspheric lens replaced with LED-Lenser style zooming TIR optic.
  • Driver replaced with e-switch FET driver from Mountain Electronics (moppydrv firmware. If I were doing the driver today I’d go with a FET+1 driver with D4 firmware).
  • Interior of battery compartment widened to make room for a rolled up plastic sheet and brass sheet to serve as electrically isolated e-switch contact.
  • Tailcap guts rebuilt with copper structure and momentary pushbutton switch.
  • contact rings added at both ends of the battery compartment for e-switch.
  • tailcap switch boot replaced with light-green GITD boot.
  • LED replaced with XPL HI 5D

What’s going on here?
Is that a DR. Jones RGB driver on the test stand?
Yes, yes it is!

More to come, off to ITCC finals!!!

And here it is (my ITCC event got pushed till this afternoon)!

After a stupid routing mistake cost me my $10 driver boards, and not willing to try, and wait for, boards again I switched direction on my triple Rook.

Dr Jones RGB driver! It’s his standard 17mm board with modded rgbw FW (to be 3 channel, using RGB for white). Each channel is 2x 7135.
I really like how well the flood optic works with the RGB and runtime should be ~1h on turbo “white”, though it’s more of a toy instead of a useful light so I may stack another 2 chips per channel later and sacrifice that runtime.

Looking sharp Dale !
That’s one good looking Quad X6.

Is that the stock lens? It looks quite thick

I have the stock hosts’ clear o-ring on top of the optic and the AR glass lens on top of the o-ring. :wink:

I just got the fix applied to Bistro, no more stepping down to moon from Turbo or Strobe…. the fresh charged Sony VTC5A yields a start value of 5171.55 lumens, amazing! :slight_smile:

Edit: YOu can click on the picture to open it in a new window then click it again there for a larger look. The set-up then shows itself, optic/o-ring/lens. :wink:

In case anyone’s wondering why I drilled the outer two holes in the base of the copper heat sink when the center hole is used, it’s to give torsional strength to the glued joint. I align the ~4mm deep holes with the original wires holes in the emitter shelf of the head so the glue has “posts” to it, really limits the ability for the whole thing to slip and twist wires.

I love using the Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive as it sets up in minutes, it’s stuck in about 5 minutes and pretty much cured in 12. Another thing I like about it is that if an mcpcb just has to be removed you can heat up the board with the soldering iron and break the epoxy joint loose. Can’t do that with Arctic Silver or JB Weld, once in with those it’s just gonna stay there pretty much.

Looks like someone has a new favorite LED

I, uh, bought a tape of 25. :blush:

$2.04 each, shipped I think.

Which CRI and color did you pick? Same 5K 80CRI?

Ayup

Arrow stocks the 5000K 90CRI Samsung now and they do free overnight shipping.

If you are a new customer they have 30% off ending today. (may be able to create a new account and use the code, idk)

https://www.arrow.com/en/products/sphwhtl3da0gf4rts6/samsung-electronics

I wanted to keep the output power bin higher, the 5000K 90CRI drops power considerably. :wink:

6XP-anna mosX PCB Demo build1 - C8 6xLH351D 4000K 90CRI (still not 100% finished):

This is how spacer will look like,a little unconventional and more complicated, but it has several advantages - build is easier once spacer is fixed and can't move, spacer is compressed with high pressure, and all wires can be soldered on driver first which is usually much easier. Hole in C8 should be ~8-8.5mm.

Driver LD-B4 18Amp for this build:

Those FR4 0.6mm thermal insulating boards are working as expected, soldering thick wires on them is very easy.

Moon mode:

I used common 1288 Omten switch and 30Q cell,so I didn't test light under full potential yet, but it's damn bright for 90CRI and it's size. Brightest 90CRI C8? Hm maybe even brightest single cell 90CRI light?

Of course big die dome led and relatively small TIR size (but much bigger than carlco optics) makes this light flooder, but it still can burn paper:)

And relatively big ALU spacer definitely works well as thermal storage because light didn't get crazy hot very fast, but it also took more time to cool down. If you are going to use this kind of light in <1min pulses with >1min pause,it is beneficial.

Wow outstanding mech mod on that pill Neven! :beer:

Ay up? :laughing:

https://ayup-lights.com/