What did you mod today?

Nice Steve!

Honking light right there! What are the specs? I mean, if you updated it what emitter and driver did you go with?

See here Dale - Electro Lumens Search and Rescue ST90 upgrade. Completed post 31, 17.2.19

It’s a level blf gt driver and xhp70.2 running 8 amps.

Another satisfying moment for ya Moose, job well done :beer: :beer:

Thanks pp. The emitter is also dedomed.

I now have the light in shorty mode with 2x18350 Aspire 1100. The battery tube was not quite long enough, so I soldered some pieces of copper to the driver ground ring to effectively lengthen the compartment. Compared to 2x 30Qs it has about 87% of the output or around 5700 lumens. A nice light-weight and compact high-output thrower. :wink:

Can we get an in-hand shot of this beast of a light? :sunglasses:

Last week I put a FET + 7135 Driver - 15mm - MTN-15DDm , with Crescendo firmware, in my On The Road i3!

It improved the usability of the flashlight and also the luminous levels.
Maybe not the “throwiest” light in the category but for a 16340 flashlight with XPL-HI U6-1A, it reaches more than 200m in throw :sunglasses:

House @185m .

Some more photos here.

Today I reworked my number 3 set of X6/X5 lights. The little copper X5 I put a White Flat in and it does 78.75Kcd pulling some 4.5A off an Efest 14500 cell. The X6 I had previously made a spacer for and built a triple with XP-L emitters, so today I pulled the 32mm Noctigon (reflowed onto the sink which was also reflowed into the copper pill) and used a T Pad with 3 SST-40’s. It’s making some 6200 lumens on an 30Q cell, at over 18A tail reading.

I like both, but the little X5 with White Flat is impressive!

I weighed a stock X6 with a cell in it at 6.16 oz, the X6 SS/Cu with a cell weighs a whopping 16.17 oz! After handling the SS/Cu triple the little stock light feels like it has no cell in it… lol

Nice, Dale.

SST40 makes for such a good triple. They have the brighter N5 bin at KD with a lower Vf bin so it should pull even more current and be brighter. Unfortunately I just tested one and it performs identically to the N4 in output and voltage so no performance boost. Not sure if it is just wide tolerances or if they didn’t send me N5s.

Easy B, I got the N5’s from KD… “High Power Luminus SST-40 (Voltage: VH) N5 BC White 6500K ”

I not only used them in this triple but have built up a 7 emitter Supwildfire and will be doing another, this time with copper MCPCBs and a copper heat sink. :wink: Also used them in a Q8 which makes more power than some folks here believe it possible to do. All I can do is read the meter, ya know?

Figures you’d be up on the latest SST40s. Your N5s seem to perform pretty well, but I’m pretty confident my N5s are the same as N4s. I’ll ask BanL from KD and maybe order some more.

I got 20 last time and have over-used them… the last project calling for the 40 requires 7 and I only have 6 left. Oops! lol

This weekend I modded my white Emisar D4.

  • First I replaced the stock 5000K 3D XPL HI with 4000K 90-CRI LH351D from Mountain Electronics. I … wasn’t impressed. Yes, the output was high-CRI, but it didn’t seem any less green than the SST-20 95 CRI 4000K in one of my other D4. Also, as expected the output was noticeably more floody. But that meant I needed to turn the light up higher to illuminate things. I guess I just prefer a little more throw.
  • Then I replaced two of the 4000K LH351D with two 5000K 80-CRI LH351D also from Mountain. Still not impressed. Yes, color temp was a bit cooler, but everything was still green tinted… far more than my XPL HI lights.
  • Ended up swapping out all the LH351D for 95CRI 4000K SST-20. It’s still not as beautiful or bright as XPL HI in output, but the reds do pop more with the high CRI.
  • So far it looks like my favorite emitter for the D4 is still XPL HI. However, I haven’t tried an Oslon emitter yet. Maybe I should try that.

Also prettied up my white D4 by giving it a metal switch, green and pink aux bezel LEDs and Pobel’s modified Anduril firmware.

I actually do believe you, now that I know KD has 6500K's that look like 5700K's - a fact I wasn't aware of before. Weird the bin is not actually for higher lumens, but lower temp? Strange but it works for me...

Interesting D4 mod after mod, Firelight2. The XPL HI V2 5D is still my favorite look'n beam, but pretty much all XPL HI's have a consistent looking beam. I'm lik'n Blue's 3500K SST-20's as well, but they are under the BBL.

In the CK vs lumintop race to see who can make an anduril powered tail switch light first it looks like it’s CK 1, LT 0!

