What did you mod today?

Great point! I learned a lot from the Cometa discussions. This light came with a foam spacer. Just to make sure, I'll add some electrical tape around the caps. Card board sleeves stop the rattle.

Truth be told, the copper will anodize and reduce transmission… you’ll have to periodically clean the ends with something like De-Oxit Gold. :wink:

Anodize

Solder blobs to the rescue?

It's bizarre that the inside of the cap stays shiny but the outside oxidizes. I scraped the patina and took some DMM measurements just to check on performance.

Solder blobs blacken and also increase resistance. Believe me, I deal with it all the time. I normally use aluminum quarter inch rod to make dummy cells, with a Delrin body. But solder blobbed high discharge cells continually have to be cleaned to maintain low internal resistance and high power.

In the link above, you'll see two other lights I upgraded. One of them being this Husky: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqeZmZFhBiGKhEXGtjRD_lAAUS_S

I replaced the driver, LED and reflector. The original LED was an XPG 3 and it now has an XHP 50. The old reflector was plastic and it melted with all the heat. The new C8 reflector needed a little OD grinding reduction and works great. It also holds the MCPCB so in this case, I don't think screws will be needed to ensure good thermal transfer. It gets hot fast!

I put a sliced 3V 6500K XHP50.2 in my NS22 Seeker. I’m not too fond of a 6500K XHP50.2 (tint, Cree rainbow), and I’m not really fond of my NS22 Seeker (the cheapish finish mainly, and comic sans does not help), so I thought it fitting to combine the two.

And of course now my heart was not really into it, everything worked as planned, the result is :sunglasses: , and now I wished I had waited for the neutral 3V XHP50.2 for this mod. :frowning:

I did not see anyone mention yet the pad layout on the bottom of the 3V XHP50.2, looks like individually addressable dies, and the option to go 6V. To make use of all this you could use the oldschool XM-L colour Sinkpad that is still for sale here and there.

I reflowed the led on a Kerui 20mm copper DTP board (got it as a sample 2 years ago) and using a few sizes washers sliced my way down to the dies, and then cut off the sides of the silicone. One way or another, 1 out of 4 ESD wires survived all that :slight_smile: . The picture is with the led at 1 mA. (stereo pic)

I could have gone a bit closer even to the dies.

Further mods to the host:

*bypassed the driver spring (steel), but not the tail spring (copper alloy)
*I kept the stock (FET-) driver but bypassed the big R015 resistor. Now the 3 modes are a bit messed up: high, highest, highest it is now. Maybe a different driver later.
*I replaced the led wires to short 18 AWG.
*used a butterfly-type XM-centerpiece and luckily the focus was correct.

I think I measured 16 amps at high setting, but my clamp meter does funny things lately. The 16A I think was a short moment of sanity of the meter.

Output on a 40T (almost full) at 30 seconds is 3150lm, at switch-on 3400lm. The limited output drop tells me that led is mounted properly and that the host handles this led well.

The slicing was a succes, the corona of the hotspot is not distracting at all and only mildly yellow. You have to look for it to notice it. The hotspot itself looks very nice, without dark center. This is at 5 meter on a white wall, underexposed to show the hotspot well.

And outside, first a control. I tried to match the exposure of the background in control and beamshot but the colour balance was not corrected. Big trees at 25 meter, lighted details further down the grass are up to 125 meter.

That is plenty bright for such a small light, just checked: pretty close to what my Convoy L6 with resistor mod, XHP70.2 and smooth reflector does, same size hotspot but slightly less light.

Nice job Djozz!

Have they announced neutral tint 3V XHP 50.2? If so where do I get them?

