Old Lumens Contest 2020 - Hand-made light category

Yeah - so my backup plan is just to cut a rectangle of cardboard. But Iā€™m hoping to figure something out with a sleeve of some sort - maybe pipe or tubing, hopefully. I mean Iā€™ve heard of people wrapping tape around cells to eliminate rattle, so it shouldnā€™t be a big issue. Iā€™m just not going to use the plastic battery sleeve I have for 18650 to 21700 (came with my C8F) because that feels like cheating, even if somebody said it technically wasnā€™t.

Copper and brass is easy to solder with electronics solder just use your hot plate to preheat. Joint has to be shiny clean, a small dob of solder on the tip helps heat tranfer much quicker.

Just a tip
tube is measured outside diameter
pipe is measured inside diameter

Looking forward to see where this drives us :wink:
Good luck!!!

Yā€™all gonna have to wait a bit on this one. While the mountain order should arrive this week, my daughter should be arriving (being born, that is) today (27th).

So if I donā€™t circle back around to finishing this one in time, itā€™s for a good reason :wink:

Congrats on the new delivery! Your daughter!

Congratulations :partying_face:
Seems like youā€™ll have bigger ā€œmodsā€ to do from now on: modding life :smiley:
Wish her and the rest of the family health and a good life :blush:

This is looking great so far, canā€™t wait to see the end product.

As for the battery rattle, maybe put a cell in a plastic bag and spray foam it in place, then when the spray foam sets, the baggie can be trimmed with the foam on the ends and will create a sleeve for the battery. The baggie should let you slide the battery out as well, maybe put some petroleum jelly on the battery inside the baggie first.

:+1:

Congrats on the birth of your daughter! amazing news! Also, that ā€œmockupā€ looks sick man, makes me consider heading to lowes and trying this one myself. Very inspiring! Im new to this, so I am trying to take it all in, especially the electronics aspect. The only part I have a little understanding of is the fabricobblingā€¦

Congrats Scallywag! Daughters are very special. Mine went away to college this year and I miss her dearly. But sheā€™s doing well and Iā€™m happy for her. And she remembered to bring her flashlight: Father Daughter Flashlight.

1 Thank

Great start :+1: Congratulations on your new family :slight_smile:

That mock up looks cool as is :+1:

Just checking in. I havenā€™t had any chance to work on mods at all - Iā€™ve barely been on BLF lately. But I havenā€™t forgotten about this and hope to set aside some time in December to get it finished.

Cool build . I had considered something similar because this quick connect fitting was sitting next to this flashlight and I donā€™t know how many times I grabbed the wrong one .

Congrats on the daughter . Hope all are healthy and happy !

Alright, a little work today.

I took a shot at the tail switch. At first, I was really focused on using a 16mm switch board. However, the board was just too small and wouldnā€™t be held captive. I was considering using a brass washer to retain the switch board, but the standard sizes for washers werenā€™t going to be suitable, and I didnā€™t want to try to enlarge the hole in one (especially since I needed something larger than the 3/8ā€ chuck size on my drill).
My size requirements vs a list of washer sizes
Good thing I have a 20mm switch board. It was populated with a large forward-clicky, but I solved that.
To hopefully give a good idea of the switch stack:

The end cap with rubber boot and the rubber gasket that came in the hose adapter

The switch sitting in the end

The old vs. new switch on the board

This shows the switch board sitting on the end of the body tube, which is why I needed the larger board

The body tube attached and a cell sitting in there.

And a shot down the tube! The fit isnā€™t perfect but itā€™s good enough :wink: :+1:

In this configuration, the switch board is nearly flush with the inside of the end cap. So basically the entire omten 1288 is sitting inside the rubber boot, and I had to completely cut out the ā€œnubā€ on the inside of the rubber boot to get that to fit properly. However, as long as I donā€™t fully tighten the end cap (it can get close and begins to offer a ton of resistance), it fits fine and the switch actuation has a great feel. If I over-tighten then the rubber boot pops out the end!

The head end of this light is going to be more interesting. I measured how deep into the head the planned TIR sits, and compared that to the height the LED will be at with my ā€œpillā€ (improvised from one of the fittings from post #1), and thereā€™s a few millimeters of distance I need to bridge before thatā€™s going to work out. Iā€™ll post pictures of that when I come up with a solution.

Very nice Scallywag :+1: I like your pics showing this coming together, Good Job :smiley:

Looking good Scallywag. :beer:

Coming along nicely. Hope the new addition and momma are doing well .

Thanks for the comments. Wife and daughter are well :slight_smile:

Also, for some reason my brain wants me to put a warm LED in a brass light. It just feels right. To that end, Iā€™ve reflowed one of my 3000K Luxeon HL2X 80+ CRI on a 16mm copper MCPCB. I thought I had a 219B warmer than 4000K but I donā€™t, so Iā€™m using this.

The current challenges Iā€™m looking at: The MCPCB floats. I devised a way to improvise a ā€œshelfā€ using a part of the 3/4ā€ x 1/4ā€ ā€œhose swivel adapterā€, but that still leaves me with a few millimeters between where the MCPCB rests and the height it needs to hit for the LED to be sitting in the TIR. (Determined with my digital micrometer.) My best guess for how to do this is going to be a few brass washers stacked together to get the extra height. I also need to figure out how to mount the driver, and get it grounded to the body. I think if I can figure out the shelf to the MCPCB, I can use E6000 to hopefully glue the driver to the underside of that, but Iā€™d still need to ground it since it doesnā€™t really get anywhere near the body tube. Worst case I can probably try to solder a wire from the ground ring of the driver to the body somewhere, or solder some sort of spring (or a cut fragment of a spring, or a few of them!) onto the edge of the driver to make contact with the tube.

Another of my concerns with the assembly methods discussed above is the practicality of the light. Itā€™s already going to be quite heavy so itā€™s never going to make EDC duty, but I really donā€™t want half the head assembly to come sliding out of the dang thing every time I go to swap the batteries. Iā€™m going to be keeping this in mind as I go. If at least one part of the stack is captive in the head assembly, and the rest is all adhered to that piece (soldered, glued, whatever - Iā€™ll take it), it will be good to go.

P.S. I just realized if I E6000 the driver to the ā€œshelfā€, it will technically be pottedā€¦

Edit: Adding a pic to attempt to show the height issue in the head. The ā€œlipā€ thatā€™s closer to the camera than the MCPCB is where the improvised shelf would rest. I also measured the gap, itā€™s about 3.6mm

So it occurred to my that it might be possible to cut one of those 3/4ā€ x 1/4ā€ ā€œhose swivel adapterā€ pieces to fit. The plan is to cut if off with about 3.6mm (itā€™s okay if itā€™s a little longer, but not much shorter) past the ā€œshelfā€ part. The narrower end would end up attached (soldered?) to the MCPCB, and the wider end would get the the driver attached to it. I would probably have to cut and/or file some notches for the LED wires to route through the center-hole to the driver. Weā€™ll see how the part comes out first - Iā€™m planning to start the cut with a hacksaw to guide the hacksaw-blade on my reciprocating saw.

Edit: I did it, this is gonna work! Pics to follow.