What did you mod today?

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/

I read a lot of Western’s, the term Ayup was used a lot in the hill-billy or mountain man (typical of slang from the North East US back in the mid to late 1800’s) dialect to mean Yes.

When I said that, I was in dire straits, physically, and giving a short answer before shutting down my computer.

I think it could have ist origin in some german saying, perhaps a mixture of “ja” and the slang “jup”. https://www.mundmische.de/bedeutung/1508-jup

Today finally fixed AT40 :partying_face:

So you’re saying I can remove mpcb’s that I have laid out on an aluminum strip with enough heat? I have a bunch of Nichias on Noctigons that I would love to recover if possible.

With Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive I have found that to be true. I typically put the soldering iron on the edge of the copper MCPCB to heat it up, the adhesive will emit an odor when it gets hot, I usually use a flat blade jewelers screwdriver and twist it to apply lateral pressure or if one of the wire holes shows the bottom of the MCPCB I will put the screwdriver against the bottom of the board and give the screwdriver a sharp rap… I actually keep a 1” wood chisel on my bench to use as a hammer for this type of situation.

I have removed glued boards many times this way.

Using Arctic Silver, or JB Weld, not gonna happen. That stuff is resilient!

Ok that’s great news, thank you Dale. I just checked and have used Arctic Alumina two part adhesive. I’ll try your method and see what I can do. Do you think the noctigons will still be useful after?

Finally got a day off and put it to good use!

Convoy s2+ w/ 2 channel red / white triple.
LEDs: 2x Nichia 219C 5000k, 1x Osram Olsen SSL80 deep red (657nm). Do note this is a 3030 LED and is VERY DIFFICULT to get it to float centered on XP pads during reflow)
Driver: hacked 105c
FW: BLF-A6, surprisingly [to me] not that modified at all.

Cut one trace on thr MTN MCPCB is all it takes to make the one individually addressable

Isolate a 7135

That soldering was easy, you can’t see the tiny wire from pin 5 to the single 7135 leg.

It needs some work still, I forgot to make the red channel come on during hidden turbo and I want to mod the levels some, maybe add a red/white strobe back in. Definitely gotta
make the 6 mode group have a little higher R1 than it does now then crank R2 to max for a low/high red mode.

Yep. :+1:

Very nice CK :+1:

Thanks guys.
Wasn’t gonna post this one but gotta live and learn. Plus if at first you don’t succeed; spend more, spend more money. Or something like that I think.

Thankfully the 2 nichia bit it and the SSL80 was fine, it was the only one, the other Olsen I had was standard red and the deep red was one of my main wants in this light, otherwise I’d have just used a XP-E2 and not dealt with the crazy soldering.

Just for fun :smiley: :sunglasses:

Modded my cheapo Rayovac 3 AAA headlamp. I don’t use a headlamp that often, but when I do, it’s to work on something around the house in order to keep both hands free. Although I would love to get a nice ZebraLight floody headlamp, I can’t justify it since I wouldn’t use it much. The tint of the Rayovac headlamp isn’t bad for a cool white LED, and I like that it just has high and medium modes (no strobes).

The headlamp is also plenty bright, but I don’t like the narrowness of the beam. I’m constantly moving the headlamp up and down in order to get it in the position that I need. So I decided to replace the lens.

Taking it apart was very easy, just 3 screws holding it together. There are 2 O-rings, 1 for the battery cover and the other for the plastic lens. There was some type of thermal compound/adhesive on the back of the aluminum MCPCB, but my guess it was to hold the LED in place for assembly rather than for thermodynamics.

I thought about trying to make the Rayovac lens frosted, but it had a raised rim on both sides. So instead, I created a lens from some semi-transparent plastic I had. I used sandpaper to make 1 side frosted.

The final result turned out great. The headlamp now produces a much more useful flooded light.

I solved the last of the problems with my first flashlight rebuild.
S2+ with TIR, shaved SST-40 and BLF-A6 driver.
The problem was soldering the driver to that damn pill.
I used a blowtorch this time and it worked.
Though I overheated the spring so it stopped being springy. And fell off.
Oh well, doesn’t matter for now, I soldered it back on.

I turn it on….nothing happens.

If I bypass the driver and connect a battery directly to the leads - ouch, my eyes hurt. So it must be the driver.
I tried to remove the pill and connect battery to it directly. I touched the pill and the driver with wires, saw a blink. Weird…
Back to the host, it’s still dead.
Again, checking the pill. When I connected it I saw some smoke from the point on the spring where I touched it with the wire.

Did I reverse polarity?
No.

OK, how should I troubleshoot it further?

You might have heated the driver so hot with the torch that other things flowed and shorted it out, or you may have just damaged components with the sheer amount of heat applied. Blowtorch and the fine components of a flashlight driver are a risky and tricky combination.