I picked up a couple of modified lights from a forum member that was trimming his herd, a triple BLF Special Edition X6 and a Convoy M1 Quad. I got these yesterday and the power levels were really severely down, each under a thousand lumens. The X6 had XP-L HD emitters on top of a Noctigon with a copper spacer and CUTE-3 optic. A Dr. Jones driver with very small 3 legged MOSFET for a driver. I looked in my stuff and found an original Special Edition driver, did the triangle stack mod to make sure it would handle high power and then stuck a couple of heavy gauge (16 ga Turnigy) leads on it, just because. Emitter of choice for me is the LH351D from Samsung, I really like the W6 power bin 70 CRI in 5000K but chose to go with the 80 CRI variant in U6 power bin here. These went on a Noctigon quad board designed for the D4S with an Angie optic, which required opening up the pill section of the X6 a bit on the lathe. Also required making a second copper spacer to allow for the shorter quad optics to work. I reflowed the two spacers together, ended up with over 16A at the tail for 4110 lumens through a single piece of one-eighth minus green Lee filter. Works for me! :smiley:

Celebrated with a Pepperoni Pizza topped with Tillamook Pepper Jack cheese. Mmmmmm! :smiley:

@DB Custom, how THICK are these power wires?

Also, how you tried chicken veggie pizza once? It’s absolutely lovely IMO.
I’ve actually made one with ghost peppers, and will never try that again in my life.

That is a very nice X6 version, Dale! (80CRI, I see progress :stuck_out_tongue: )

@Firelight2 : not really, the 3V XHP50.2 goes down to the 3 tints at the moment. But a 3D tint would work well enough for me :slight_smile:

The 16 ga Turnigy wires are pretty much the size of the emitter domes. lol My cheap plastic calipers say they’re 2.9mm.

I didn’t have any 18 ga and there was 16 ga sitting there, the Noctigon quad already had a big enough hole for the two wires to fit and I was going to have to drill the spacer and emitter shelf anyway, so … I didn’t even think about the quad optic being shorter, fitted the Noctigon quad into the head and brought it back into the house only to realize the entire set-up was well short of the bezel’s top. So back to the shop I went, made a second spacer….

This was all right after I got up this morning, was done with the light by 10:30 and then charged a 30Q up and tested it in time to make pizza for lunch for me and D. lol

Jos, the 80 CRI 351’s have a lemony look to em through this optic so I used the minus green filter to bring it around to a pleasing tint.

I felt the impact of my choice of not going with W6 bin when I saw the lumens numbers, I coulda had over 5000 lumens! lol Wanted it to be a little different though as it came to me via Panama and is a BLF SE light … I think I have 16 X6’s now, not 100% sure. :smiley:

I really like to throw a whole lot of light in a beam like that. It's great to have such a high output LED for all the XM-L lights I'm now bored with. I mean, with a D4, anything less than 2K lumens is either getting gifted or stored for future technology upgrades.

Nice mod Djozz!

@DB Custom, Those wires are huge! 16 ga. is my minimum preference in home theater/sound system setups but putting them in a flashlight, whoa!

those separation gaps are a lot smaller than on regular XHP50.2, tricky to reflow if not done with stencil and paste and perfect placement

Major respect to Dale, always amazing mods and without a doubt the king of X6 mods in particular.

As a little bit of a tribute to DB Custom and a little bit of a one up to his daily mod I decided to class up my X6 a little and squeeze a little more out of it. Dale convinced me to start modding and helped me a ton via PM when I had no idea what I was doing and had never opened a light or used a soldering iron.

Changed from a Nickel BeCu spring with no bypass to a 20g bypassed silver BeCu spring. The silver spring was not necessary but it afforded a bit more room for the bypass and I wanted to try them out

This was one of MANY tricks I learned from Dale and have used on half a dozen lights. Flip a clear tail cap inside out and put a small hole through horizontally. Now you can use a toothpick or something and feed a nice 6mm tritium in there.

First attempt at heat treating stainless. This was done a while ago and didn’t turn out great but I do think it’s cool that it at least made it a matte finish

Dale is also a big advocate of high quality lenses so naturally this gets a UCLp AR acrylic lens . It’s doing double duty cause I needed a bit of slack to be taken up in the bezel. Also featuring the narrow Angie optic like the D4S.

