Modded Atom AL Mule w sw45 to Aspheric lens, for a more collected beam.
Nice aspheric
thank you for the encouragement 
I dont like mules, they throw light sideways too much
puts light in my eyes when tailstanding…
all three lights are on, only the mule glares at the camera:
I have an aspheric I use in the workshop all the time, and a mule I like only for its short physical length and low moonlight mode.
Where did you find the aspheric lens?
I’d like to add one to an old EagTac T25C2 :sunglasses:
the aspheric came from Kaidomain
18mm Optical Glass LED Lamp Lens
I originally thought I would try it on an AA Tool, but quickly discovered that the reflector places the LED too far from the lens. The aspheric lens only works up close to the LED.
Ah. Thanks for the insight!
Good, straight file works almost as precision ground flat stone - removes protrusions from the surface and leaves it flat. When the surface is already flat, it just slides back and forth without material removal.
Using sandpaper rolled around such a straight file can give some visible improvements in material removal rate.
Nice mod jon_slider.
I am looking for a new tester for my flashlight and hope that he will contact me at next second.
Modded few weeks ago but i’m still waiting for Yaijamei optic to show up.
Warrior Mini with 351D 5000K
I have used alu 1mm mcpcb for test but final build will be with CU board sanded down to 1mm thickness due to turbo Amps
What’s the best way to sand down a CU board in thickness evenly?
This comes up often but I almost think it’s easier to source a larger 1mm thick CU board and sand down the diameter instead. I thought the smaller Convoy boards were 1mm but according to their store only the 5050 footprint one is 16*1.0mm
I guess I should not disregard kiriba-ru as if I didn’t see his suggestion about using sandpaper wrapped file. I guess my question is then how to keep it even if that’s the best way. Rotate 1/8 or 1/4 turn for every few passes?
Yeah, rotate every pass and even then it won’t be even :(
Only good thermal paste helps using this method or if the host is copper or brass, soldering directly to the shelf.
Parallelism or flatness? Flatness can be achieved but parallelism is hard with hand tools. I’ve done it to a noctigon before using wd40 and 80/120/300/800 sandpaper. I double-sided tape in a few spots to secure the paper to a piece of thick glass, and soldered a copper rivet (misc parts bin) to the thermal pad to get a grip on it, and about 45 minutes later I had reduced it to about 1mm and it was pretty darn flat. Due to the heat buildup, I actually drilled a blind hole in a thick dowel rod and used that as an insulator. This was years ago so no pics sorry
Get a SS washer the thickness that you want the Cu star to be, drop it inside (bore out the hole if probably needed), then sand/grind away. SS is harder than Cu, won’t wear away as fast as Cu, so you could probably grind down the Cu to that thickness without going too much thinner.
Going to try to sneak in my other hobby.
Flashed a smart plug (Sonoff S31) to use open source local firmware to control some (flickering LED 
) Christmas lights:
Solder jumper wires to USB to Serial adapter to flash ESP8266 chip
Flash and setup device, web page is the local device IP with all configuration options. No more phoning home to the “cloud” and works instantly with my home automation (Home Assistant) running on raspberry pi.
Costco LED garland the wife really wanted hooked up to re-assembled plug. My 3yo daughter asked “why does it blink like that?” I guess she is already one of us… 
Time to gut the driver on that garland 
Maybe bring along the little one along for a lesson
“Driver” is a pretty loose term since they are wired in series to use line voltage. I did some quick googleFu and it looks like I could convert half wave to full wave rectifier but I would need to re-string at least half of the lights (I dont quite understand all this though). If I did that I would end up just replacing the entire string and get a warmer tint along with it.
I can probably live with it as is as long as I keep it away from our other lights.
Nice mod. I’ve thought about modding my E3, but a few factors have prevented it. First, the 5700K 219C is actually a good tint (if cooler than I typically prefer). No noticeable tint-shift and no green. Second, it was a gift. And third, the modes are excellent with NiMh. It does suffer from the typical AA/14500 light problem for me, though: it’s large enough that I often just grab the SC62w instead.
Looks great. Zoomies definitely have places and uses where I’d prefer them over reflectors or most TIRs.
Hey that is pretty cool. Especially preventing it from phoning home - my Pihole blocks so much crap these days…