What did you mod today?

Sounds very nice Henk! The shallow reflector of the S2+ has never been my preference.

A quick and dirty mod tonight. I blued my AT40. Unfortunately I held the torch over the tail for extra long (that was where I started) and the colour went from blue back to pale. I let it cool and tried again but it just didn’t turn out. It’s blue inside the tail. Maybe if I sanded it back and tried again it might work…???

I am just modded by you folks :open_mouth:
Great great mods, all different, all cool ! Great work, mates :face_with_monocle:

Finished up the red utorch s1 mini for my wife.

Beam profile was exactly what I hoped for (why I used the SSL-80 version of Olson) but had pretty bad artifacts / rings on the wall so a layer of DC-fix on the inside of the lens fixed that right up

What happened to the heart positive contact ? :open_mouth:

I thought I would be able to cut / file some 3mm thick Cu sheet (to replace the stock button) but that didn’t happen :frowning:

I wasn’t able to shape the thick Cu sheet well enough by hand (diamond files and shears) so then I thought I’d just make 3 1mm hearts cause I can shape the thinner stuff well but I couldn’t stack 3 tiny 1mm thick hearts and get them to solder together and solder to the PCB clean enough to feel good about it…

Instead I just reused the factory 3mm x 5mm round button and gave her one of the blank PCB’s. The pad is a heart, just the button didn’t happen.

I tried a solder blob first, you can pile on about 1-1.5mm of solder and have it retain the perfect heart shape but it wasn’t enough height to work :frowning:

Sometimes the box needs to be shredded and tossed aside… why didn’t you simply solder the brass contact button to the top of the cell, leave the heart pad in place and let it show clearly at every cell charge?

You could also have went with the solder blobbed heart, solder blobbed the top of the cell to meet it. Seems a shame to have gone to all that trouble to make the heart pad only to obliterate it in the end. :frowning:

Convoy BD06. Quad Luxeon V. LD-B4 9A driver. Blue GITD tape.


Moded my On The Road M1,turned it into a Triple!

I was having issues with my Convoy S2+ (with biscotti) recently. It was switching modes or not turning on. I thought that maybe the switch or connection was bad.

I bought a new soldering iron (TS80), but have never used one, so have been hesitant to try it. This was a perfect excuse to practice by replacing a spring and seeing if I can fix it. I replaced the original spring with a carbobronze spring. The soldering job was horrible, but it held. I may redo it, eventually. I removed the front ring holding in the driver in order to replace that spring as well and noticed it was loose. I tightened it back up and it solved my issue. I am going to use it for a few days before messing with the spring on the driver, but it was my first mod/repair so I wanted to share.

Yep, I had a similar issue with a Sofirn SP/SF/whatever light æons ago. Thought it was a wonky switch, too. Saw that the driver’s retaining ring was loose, snugged it up, worked perfectly ever since.

@Calaveras, you need a flat tip to do most soldering jobs.

Here is one which will work well:

A bit expensive, but totally worth it.

I agree that some sort of chisel tip is more useful for most soldering jobs. That iron is 18W, max? For a lot of flashlight stuff, I’d be looking at a high-power iron too. MCPCBs, springs and leads can pull away a lot of heat.

@Bluesword
It comes with either the fine tip = TS-B02
or the chisel tip TS-D25 which I bought. I just checked and it is marked TS-D25 FR37
The picture cut off the end with formatting…

This is not a serious soldering station, but it should work for now. I liked the portability. I have a couple powerbanks that can power it. I do no like tools that sit forever on the table, but I may have to go that way in the future if I get serious

My TS80 is useful for some stuff, but for certain flashlight mods you’ll need a 60W soldering iron.

Yeah. The TS80 works well on surfaces that wick heat away quickly, but not ones that can sink in a ton of heat, like springs and MCPCBs. It makes it hard to solder stuff quickly since they have high thermal mass.

There is one thing you should invest on though if you want to do mods like spring replacements, MCPCBs, etc. Hard stuff to do with a soldering iron, but really easy with the tool I am about to show you.

A hot air reflow station like this:

Chatika, I LIKE it! :slight_smile: Nicely done, and a nice light to choose as a host for that project! I took forever getting one and now have almost forgotten it…

Warmed up one of my Wuben T046R lights with a triple emitter XP-L Hi U4 3000K 80+ CRI board from Mountain Electronics.


Not sure about TS-80, but it’s predecessor is 60W.

I wasn’t sure either, that’s why I googled it before posting. Everything I founds said 9v, 2a.