And finally the trit switch all put together

Driver: MTN17-DDm
LEDs: Luxeon V 4000K
Spacer: LED4Power

Vapcell VTC5D battery

4,427lm at 0s w/ nickel BeCu tail
5,605lm at 0s w/ bypassed silver BeCu tail

Reflow oven T-962A full mod report

After using a hotplate in addition to a hot air gun for quite some time I wanted to upgrade to more professional gear
Problem is real professional small reflow ovens cost 2,000€ and up

Chinesse start at about 170€ but come with a lot of issues

I have chosen the T962 Series Model A that is a bit bigger than the 962 for 280€ shipped in EU
I bought this in EU because I doint want to have trouble with customs because its basically nowhere near having the requirements for a CE label

Even if its not the worst you can read on every spot about this oven, in my opinion this is the most severe issue to be fixed first

1. mains earth is a mess on this thing

most parts are not grounded at all, worst case is only the one screw of the socket is grounded rest of the whole case not

  • removing paint on the back panel (and yes a lot hot melt glue on this oven, hope the insulation is good)

- using a proper washer with teeth to follow the safety rules for grounding (even if its a bit rusty dicovered later on PC on that Macro image)

- Now also a washer on top (a recycled one from some old gear that had seal paint)
and a bridge to gound the other parts both with safety nut not the original crap

- removing paint on the 2 main housing parts forming the top and bottom

- crimping connectors with a professional tool

- will also add here on reassembly 2 “teeth” washers

- rewiring the 2 phase switch actually to switch N and L, was before only one conductor both parallel
so now the switch lights up
and it swithes mains and L+N off (the sockets are here in Germany have not a fixed position for L)

- grounding the front drawer as the metal parts do not make proper contact a lot of grease on the mechanical parts

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2. Replace the “stinky” tape

First you can read on all forums and blogs ect. about all those ovens
- you got to remove the masking tape, because it will burn and stink horrible

- and replacing with Kapton tape

- Then I read dont forget the hidden tape on the drawer junction :person_facepalming:
replaced with more Kapton tape

- I did a larger area of the top covered than originally

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3. remove hot melt glue on front window

they simply used hot melt glue to fix the position then applied silicone, but seems they wanted to get production time as minimal as possible so they leave it there and assemble asap

also one thread was messey

Mod material

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4. 13.5dBA 40mm case fan

original: SanAce 40
40x15mm, 0.11A, 8,000 RPM, 33dBA, about 15m³/h
The frame mounted to the protection cover inside the case, this also makes some recirculation

Cooltek Silent Fan 4020

40x20mm, 0.05A, 4,000 RPM, 13.5 dBA, 11.5 m³/h
2.99€ shipped with Amazon prime not 9€ Ebay
I mounted the protection frame outside to eliminate recirculation

5. Cold junction Mod and new firmware


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6. hot air circulation fan
ordered today one that hopefully can be made fit
I am pretty sure I got to move the middle termocouple hole from the current position, but getting the termocouple mounted on same place as before or mount a smaller fan blade
PS I removed both thermocopuple tubes and placed the fan in the middle of the compartment

First taking off the top cover which was screwed down with 4 scres that were below the amulinum tape, but easy to locate

And more of the stinky masking tape

hot air oven fan 230V AC motor

open compartment with the IR tubes exposed, I measured those below the rated power, maybe replace later IR camera test will follow to see if the boards heat up evenly

fan blade made from aluminum, have simple bent it so it fits below the IR tubes and the compartment top cover

as the compartment is from thin steel, so I used a 4mm aluminum plate that I found in my used metal box, already marked the drill spots using the old mounting plate

I used 5 washers to lift the mounted fan motor enough to clear the IR tubes, holding it in place unscrewed fitted,
screwed down it was stuck on the IR tubes but as I had about 2mm distance from fan wheel to the cover
I added one more 1mm thick washer and that was enough to make it spin freely

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7. hot air fan switch and manual override of cooling fan and IR tubes

proper holes made for them, but I might buy another switch for the fan so I can manually disable the cooling fan when IR tubes are manually on
will see if the profiles work good enough so no manual heating on the end of the cycle is needed

wiring switches with heat resistant silicone wire

drawer was modded with lifted PCBs, simply 3mm screws with fitting washers and threads cut in the PCBs
so the boards are thermally decoupled from the drawer
the bigger one got the 2 original thermal probes attached with SMD hot glue

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8. unhappy with heating up, not enough power, hot air circulatuion unusable

I measured the heating power with 800-900W depending on filament temperature

not enough especially when the hot air circulation is on the board temperature raise is way too slow to follow the reflow profile


here I had the hot air fan only on during the soak phase the lamps on at 100% barely getting the temperature stable
then I switched it on at peak temperature and cool down

I ordered now 6 1300W tubes 10 inches long
having the tubes connected as pairs in series I get 1950W
this should be sufficient and the 10A electronic relais should handle that with no problem
P=1300W*6/4

also 12 of those holder which schould fit the compartment, I may have to add a few mm to make the tubes fit the spring loaded contacts properly

also the cool down is a bit slow I think about removing the back side slots and replace that with a steel fan protection for less resistance for the air flow

the used fan is an EBM Pabst 4656N with 230V 19W 160m³, nothing to change there to improve much in the same size


I had a look in my fan box and having on hand 120mm a 19 (same model) and 20W 230V one
as well as a 150mm 39W with 405m³
I guess I go for the big one mounted outside, just need to order a fitting fanprotection



cutting hole just with hand cutters at it in the middle of night here, tomorrow I will get the jigsaw
the metal quality is very bad sometime the steel simply broke when bending it outside to cut next part


also the feet need to be replaced as they smear black stuff when moved without lifting completely

bite out all the old fan slots

Used a saw to remove as close to the new smaller marking then a Multitool to grind the rst away
also drilled holes for new fan

taped the inside insulation to prevent air from blowing inside it, now all air should go into the PCB compartment

threads cut

FAN!

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9. installing new heating tubes, I have chosen replaceable with holders, so if one blows its easy to replace

- first I searched for some 6-10mm thich aluminum plate, as the 10 inch tubes with the 30mm holders are 6mm to short and I need some spring pressure

- sawing the piece in half and adding threads

- removing old tubes and hey they really got Kapton tape in their factory but dont use it where the cheap masking tape is used

- Of course after I put it together I realized I sawed and added holes for mounting all mirrored :person_facepalming:
so I had to rotate all holdery by 180° of course 12 new holes and threads

and I am an idiot didnt thing about the wires, of course the top part closes leaving only a circle where old tubes were

- so now taking that thing completely apart and drilling holes througn where the holders are and for electrical safety I used a cone drill bit to remove all sharp edges

- now also the oppotrunity to completely seal off that fans air tunnel so the air moved through the chamber not inside the top housing

- I decided for more safety and electrical wiring to use this time not 230V for the heater wired to the front manual switch
so I looked up how the heaters Triac control voltage is wired on the board
it is coming from the MCU then goes 2 times through an inverter which switches ground
as I do not plan to blow that inverter I simply added a diode between its output and my manual switched ground

- 2kW tubes are different type more like conventional red light tubes but driven at 115/230V 2 in series
now the compartment got a nice red glow during heating where the original heat elements were barely visible

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Final summary:

- Hot air oven out of the Box

electrical safety is absolutely noneexistent whole case was not grounded, just one screw :person_facepalming:
stinky tape which will smell horible if not removed
sucks for my understanding what I expect from a good product
gets leaded stuff done with enough heat
but can cook or leave stuff unmolten

- new Firmware and cold junction compensation

better, but the real board temperature is way off what is measured from the sensos between the IR tubes
option to calibrate the temperature probes
still measuring air temperature on a IR oven is total wrong aproach

- Probes moved to some dummy boards

while the temperature looked good measuring the air temperature now the truth is measured, pretty disappointing

- hot air circulation fails

now it shows its waekness, 800-900W heating power is not enough not even the claimed 1500W
does not work anywhere close the heating profile when hot air is on

tried to have hot air fan on from beginning, but heat up was slow so turned it off
hot air fan on during soak and peak temperature on, manually heated longer than in profile overriding heat tubes

- IR tubes replaced with 2kW tubes, bigger fan and taped the fans airflow airtight

now its working like expected, air circulation during whole reflow
I can run the hot air fan all the time

@contactr, nice build.

How much power is it consuming?

Do you have a power supply and thick leads capable of measuring voltage as well as current?

Also, seems like there is room for improvement still with my springs with very high drain cells. Will make some tweaks for the 3rd revision.

Finally, would you think about doing this mod using XP-L2s?

At that point, the sky would be the limit :smiling_imp:

@Lexel, I think “mod report” is an understatement. You completely rebuilt everything, impressive!