What did you mod today?

Modded a Wowtac A6 last night into a triple. New emitters are SST-20 95 CRI.


I used the stock driver. I didn’t even remove the driver to drill a new hole for the driver wires.

I filed off around 1mm of the edge of the star on all sides so it would fit, then I filed 2 notches in the star for the driver wires, and used short bits of wire to extend the stock driver wires to the contacts on the star. I also snipped 1 leg off the Carclo 10507 optic as it was getting in the way of the inside knob of the USB port cover.

Put it back together and it works.

Nice work! Sounds like it was one of those great moments where everything just comes together. Love when that happens.

This looks really useful, but what if the button fails? Can it still be replaced and coating reapplied?

Yes, the coating is flexible it can be removed and reapplied
Additionally it’s Fluoresces under UV-A light so you won’t miss any uncovered parts

It seemed that way at first.

… but then problems developed. Sometimes after battery changes I noticed the light was staying on at a low level even when the switch was off. Then it got worse and was staying on at a higher level. I spent last night trouble-shooting it:

  • Perhaps the problem was a short under one of the stars or between one of the jumpers on the Noctigon. I removed the star and reflowed the LEDs and jumpers. But that didn’t fix it.
  • Perhaps the unusual arrangement of 2 wires at the sides to a triple was causing issues. Maybe when I screwed down the bezel it torqued the driver wires causing a short through the silicone insulation. I removed the driver, drilled a hole through the center of the shelf and redid the driver wires with a more conventional “through the center” format for a triple. That didn’t fix it either.
  • I checked the star outside the light and noticed the LEDs did turn on at a low level when I connected negative to ground and positive to the positive on a battery showing a short somewhere at the star. But reflowing again didn’t fix it.
  • Finally, it occurred to me that my filing of the edges of the star might have created a short. BINGO… that was it! When I filed the 2 notches for the driver wires they lifted up the mask slightly at one point. Then when I installed the driver wires it hooked a tiny portion of the contact under the mask down until it hit ground. This was all miniscule and required a magnifying glass to see, but it was enough. I cleaned it up and then it worked fine.
  • On reassembly, I also noticed the optic was sitting on ledge just inside the bezel rather than pressing firmly to the star. To fix, I filed down the edges of the optic. (though now that I think about it, a better way would have been to lift up the star slightly by inserting a copper disk between the star and shelf. I also replaced the snipped 2-legged optic with one with all 3 of its legs for more support.

Now it works perfectly. It is nice when the troubleshooting process solves the problem.

Today I made few visual comparisons between XHP70.3 and XHP70.2. 70.3 is 6000K P2 from digikey and 70.2 is 5000K P4 3A from Convoy flashlight store. I used M21E with OP reflector and camera settings are tweaked so that photos look realistic. Same settings for both leds.

XHP70.3 100%

70.2 100%

Second lowest step in stepped mode 70.3

70.2 same mode

Small difference in beam profiles. 70.3 is little throwier, but it also has big blue center in hotspot. 70.2 has uniform hotspot. Similar tint shift in both leds. Not so bad in this reflector.

I have tinkered quite a lot with Convoys and this M21E’s driver is very different physically than other Convoy ones. It has two horizontal pcb’s that are connected together. Upper seems like normal Convoy boost driver and lower one is probably for the charging circuit and it also has momentary switch directly mounted on it. Two pcb’s seem to be connected together with some kind of rods. Can’t remember excactly. It’s been few days since I opened it.

Change to LEP

Post 23

A provesorium driver 0.3A
No results.just test

Regards Xandre

Turned a cheap incandescent flashlight into something useful. Now has a warm high CRI XP-G and TIR lens with a 1-mode driver.

Awesome. I have the same (or similar) flashlight and I don’t know what to do with it.

Bought a gently used Lumintop D2 off ebay, and swapped in a sliced 3V XHP50.2. The reflector in the D2 is awful so I’m waiting for a couple different sizes of TIR lens to try but they’re coming from China.

I made a quad 21700 flashlight:

The host was different than what I was expecting since the reflector was shorter than the 21700 black host that I bought previously from Kaidomain. So I had to shorten the S2 spacer much more than anticipated and could’ve just bought the shorter S2+ spacer if I had known. The spacer went from 13.4 to just 3.9 mm.

I also had to make the quad optic a little smaller so I sanded down the parameter to make it fit into the head. That then made the LEDs to align perfectly into the head.

For the lighted tail switch, I found some purple 0805 LEDs on eBay and added them to the blue LEDs that came with the Convoy switch. That made a very unique dark purple color which draws 0.15 mA (3.8 years).




Repaired Fixed, thank you. Can anyone do FWAA repair in Australia?

Lumintop FWAA Copper with Nichia 219B sw30 D180 R9080

Today I finished my Sofirn SP35 quad build. I used SST-20 FA3 leds and Carclo quad narrow optics.

It needed spacer, so I made one from copper bar.

I wanted to use the original buck driver. I measured with clamp meter what current the original driver gives to led. Only 5A, so no wonder that in reviews it hasn’t met the 2000 lumens that Sofirn gives as a output.

It used 2 20mOhm sense resistors. I halved that value to 2 10mOhm ones. Something else in driver must be restricting component, because it only added 50% more output.

Hardest part of the build was removing the driver and the switch. Driver was glued and switch is press fitted. I punched it out from chargers hole Esterafter the driver was removed.



So here it is. Another flashlight for which I need to invent some use case. :smiley:

Great you helped out. And this is not just a repair, but an upgrade.

Thanks for the driver details and good work with the mod. Sounds like the driver is beyond it’s limit. Sounds like an R056 on top of the two stock R020s would be about as much as I’d push it.

Good luck finding a home for it. 21700 tube lights, side switches especially, are a hard sell honestly for me. YMMV.

Yeah, I thought might as well try what it could deliver. Now I know that it’s 7A. I might adjust it to that range someday.

Sillen kindly offered to give me a new black WT3M in exchange for swapping the FWAA emitters and to fix the button LEDs in a clear WT3M. WildTrail provided the black WT3M as a replacement due to the faulty button LED in the clear WT3M.

The button LEDs were ok individually but wires for the 3-pin switch PCB were crushed. Continuity was ok. I didn’t know what the root cause was at that time, so I swapped the newer driver and 5-pin switch PCB into the clear WT3M. It has a red charging LED on the switch PCB instead of hidden away on the driver. It seemed like the safest way to fix it (desolder two wires from the MCPCB and swap). That said, the wires need to be neat to avoid shorting on the reflector.

I then put the prototype driver and switch PCB into the black WT3M after replacing all of the wires. It’s working now too. It’s not exactly a cheap flashlight. Much appreciated! :slight_smile:

I ended up with an Amutorch E4 in a trade, and I love the weird little host but the insides needed some upgrades. I reflowed four sw45ks and replaced the stock driver with a 20 mm 6A Convoy 12-group programmable. Much better.

The only thing is, the Amutorch driver was held in by tiny screws, and there’s no room for drilling matching holes in the Convoy driver. So right now it’s just floating in there, held in by the battery. The prospect of soldering it to the host, essentially a giant brass heatsink, doesn’t appeal to me. Any other ideas for keeping it in place?

Does the body tube clamp down on the perimeter of the driver directly? If so, using a low strength silicone potting compound/epoxy/adhesive could work. I wonder what product the chinese manufacturers use, it’s a light grey/ white and peels off with your fingernail, but is enough to hold the driver in place during a battery swap