I have removed AR coating with steel wool. No scratches.
Indeed, IPA works out well for this purpose. I learnt it the hard way a couple of years ago, after cleaning my mobile phones’s camera lense too often with IPA. 
Ouch!
Jeweler’s rouge also works great to remove AR coating. Just rub it over the surface like a pencil eraser.
I like AR lenses on my flashlights, except for the ones where I frosted the lenses. Any reason why you just didn’t buy a replacement lens?
And good to know on how to remove the coating.
I’m frugal 
(however i did order a new Emisar Yesterday)
And i was curious to see whether the coating affects the tint hue.
Brynnl S11 (similar to Seeknite S11 ) and Nitecore Tini received 219b 4500k upgrades
Nitecore Tini emitter swap looks daunting but it’s pretty simple reflow procedure using SMD Hot air gun ( I used cheap CO-Z brand). I heated the surrounding area avoiding direct heat on the led. The trickiest part for me is disassembly/reassembly. It needs Hex 0.9 bit for 6 screws.
Components are pushed out on the USB port hole side in the plastic housing. The white stuff is thermal paste on small heatspreader.
Brynnl S11 just needs to be pushed/pulled upwards from the body. I used the usb port. The led could be reflowed with heat gun but I de-soldered the pcb and used a hot place
Full album: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Left to right
Brynnl S11 with 219b (azhu batch)
Nitecore Tini with 219b (convoy batch)
Disassembled Stock Nitecore Tini Cree XPL
Nice work on such small lights. Patience and dexterity prevail. And the lights really look better than the CW.
And thanks for those past links on these keychain alternatives. Had missed those and is useful.
did it?
Not a flashlight, but related. Had to open one of my lab power supplies (Korad KA3005P) because the rotary encoder was faulty. That power supply has a very nice modular design. To access the encoder I removed most of the (stacked) front boards.
After repairing and testing the encoder I’ve noticed that one of the carbon pads from the buttons was missing. Even worse, it’s from the on/off button! On a closer look it was obvious that it was always missing. They are molded in two steps and the pad got squished. A wonder that it worked all the time!
Instead of trying to fix it by attaching a new carbon pad with silicone glue I just swapped the on/off and lock button (which I never use).
I have the exact same power supply and I’ve modded the fan to make it quiter.
- replaced with Noctua fan (didn’t make much difference when case was on, probably because of bad case airflow design)
- added a small electrolytic capacitor across the fan to remove the clicking (from the nasty PWM)
- added a 45°C thermal switch inline with the fan so it’ll only turn on when the heatsink starts to get hot (which means the fan is off most of the time when there’s not much load, which is how I usually use it)
I modified an old incandescent 4 AA lantern with some leftover flashlight parts.
First I knew I had to give it a heatsink, so I found the largest thickest washer that fit perfectly into the lantern. I then stacked 2 more washers on top of it to cover the washer hole, sanded them flat, and soldered them together using my electric skillet. I drilled 2 holes to screw down the MCPCB and re-sanded the top washer to make sure that it was flat. The heatsink weighed in at 1.7 ounces (48 grams).
I then bent the spring on a 17mm 1 amp 12 mode Convoy driver and screwed it onto one of the unused posts in the body of the lantern. I also replace the stock wires with 24 AWG.
The basic switch looked good since it has big contact points.
In order to cover the gap between the lantern diffuser and the LEDs, I repurposed the bulb holder. I removed the bulb holder column and cut a large hole in the base. Without the base there was a lot of annoying light escaping out below the diffuser.
When I screw the top of the lantern onto the body, the diffuser presses down on the bulb holder base which then keeps the heatsink in place.
The quad 2700K SST-20 LEDs driven at 1 amps produces plenty of light and the heatsink works well enough to keep the heat in check. I have another one of these lanterns and plan on doing something similar with some additional leftover parts.
I love leftovers.
Emitter swap on a Fenix HL23 aa headlamp. The stock xp-g wasn’t bad at all - maybe 4500-5000k and nice white tint, but the new sw45 is better 
I used a heat gun to soften the glue in the bezel and pliers to remove it. Slight damage from the pliers but I don’t mind on this old light. I reflowed with the same heat gun using the residual solder from the original.
Turned out to be a 15 min mod. Like I said, the stock emitter wasn’t bad at all so I don’t regret not doing this years ago.
It does look like a bong!
(but it's a flashlight.)
NeutralFan:
That’s a nice DIY project. And much so making do with what you had at hand. I like your improvising and designing around what is a cheap lantern. I believe these types of projects are underrated but have their challenges.
So a couple of questions:
1- How did you set up the switch to toggle with that rotary knob?
2- What are you using as battery, the built-in 3 or 4 cell AA or did you mod that too?
I’ve picked up a few of these lanterns at the thrift store and was meaning to make something out of them. This got me thinking about some ideas.
BTW – I like your exposé.
Thanks Sidney Stratton.
I’m just using the original switch. It has a plastic arm on it so when I turn the knob to the right it presses down on the metal contact point. Quickly turning to the right, left, right again switches the modes. Here are a couple more pics that hopefully helps.
For the battery, I’m using the original 4 AA battery holder which is 4.8 volts with Eneloops. The driver seems fine with that many volts. I thought about modding it to just 3 AAs, but then the low voltage protection would kick in after not too long.
Ah! I see that’s the driver up in mid-air. Thought it was the switch hooked to the cam.
Yeah, with the 4x NiMH you would be ok. My understanding that those drivers work under 5 volts.
Did a few mods over the weekend and used up a bunch of my YD5050 emitters.
Finished tuning the reflector height in my ’ol Supfire M6 with these new LEDs. End result was 225kcd without the glass and about 205kcd with - pretty big loss. Flux I’d guestimate at 4000lm. Driver is acting weird now. It’s running the MTNe slave MCU kit, and I’m thinking about reflashing it with a newer firmware and maybe newer FETs (one is not balanced).
B158B finally got this emitter. I don’t know why I waited so long. 320kcd and a wonderful round spot. When focused just right, the chromatic aberrations are minimal. Gotta re-do some blacking out inside the head to get rid of artifacts, but it’s pretty awesome right now. Next mod is to increase the thread resistance to better hold a focus point and hopefully fab a collar 
I also spent some time fooling around with another BLF A6 with the XML ‘center sand’ TIR. I modded the holder by reducing the OD with a sanding drum + dremel to fit snuggly in the bezel … press fit levels of ‘snug’. I then took a 7.1mm drill bit and rounded out the emitter hole to avoid torqueing the led/mcpcb/wires. End result was 40kcd, a near perfect beam (still one nagging dim satellite ring artifact). The lens on this one is pretty beat up, so a new UCL lens is in store and a fresh TIR (got dirty/scratched while tweaking the holder a billion times). >>> The coolest part? This setup now creates a zooming feature. This TIR behaves reasonably enough that the hotspot/corona stays ‘solid’ - i.e. no donut hole - until the bezel reaches the last points of contact with the o-ring. Beam angle goes from 9 degrees in focus to 42 degrees before a donut starts. Obviously lumen loss is taking place, and the actual ‘hotspot’ gets smaller, but the corona is massive and quite usable.
I think that’s all that’s notable. Getting a real camera this week (finally!!) so I’ll start getting some beamshots and such.
Hey I’ve spent a ton of time inside the M6! The stock glass was horrid, I got a UCLp for it. I like that it has full reflectors so there’s no “petal” effect like the Q8 - just some spikes from where the bezel reflects a bit.
I found the 46mm TA Triple driver fits it well. Fet+1+15 and anduril compatible