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! 
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.
Yesterday I put Luminus SST-20 J4 FB4 (4000K) in Reylight Pineapple.
Reflowed onto a bit crushed stock MPCPB:
The pill:
Stock 219C emitter was way above BBL in mine sample. This one (FB4) is as well, but not as much as the stock one. Quality of light is much better, very “soft” to eyes. Because of PWM design of the driver, tint shift with increasing drive current is not visible.
Also I upgraded the driver (back in August :person_facepalming: ). Here is the picture of 2 drivers, both are stock, one is from older version (old clip design and no LVP).
Put a reverse flush clicky in my Armytek Partner C1. Light now tail stands, Wizard clip for deep carry, grip tape for cold wet hands. Next step is a tail magnet.
Built my big boy… 25,426.5 lumens at start, 22,700 at 30 seconds.
very nice! what emitters did you settle on? also, I assume your negative is a solid CU plate?
You know the best thing about this mod?
It’s not even finished yet
With 8 cells, you are going to push the emitters even harder.
He is perhaps going to get 30 000, or even slightly more with more cells
The tail end of the Q8 has a thick copper plate with dual Blue springs soldered on. No bypasses.
I have Noctigon Quad boards and a Maxtoch 25mm center board.
4 Samsung LH351D W6 5000K
4 Samsung LH351D U6 5000k 80 CRI
4 XP-L V3 HI, 2 ea of 1A and 3A
4 XP-L V6 HD, 2 ea of 1D and 3D
1 SST-40 dedomed and sealed from Richard
The HI’s and HD’s are on shared boards with the domeless emitters on the inside, tint’s oppose each other for mixing. The whiter W6 emitters are on the inside with the slightly warm higher CRI emitters on the outside. Tedious to layout and implement, managed to get one Samsung reversed and short a board and got one Samsung emitter poorly re-flowed, nada zilch sip solder on the positive contact. AND, something happened to the 7135 on the main driver and had the SST-40 on full time, that one required a complete disassembly, even removed the Slaves to get at the Master to swap in a new chip. Went ahead and removed the dual 12 ga copper ground posts and used a quarter inch copper rod instead.
Final tint is surprisingly just white, I haven’t noticed a tint or hue yet, of course it isn’t dark yet either.
Maybe now I can sleep without this crazy light build haunting my precious few brain cells! Lol
Blue, I’ll ultimately be able to run 16 cells and have run time too!