In case you’re not impressed cause you don’t know what the folomov 18650s is; the driver is at the tail with the e-switch mounted on it. No wires or secondary tubes connect the head and tail. Power is supplied via a bleed resistor at the head, the LED- output on the driver goes back into the body. This driver could potentially be a drop in replacement for any clicky light to convert to e-switch!

Excellent mod CK!!! Where’s the group-buy on your new driver? I need something like 8 of them!!! :laughing: :blush: :stuck_out_tongue:

Superb!!
My only worry is heat management. But not every light needs to be a hot rod and there are older ways to manage heat as well…

Nice CK, you did it!! :BEER:

A while back I modded a FandyFire SP03 with 3 SST-40 N4's from KD, and a HQ SRK v3.5A driver in a FET+1 configuration. I used 2.5" 20 AWG wires but extended them with 3" of 26 AWG wires to add resistance. I still hit 8092 lumens at start, 6834 at 30 secs, and 257 kcd (manufacturer lumens) .

Also modded a SupFire L1 with 5 SST-40 N4's from KD. This time I used 3.5" of 25 AWG LED wires, a Q8 driver modded with an Infineon FET. Measurements were a little strange between 35E's and 30Q's. The 35E's actually hit the highest numbers: 12510 lumens at start, 10780 at 30 secs, 134 kcd (manufacturer lumens).

Is 10K possible in a Q8 or any quad using SST-40's? Sure is, based on these #'s with higher resistance LED wires. Springs are bypassed to avoid melting.

SST-40's for the SP03:

SP03 driver:

For the SupFire L1:

UCLp lens:

Cool work C_k&Tom! :sunglasses:

Today I finished a thrower project with Nicolaas’ TN31. It was already converted to an aspheric thrower by Kenji, now it has a new led on a 20mm board and a wavien collar. I did not make a lot of pictures because it was a mod for Nicolaas and I did not think about posting it before now.

The steps:
*a XP-G2 S4 2B old style was refowed on a 20mm DTP boardcand hot dedomed.
*the board was glued with Arctic Alumina Adhesive centered on the shelf in the TN31 (after the previous conversion the TN31 has a (sort of) flat 35mm diameter shelf).
*a contraption was made from soldered together brass rings for the collar (from Enderman’s group buy) to sit on the correct height, while clearing the led wires (the ring is upside down on the photo). The 4 posts were bit by bit sanded down until the focus of the collar was perfect, as tested with the led in moonlight mode.
*To handle the collar during all the adjustments deep inside the cavity (in-out-in-out etc.) I glued a copper handle on top of the collar with Norland64. The handle is not in the light path and was simply left in place inside the final modded light.
*after the focus was established as correct, the brass ring was glued on the shelf with a very thin layer of Arctic Alumina Adhesive to not alter the focus.
*two very small drops of Norland 64 were applied on the edge of the collar, the collar was placed on the brass ring, it was shifted until the reflected image of the die was perfectly projected on top of the die, then the Norland was cured with lots of 365nm UV light.
*With everything lightly glued into position, the TN31 was assembled with the aspheric lens to check if the beam was correct and as expected, which fortunately it was.
*Then the head was opened again and three generous blobs of hot glue (the hot 180degC version) were applied for a more permanent fixation of the wavien collar.
*made an effort to clean the aspheric lens as well as possible and closed the light.

We measured the modded TN31 as well as possible, even checking it against other modded throwers that I measured before to see if the setup was still correct, and we got 1.31 Mcd after 30 seconds, measured at 7 meter distance ( :sunglasses: ). That is an almost exact doubling of throw compared to before adding the collar (650 kcd).

Having used my own collar on a White Flat, my catious conclusion is that the gain of the collar on a dedomed XP-G2 is a bit higher than on a White Flat, possibly close to cancelling out the higher luminance of the White Flat. Of course the combined dedoming and collar effects cause the XP-G2 S4 2B emit a very green tint. But with 1.3Mcd out of a TN31 size light I begin to like that tint :slight_smile:

That's outstanding Jos - 1.3 mcd from a big classic thrower! Wonder if the conversion to an aspheric made much difference. From what I recall, a good dedomed XM-L2 in a TN31 with resistors bypassed did ~600 kcd at best, but of course you can't collar a reflector.

I totally missed the group buy on the collars - would have been in on it.

And I would have bought 2 of them now that I have some experience (two succesful mods) in how to use them and see how well they work.

The quality of Nicolaas’ lens is ok but not great btw, I reckon if a lens of the quality of the JaxmanZ1/Cometa was used (better optical quality plus coated), the results would be even significantly better.