What did you mod today?

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.

I have demolished several drivers trying to solder them to a pill with a blowtorch. After I bought a 80W (Antex) solder iron (also good for soldering wires to DTP boards inside cavities) my problems were over.

OK, so the best thing to do now is cut the driver off the pill, unsolder the leads and do a visual inspection. Right?

Perhaps a photo of this driver/pill assembly would help, maybe a few photo’s from different angles?

Next time, before you put in the driver, tin the rim of the pill with solder. It’ll be a lot easier to solder the driver to it.

Been working on the TN42 XHP70.2 P2-1A. (crash test dummy) I think I got most of the resistance out of it. :smiley: Tested on a T/A’s Lumen Tube and calibrated with maukka’s lights.

4xVTC5D’s at 4.07volts. 8,840lms @ turn on.

4xVTC5D’s right off the charger, 4.21volts

9,230 lumen at turn on. I need more/better/ bigger heat sinking!!! :person_facepalming:

I SWEAR I seen just over 11,000lm Blip off the meter for a Nano Second! :open_mouth:

^

Nice KawiBoy. Looks like you are losing some lumens in your measurement around the bezel. If you can lower the light a bit deeper into the tube, you will probably get a better measurement. I think I read TA once saying that he lowers the light until he gets the highest reading. I do the same thing now.

Fun soldering tonight!

That’s how much slack I was working with. All 22AWG silicone

Pretty cool! What driver is this?

That looks downright scary Sk. Nice work. :beer:

That’d be mine. If you happened to know that and you’re asking for specifics it’s my v3.0 constant current 4Ch driver in 17mm.

Omg, with the current FW offerings this old board is my new favorite 7135 driver!

Can be populated from a 105c and a otc.
Dual channel 1x / 7x 7135.
Runs popular FW including star moonlight special and (wait for it) BLF-A6 without mods.
Fits in Convoy S2+ pills, with non filed retaining ring!

Awesome!


Yes, sitting on top of the ring is not ideal, and even with a tinfoil hat around it, and set inside I gained 400lm. It was mostly and experiment. I used some heavy solid core copper wire we use on our machines that I found laying around in the shop, and hand pounded and bent many pieces to connect the mcpcb to the Lexel T/A Infineon FETDD TN42 driver, to see if/what I would get. Well the pipe fitters have a term/word for it “Bones” many bones were made till I got the right length and bends in the leads to be able to solder the leads to the board or driver with out breaking the solder joints or ripping the contacts off either, and bolt the TN42 style driver up to the light. This heavy solid core wire is not manageable to say the least. I wasted a good brand new massive SD75 XHP70 board in the process. I just wished I would of done this in a light that had better sinking and fins on it. The TN42 is not the best choice, as in seconds this thing gets amazingly hot, the GT or SD75 would have been a better host, really stupid in the end on my choice with all the effort but it was a rainy weekend?. :smiley:

The carrier springs had 18awg Normal wire (silicone) bypass’s and the center positive contact was soldered directly to the carrier mcpcb, brass screws connecting the stanchions to the boards, with 4xVTC5D’s 2S2P it’s a potent power plant.

I am building an integrated sphere and have a problem.
My Luxmeter has a maximum value of 200 kLux, but my Imalent DX80 emitts more light.
Does anyone know how to mod a luxmeter, that it shows lower values. Can I add a resistor? How does it work? Has the sensor AC or DC Current?

Its a UNI-T UT383 BT.

Diffuse the light. That will take some balancing to get it right but it will be easier and more reliable than tinkering with your meter.

Thank you, that was my second idea, but my favorite was to change something in my meter.

Now I added a DN25 electric installation tube with 6cm length, to put the sensor to the outside of the sphere. It lowers the readings by factor 10.

No 30.000 Lumen eqals around 50.000 Lux. This means my sphere can read around 100-120 kLumen. That may rest around 2 years to get such a flashlight, I think.

Measure a lower mode in the sphere and calculate the relative difference between that and higher modes in some other way (ceiling bounce for example). Or put a diffuser/neutral density filter in front of the lux meter. Or what you just did :slight_smile: