What did you mod today?

even with the xpl-hi the beam was nasty. It's interesting because I see all of these posts about simons osram lights lately with people complaining about the beams, one of the biggest reasons I even figured I would switch the leds out during the d1 & D1s driver swaps was because the beams were already so poor anyway, just fuzziness around the hotspot, not impressive for what I come to expect from Hank. I would love to have a convoy sft40 quality beam on my d1s right about now! I know Hank didn't design this reflector for this led or even this size led.

I put a kr1 reflector in the d1s a while back and it improved it greatly! The kr1 reflector has made every emitter I've used it in (over a dozen) look really good! It's one of the best all around reflector I have ever used.

the d1s reflector- I wouldn't be surprised if you had it correct JaredM, and that it was flawed. I'm going to work on getting a gt mini reflector as when I had one of those i remember the beam was nice, maybe I'm wrong. but worth a try. I found a very similarly sized reflector on kaidoman, but it had a slight op which was disappointing..

Tmaxxjj - I have a lux meter for measuring throw.

when I say tune the beam (I am probably saying it wrong), I mean to eliminate the rings and artifacts, not optimize the throw Perse, although I feel they're probably hand in hand to an extent. I just want it to look better than this picture below.. it's very aggravating. The reflector is very thick at its emitter opening, and also wide. And with a small mcpcb it makes the options you have for lowering it without hitting the +/- terminals very difficult. If I had a lathe, this thing would already be either fixed or destroyed!

what are you implying/asking tmaxxjj? To measure while adjusting to see what works better? I'm using my eyes to determine the beam has terrible rings in it, yes. I don't need equipment for that lol. I don't care about total throw so much, I've recently felt like it is whatever the battery, led, and driver will let it be (total Lm & cd). I am way more concerned about how the beam looks. It's kind of all that matters, within reason.

D1s with a well fitting centering ring and the sft40 led.NOTE: the led is sits VERY low in the reflector open8ng with this centering ring, without the centering ring it's better than this pic but still not good by any means. I'm going to start reaming until someth8ng happens, good or bad. I've reamed before so I have experience of how not to mess that up. The beam on the other hand, who knows...

Today I finally built Convoy S21A quad using LD-A4 driver, Nichia 219b’s from Convoy flashlight store, lighted tailswitch and Kaidomain quad mcpcb and tir with self made spacer. Driver runs at 10A and leds are mix of 4500K and 3500K. Spacer is ~22mmx5mm copper piece with small machined groove for pcb. Kaidomain quad tir fits S21A perfectly.




Beamshot from 1,5m distance with color balance of 4600K

Cool :sunglasses:
I guess it will run hot AF, no? :smiling_imp:

I’m guessing you must have had a bad one. My D1S’s beam and focus is just perfect. Even with its age it’s still one of my favourite torches, and with them being discontinued they’re very sort after.

To tune the reflector means to get the best focus and thus in turn optimal throw, so that’s where the meter would come in. But as you say, you’re just looking for a pleasant beam that looks good. Which is fair enough!

Once you’ve finished and you’re happy, I’d still be very interested as to what numbers you’re getting from it with the SFT40 :slight_smile:

Not much different compared to S2+ triples that use Fet-driver.

Kapton tape on the bottom side. Hot air (low volume) on top/sides with flux paste around the LED to help liquify solder.

To put new component on you will want to clean the pads very well and use more flux between LED and pad combined with the smallest possible amount of lead free solder paste.

Kapton tape shouldn’t be needed, I reflow double sided PCB and back side components falling off hasn’t happened to me (yet at least).

How powerfull are those aux channel LEDs ? Likely low power I guess, maybe soldering the thermal pad is not necessary. Do the anode and cathode pads extend past the footprint ? (Usually for the solder to overflow) If so you could try soldering the pads by putting your iron with a solder blob there. For desoldering, take a knife and remove the dome and phosphor, then apply directly your iron on the led’s substrate.

Edit : they don’t

You could try scrapping the soldermask next to the pads so you can put your iron there.

Yeah I went for the same review for pictures.

So what I would do without hot air is desoldering as described in my previous comment, I’ve already done it that way, it works well (albeit with the led destroyed).

