Today I made an EDC to fit the new F14 18350 battery from Vapcell.
Since the F14 retains its great capacity up to 3A but not higher (1300mAh@3A, HKJ’s test here), a 8x7135 current regulated driver is needed, while all my current 18350 EDC’s have direct drivers (mostly BLF-A6 versions). So a new mod was required.
I used a Jaxman E2L host, the latest 8x7135 driver from Simon (link), three oldschool Nichia 219B V1 SW40 R9080 D200 leds from Clemence, a ring-shaped tail-PCP from Oshpark slightly sanded smaller to fit the tail cavity (a pilotdog68 design, this one) with 6 cyan 485nm 0603 leds (each led with a 1.5 kOhm resistor in series).
The driver is set to mode group 1.2 : 0.1–1–10–35–100%, no memory.
The output on 100% (3.04 A) is 560 lumen, the tint is 3900K and very close to the BBL, visually it looks very neutral with no hints of green or yellow. CRI is as expected above 95 on all brightness settings, with R9 between 80 and 90. The tail leds are not ultra-bright but well visible in dim surroundings and they draw 0.18mA current which should be good for over 300 days on a battery charge. The emitted wavelength is exactly 500nm (cyan leds emit a higher than listed wavelength when at very low currents).
One remark about using a lighted switch in combination with this driver: Simon mentions on his website that this driver supports a lighted switch, without having to add a bleeder resistor. Although this is correct, and the user interface is stable with tail leds functioning, the driver struggles to provide enough voltage to light up blue or even green tail leds, red is fine. You can compensate some of this with lower than usual value resistors in the tail but blue never becomes bright. I think that some battery voltage is eaten on the driver before feeding the tail leds.
Previously I had a FET driver with Guppydrv rev 1 inside.
I replaced it with a FET driver with Toykeeper’s Crescendo firmware. This is the first time I’ve tried Crescendo and it is quite nice. With the new ramping firmware with shortcuts to min and max, a lighted switch and 95 CRI SST-20 FD2 emitter, plus Eagletac’s excellent clip, this makes a really fantastic and classy looking EDC.
Modified clip for Acebeam TK17 Ti
This is a pricey light that I got at a huge discount. A lot of that price is probably from the pretty solid silver and gold clip.
Unfortunately, while the stock clip may look good, I consider it completely unusable as a clip. The biggest problem is the gold accents that bend over the side of the clip have tips that catch on clothing and belts. The clip will literally tear up and destroy whatever you clip it to. Also, the silver isn’t elastic, so the clip screws tend to unscrew themselves.
I replaced it with a heavily modified convoy clip (enlarged holes, dremeled indents near the base of the clip, end of the clip chopped off and filed down).
Today I swapped drivers between a Helius Beta VI penlight and a Lumintop IYP 365, changed out the XP-G2 in my Lumapower Incendio V3 for a Nichia 219B, and turned a cheap 3xaaa light into an 18650 triple. Can’t wait to get my parts in I ordered from various websites for other plans in the works.
That is very cool. I’m a flatworm with computers so flashing chips is out of the question, which I am ok with except for gchart’s smart tails, I’d love to be able to use those.
I just rebuilt two Polarion packs and one of them is fine (14.4V), but the other one shows this exact issue (only 5.55V between P+ and P-). It’s probably noteworthy that the PCBs were different and the one that works looks older…
The voltage between V+ and V- is 14.4V, so the pack is correctly built. Balancing wires are showing correct 3.6, 7.2, and 10.8V, respectively.
I’m afraid they have built in a “safety” program that kills the output after seeing a severe undervoltage (or after some amount of charge cycles? they repeatedly mention that the battery is good for 400 cycles only…).
congrats on your mod of the 2019 RRT-01… I did not know the reflector needed replacing, but glad to hear the ones we use for the 2012 model, that moderator007 sourced from kaidomain, works in the 2019 model also…
very sorry for the damaged driver, I hope you manage to get it fixed.
fwiw, with the V10r Ti+ reflector, I find the unshaved LH351D produces a perfect beam… I like the 2700K… shown in a V11R
Certainly if the optic fits. Certainly not if you use the original optic. Maybe good to have an xml2 as backup. It’s not a very hard mod to do btw, just work your way around the bezel with a knife to open it up. Have you seen the video by - X3 - ?
I tried the optic over an 219 when I opened the light the first time and it was not nice enough for me. I have a feeling Jon is a bit snobbish about his beams also.
yes, Ive been reading the teardown threads, including for the S1 Mini… which is where the Yaji Tir are mentioned.
And Ive read that the main obstacle to a S Mini mod to 219b is the stock XML2 Tir… hence my interest in a Tir swap to Yaji 3535 profile.
Ive not confirmed if the S1 Mini and the S Mini use the same size Tir, but I did read that the 17mm Tir fits the S1 Mini.
Urban Widsom or Urban Legend…
I trust Geuzzz, since hes actually done it, and also X3…
so… just covering bases…
I can start with a 219b in the stock XM Tir, to confirm how horrible it is…
then have a couple backup options:
backup Pebble Tir,
backup XM-L2 LED
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