What did you mod today?

Fairly certain Turning Blue Chips is about to turn a pile of shavings into a bar that he will then make a light from. Converting ā€œscrapā€ into a nice final product. :wink:

Are you sure that isnā€™t a bowl of veggies heā€™s about to convert into calories and biological waste products? :smiling_imp:

Oh, itā€™s aluminum shavings. I have too big a pile of those myself to not recognize themā€¦ even under the odd color liquid.

Did me a pintrest project with my son today. Accent lighting for his room.

Edit it didnā€™t work, hereā€™s a link (Idk if you have to be logged in or just open it in a new tab or what, never tried to do a video on imgur before)
https://i.imgur.com/ZhGemH2.gifv

Not sure of the imgur video is gonna embed so hereā€™s a photo jicā€¦

ā€œpencil modā€ on the suspect capacitors on two Astrolux A01s ā€” both now behave properly, starting on low, eliminating the next mode sometimes flakiness.

Super cool project CK :+1:

Finally got my Skilhunt H03 modded. Used a LH351D and Lexelā€™s newest 21mm driver, flashed Anduril and bypassed that weird tail (mostly). One thing I think people donā€™t mention for this mod is to make sure the optic presses against the PCB firmly if you switch to a 3535 LED. I sanded down an XP butterfly spacer flat and thin and now it presses against that and holds everything with good pressure.

I also had a bad re-flow the first try thanks to the damn BLF A6 star I tried to re-use. Gotta love seeing that blue light.

My man cave needs one as well Ck. :+1:

My man mousehole needs one too :+1:

Built my second S2+ triple yesterday. Headline specs:

Desert Tan S2+ Host
Triple Luxeon V 4000K on Led4Power MCPCB with MOSFET and NTC
LED4Power B4 driver
Carclo 10507 TIR optic
Kiriba-ru copper spacer
Both springs bypassed with 20AWG silicone wire
LG HG2 battery

My Nichia 219C triple (in the copper host in the photo) is the first torch I built from scratch, i.e. with a host and collecting all the parts together. I love it, and itā€™s a ridiculous little hot rod. But I felt I could go even further, so after some browsing of led4power.comā€™s site and these forums I saw that the Luxeon V seems like a very efficient and high-power emitter. Iā€™m a huge fan of the S2+ so I decided my next build would be a Luxeon V triple.

The results are quite amazing. It is both brighter and throwier than my 219C triple, as you can see in the photos (same camera settings for the outdoor comparison shots, including the hilariously grainy high ISO setting that I didnā€™t notice on Lightroom Mobile!). I measured 19A with my clamp meter which is roughly the same as my 219C triple, but according to the tests posted here, a Luxeon V at 6 amps is 2000 lumens! Iā€™m not sure if that really equates to 6K of real-life light output with three of them, but it is very impressive nonetheless.

I used the L4P B4 driver and their triple Luxeon V MCPCB with external MOSFET and temp sensor. This means 5 wires to the MCPCB rather than just 2 which made for some fiddly soldering, but it allows for much quicker, more granular temperature control, and more efficient heat dissipation thanks to the external FET. Itā€™s quite a sophisticated little build and it works really well. You can set the temperature stepdown threshold wherever you please with the L4P driver, so I increased it a bit since the stock 65C was quite tame :slight_smile:

All in all, Iā€™m extremely impressed with this build and the quality of L4Pā€™s hardware. Butā€¦ Iā€™m wondering if I can go even better and brighter with the S2+ hostā€¦. What say you all?

Iā€™m jealous of your soldering skills hcanning, those joints look immaculate! :open_mouth:

Iā€™m not gonna lie, they came pre-soldered from L4P, which was a nice surprise as I wasnā€™t expecting them to, nor did I pay for this service. But soldering the 5 wires onto the driver was very fiddly and Iā€™m quite pleased with the results of that (forgot to take photos so youā€™ll have to take my word for it)! My cheapy Amazon iron has done me well over the years and Iā€™ve never had any trouble soldering onto MCPCBs or anything really.

Well done L4P then :slight_smile:
And a very nice mod hcanning, this may be the hottest S2+ one can build these days.

Thanks! Iā€™d love to know if thereā€™s any way of going even hotter for my next build :sunglasses:

Jam 4 of them in thereā€¦ :smiley:

:open_mouth:

Details?!


The inside is well-illuminated :stuck_out_tongue:

Iā€™m afraid I donā€™t understand the external FET reasoning. The FET doesnā€™t typically produce heat, but the emitters on a copper star sure do. Why move the FET from the tame pcb of the driver to the hot MCPCB of 3 emitters? That seems counterintuitive to me.

So much to learn, so little timeā€¦

+1 with Dale, though I've been too embarrassed to ask...

L4P's CC drivers do result in the FET's getting hot though, just seems odd to put it on the known hot MCPCB. Obviously though it must work somehow because I'm sure L4P tests all this stuff out.

Also confused that 150ĀŗF is being called tame, if that doesnā€™t burn blisters on your hand then nothing is going to. If the light isnā€™t too hot to hold at that setting then the thermal path from the emitters is compromised.

To elaborate, I truly do know what 150Āŗ is all about, my driveway gets that hot in the summer here. It WILL burn you!

Mercury thermometer showing an actual 120ĀŗF air temperature on my front porchā€¦

So yeah, Iā€™m confused as to why one would want more heat in a small light.