I have played with aspherics in the 2AA Mini Mags, but I never really liked the means or the results. Finally I decided to back up a little and figure a new way to get a good heat sink and still be able to adjust flood to throw, with the head.
I decided that I would go ahead and put the heat sink in the body and have the LED sit on the top of the body. Since I have been doing lights where they would work with one 14500, why not go ahead and make a heat sink instead of a dummy cell. Here I have a 3/8" copper end cap with two 3/8" copper couplings. They come out just about the right length for a heat sink. I also have a piece of 1/2" aluminum rod to put inside, instead of messing with all that copper shot and solder.
This mess contains the copper end cap, copper couplings, the aluminum inside and a nickel silver top spacer. I figured I would show you what the solder job really looked like, before I clean it up. I hardly ever show the ugly stuff.
Here it is after cleaning it up.
The heat sink in place. The top nickel silver round is there to give a flush surface for the LED/star to sit on.
The positive terminal inside the body, is a plastic bushing and another nickel silver round.
The positive goes thru the heat sink. The negative is sandwiched in between the heat sink and the underside of the body's top lip where the stock negative contact would touch. The right side photo is just the heat sink inside the body.
With the aspheric lens on.
I still have to put the tail switch in.
I thought I would go ahead and show some beam shots. I am using a Nichia LED on this. It's what I had. I would use an XR-E, but I don't have any, so the Nichia is it.
I don't think I have to tell you which one is flood and which one is throw. This shows the extent of travel with the twist in/out of the head. This is only a 20mm lens (well 23mm, but the bezel covers some of it).
Flood shot along the side of the house.
2 shots of how it throws. I have not tried long distance, but I feel it will not go much past about 100 yards and it will not be really bright until a 14500 is put in it.
That's all for now. Once I get the switch done, I will show some shots of that.
The switch is done. Weird, but done.
I just used two drills to open up the tail cap. One for the button and the other for the switch body.
I have no idea what this is, but it is what it is. I guess I could say it's left this way to protect the button. It's strange, but I'm leaving it that way.
The light is done.