Then I would remove the soldermask (Green markings) so that the exposed copper areas connects to the pads.
Clean the lead free solder, add a generous amount of flux (which you should have in any case) and place the LED.
Apply the iron to exposed copper with a solder blob (preferably SnPb) and wait until it spreads under the LED, repeat for all pads.

I don’t know of an easy technique to remove the solder mask, usually I scratch it with a scalpel or a chisel.

I always use liquid flux, the blue stuff that looks like washer fluid.

Might very well be, for all I know.

Not any of those, i.e. zink chloride flux, an agressive water based flux, often used for plumbing, it will corrode the joints. For electronics you need a ”no clean” kind, generally rosin based, also exists in liquid (pen, bottle) and grease form (”tacky flux”, or thicker variants in pot)

But the solder paste will do, it contains flux already.

Get the paste:

The liquid stuff might as well be isopropyl. The paste will stick around longer for when you have a stubborn joint. (granted you will have to clean the sticky residue off after)

A few simple mods last night:

Swapped the clip on my Zebralight SC52w triple. Previous clip is a custom deep-carry titanium. New clip is titanium from a Jetbeam TCR-01. Testing to see which one I like better.

Previous clip:

New clip:

I also did a couple mods on my Sofirn SC21, including changing the stock clip to the black one in the last picture.

I also swapped out the 5000K LH351D, for a 4000K SST-20, 95 CRI, FD2 bin. The result is a more concentrated brighter hotspot, more throw, warmer tint and better CRI (especially R9).

> New clip is titanium from a Jetbeam TCR-01

the clip looks nice… Im still speechless over your Triple Zebra… congrats!

for others who dont have access to that clip…

here are a couple other options available for purchase direct from info (at) jetbeamlight.com

The long one, I think costs $2 + ship… they also sell the short version for $1 iirc… (they come with the screws and wrench). Same hole pattern as the Ti clip for TCR-1.

it helps if you provide Jetbeam a photo of the clip you want… feel free to use this image if you like:

.

I do not know if they still have the TCR-1 clip available (identical to McGizmo clip, but the jetbeam version is half as thick). I prefer the short clips myself.

Nice! I was running low on those Jetbeam clips. Looks like I should contact them to order some more, plus some new RRT-01 drivers for my old lights.

I’m quite pleased with the modded Zebralight. So far it is working great. No issues. Heat sinking is excellent and the output is very high. On a fresh Vapcell H10, maximum output is actually brighter than my FW3As with SST-20s and 18650 cells inside.

I think I lucked out with this batch of emitters. These FD2 bin SST20s also have the best tint I’ve seen in any SST-20. I thought the tint in some of my FW3As was good, but this is much rosier.

Swapped some emitters in a couple FWAAs this week. Aluminum got 219b sw35, and Ti got 219 sw45k from Simon. Also cut out some glow gaskets out of glow tape.

Very nice Pairing…
thanks for the great photos!

Hello, I show you a small but effective modification, a trustfire t70 that had 1860lm and 220,000CD from stock. Now after stacking a resistor R091 on top of the stock R020 it is giving 2100lm and 250,000CD. The measurements in the tail with the current clamp changed from the 3.7A of stock to the current 4.8A; I don’t know how many will get to the led, maybe half? also I also gave the MCPCB some sandpaper and put new thermal paste

the color and the projection of the led is very good, I think the tint is warmer than what I have seen in other reviews

since I show the olight m3xs-ut javelot I tell you the modification that I made, very similar to that of the t70. I stacked two R500 + R100 resistors on top of the stock R030, I measured on the tail with the stock 2.04A clamp meter, and after the modification I measure 2.82A. This javelot is one of the latest, it has an xpl-hi, I think V3 because before the modification it gave me almost 1400lm and now almost 1800lm

I would be careful with this Olight.
It’s a very popular model locally and I often get it for a repair, models with older driver (2 board version) hardly ever had a driver issue, in 90% of cases it was an issue with the LED (easy fix).
Opposite to this, I had about 5 light with this new driver sent for a repair and it was alway an driver issue + I only managed to repair one of them.