I’m Michael and I live in Poland; I’ve been reading BLF for about a year.
One month ago I’ve bought STL-V2 and after reading BLF I decided to dedome the LED
I used iron to make the dome hot, and I used my fingernail!! (after trying tweezers) to peel it off. Luckily, everything went well.
I made beamshots (4 meters from the wall, same white balance, shutter time, iso and aperture) before and after dedoming.
In the real life, difference seems to be similar to what we can see at the photos. The tint is now more neutral (much nicer for me!) and the hotspot is really more intense. Unfortunately I’don’t have lux-meter.
I hope that the beamshots are somehow useful and can tell if it’s worth to dedome the xm-l in STL-v2
Last night Hannes and I decided to upgrade one of our other friend’s Skyray STL-V2. The STL-V2 is already a very nice thrower, but we wanted to give it some wow factor. We took some before and after measurement, so the numbers are purely there to give an indication of improvement, as we are unsure if the DX Lux meter is fully calibrated, and forgot to measure the distance from the wall (I blame it all on the red wine J) ) I think the distance was between 3 and 4 meters from the wall.
Before:
Ceiling bounce: 32 lux
Wallshot: 430 lux
As a reference, my Solarforce Masterpiece Pro-1 with 2x18650’s gave the following results:
Ceiling bounce: 12 lux
Wallshot: 505 lux
We started by taking a brand new XML2 U2 1A tint, and cut away 90% of the dome, about 0.5mm above the LED itself.
We then reflowed the de-domed LED on a sinkpad
Next we replaced the stock driver with a LD-29 1-2* Lithium 2.8A driver. We measured the stock current going through the LED, which was 2.78A. We decided this was too little and modified the sensing resistor on the LD-29 driver to supply 4.2A to the LED (measured in series on the LED side).
We put everything back together and put some Fujik in the pill as well.
After:
Ceiling bounce: 41 lux
Wallshot: 900 lux
All and all, we are happy with the light. The tint is a much nicer neutral white. It compares very closely to a 3D tint (5000K). The hotspot is very similar in size to my MPP-1, however the STL-V2 now smokes my MPP-1 in the hotspot, and even between 200-300m the hotspot of the STL-V2 is just as bright (to the eye) than my MPP-1, but the difference is the STL-V2 still has a quite useable corona and spill around the hotspot where the MPP-1 is a laser.
I’ll see if I can get some beamshots over the weekend.
Suggest you search BLF for "resistor" and the model of light you want to do this to. It's been pretty well described in a number of threads for the Small Sun ZY-T13 and the SS ZY-T08 as well as others. The basic idea is that you add a resistor in parallel with the existing sense resistors. This reduces the total "sense resistance" and causes the driver to supply more current to the LED. If your light doesn't have sufficient thermal management to handle the increased current you may have problems. Doing this is usually easier with under driven/over built lights. If your light is already well driven you may want to consider trying it with different light.