Jerommel's Hand Job 2018 - 6th annual BLF / Old Lumen Scratch Made Light Contest

Nice work!

Wow. This looks real interesting. Good on ya for entering. :beer:

Progress has been slow, and i planned on getting to a working light today, but i have to wait for glue to dry now.

Pics and text:

I made a hole for the charging indicator lights.
Drilled a hole, put some Scotch ‘magic’ tape on the inside and filled the cavity with Kafuter UV curing glue.
The tape is frosted, acting as a diffuser.
Nice idea, but didn’t last…

I have an average to short micro USB plug in the charging port, and still some room to spare.

And then it was time to do some epoxy sculpting.

Switch button boxed in by epoxy, because i want to make this light as waterproof as possible.

A switch boot will fit over the button, shutting it off from water.

And also the USB port is surrounded by epoxy now.
The port itself is set in super glue and epoxy, so any water can’t really go through the port because all is sealed form the rear.

This was a bit dumb:

Had to make a new pair of holes for the LED board screws, in order to align the optics with the switch.
Why didn’t i think of that before?? :confounded:

Screws with rather large heads, but the right length.
Had to scrape some of the traces on the LED board out of the way to prevent causing short circuit.
Used a black marker to mask the mayhem…

Meanwhile, i ground some 1.5mm off the head length, also getting rid of the damages.

…needless to say, i dropped it AGAIN after that…
But after some cussing, hammering, squeezing and sanding it all ‘buffed out’ fairly nicely.

But this is the problem with this build…
The copper is actually too soft to make a light out of.
It would be okay if it was thicker, but it’s just 1 mm wall thickness…
So i’m looking for another tube, maybe aluminium, maybe brass, to slide over the light, to add some strength, particularly for the head.
But i’ll build it like this first, then we’ll see what we can find, or not…

Time to glue the assembly in place in the tube !

Kafuter is really handy stuff.
I put some in a syringe and filled the gaps between the epoxy and the copper.
Used a Singfire 324 with 395nm LED, shining around inside the cavity.

Also glued the battery in the tube the same way.

And the USB port.

It’s pretty strong stuff when cured.
And very thin so it creeps where ever it can.

So what about the Scotch tape?
Well, it damaged when i had to do some filing inside the tube after opening the USB hole a bit more to the right to get better alignment.
So in stead of the tape a put a bit of Kafuter there in stead, and made that surface frosted with a diamond powder coated file.
That was okay, although not as even as the tape…
But somehow either the Kafuter or some of the final addition of super glue got onto it, so it’s not entirely frosted anymore…
In fact, it looks quite messy now… :weary:
I think some particles got stuck in there too…
Too bad, but oh well…

So after pouring in some super glue, intended to creep between battery and copper tube, i added some more epoxy between driver and shelf, all just to make sure the insides aren’t going anywhere.

So now it hangs in my bathing room against the air intake, in order to suck away the fumes of the drying super glue.
I’ll leave it hanging there to tomorrow afternoon.
After that, i can put in the LED board and optic.
If i don’t wait for the super glue to shed its fumes, it might well deposit a white haze on the optics, so i’m not taking the risk.

To be continued…

:+1:

What sort of epoxy glue did you use?

This one:

^ Does not contain metal, by the way.

Update:

No pics, just some reporting on the disasters of building this light…

I dropped the damn thing AGAIN !!

Big dent in the head….

BUT, i managed to un-dent it AGAIN ! :+1: :beer:

And then i put in the triple LED board, and somehow (i suspect how it happened though…) i have a short circuit, probably in one of the LEDS.

I’ve had it for today… :weary:

I did glue a switch boot over the button, or rather, over the cylinder in which the button sits.
That went quite well. Drying now, should be cured tomorrow.

To be continued……………

Persistence man… keep at it.
Will be a really nice light when done.
Great work so far.

Good thing you didn’t entomb everything together before finding out it had a short… :zipper_mouth_face:

Yeah. Shorting to that thick copper wall would have been bad for the 18650. Like venting.

It wouldn’t be too much of a problem(except for electrolyte smoking+leaking), but since you have an enclosed cell, well, it’s like with lithium ion pouches, but worse.

Nice work! :slight_smile:

The short was not in the entombed (lol) parts.
They just slided in the tube and are fine.
I think i cracked one of the LEDs on the LED board…
See, those thin KD triple are not flat, so i tried to flatten it a little when the LEDs were already soldered on it…
That was dumb, in hind sight… :person_facepalming:
The LED board is fixed with screws, so i could take it out again.

It’s not a short to the copper tube. :+1:

A true glue feast, is what it is… :smiley:
Of course i won’t give up.
Close to finishing a working light now.
Learned a lot too.
I should do this more often.

To be continued…

Yeah, this thin KD triple boards are crap. I ordered a couple of them way back with 219C mounted since they were pretty cheap but after mounting one of them into a S2+and the first LED dying quickly I never used them again.

Well, i should have flattened the board BEFORE i soldered the LEDs on to it, of course… :person_facepalming:
So i can only blame myself for this.
I knew they are not flat…

Kudos for your persistence. Also nice job lining up and cutting out a slot for the USB port :+1:

Well, it’s on hold at the moment…
There’s still that short in one of the LEDs (probably), so i finally put together my LED reflow device, consisting of the intestines of a thermostatic regulated soldering iron.
The heating element plus sensor (a ceramic rod with 4 wires coming out) i put in a large solid aluminium knob, so i would have a hot flat surface of about 40mm diameter.
And it worked! …for 15 minutes… :person_facepalming:
No idea what went wrong, but i chucked the whole thing in the bin…
And then the fluorescent tube light in the shed went out for the last time with a puff of smoke…
So i’m now replacing it with LEDs but also putting a 4 position switch regulator in the power line for the air extraction fan, which has been waiting for installation for quite a while too…
Much more work than anticipated, as usual…
And still no proper reflow thingy, which is a bit of a must for solder flowing 3030 LEDs on a triple 3535 board…

I will soon resume working on the light though.

…to be continued…

The element possibly burned out because it isn’t made for that kind of load (heating that whole knob). Or, maybe it was near failure anyway, and it just happened to give up while being used to reflow that time. Even if it was new, unused, it could have had poor tolerance or a manufacturing error. Still, a bum deal to have it go out, and the fluorescent tube as well. :weary: I hope you get back on track soon.

Aah, the joys of a man cave. To get to this you have to move that. And to finish making this you need to finish making that so you can use it to make this.

Good luck mate.