_the_ - that's a great dedome. Was thinking of trying a different approach for a heat method, viffer750 made it look so easy and I think he quotes a 100% success record, but the success I had with gas, I'll probably stick with it, only go to a high octane - NightCrawl mentioned their gas is 95 octane he used.
I cant remember which worked better, but I also dedomed one using a mixture of gasoline and acetone. Pretty much trial and error, but I never touched the dome or the glue with anything because I didnt want to kill the bond wires.
your led will only work in the uk, if you try to travel with it, it won’t be compatible with batteries and dark environments designed for the rest of the world
Success! I had cut this one down and polished the remaining dome.
Bare emitter Lumen results: 700mA drive current, XM-L T6 1A
Original dome unchanged: 276 lm
Cut down and polished with 2000grit: 200 lm
Gasoline dunk, dome fell off: 264 lm
This one be going in my other HD2010 on copper SinkPad to compare to the XM-L2 T6.
The tint looks slightly greener than before. Definitely warmer now.
Hmm, my vision seems more affected than usual by the emitter at full power. Keep your eyes safe. I need to get some oxy welding glasses…
This stuff is great. It not only protects the phosphor coating after dedoming, but also prevents reflector shorts in situations where an insulating disk cannot be used.
I wonder what chemical in gasoline is doing most of the work. They do sell Xylene in the hardware store. If it doesn't work, then dump it in your gas tank for a slight octane boost.
Honestly, I've never tried. The spray emitted from the can is pretty thin, as is a single coating from same. When used as an electrical insulator, I make two or three passes.
A year's worth of use has left me with just under half a can left, FWIW.
Even with the Internet it takes time for word to get around. I’m here daily and only recently heard about it. I don’t read every single thread every day.
I'm sure you're right, but it's been difficult to find for sure what the best method really is in all these postings and threads with the mix of successes and failures. Think we need a shared googles doc just for dedoming, or some way of summarizing the experiences. The big thread on dedoming is just way too big to get a bottom line answer from. I'm still not sure exactly what to do with the gasoline method. If you could reference threads/posts with specifics, that would be a great help. My questions with gas:
does the octane, content, source of the gas make a difference?
12 hrs min time, but ok if longer?
Is all the silicon remnants supposed to be completely gone off the LED? I found it wasn't and needed to be pushed off - maybe I did something wrong?
can you do just minimum amount to cover the LED dome for the soaking, or should you use a full jar/can of gas? Does it matter?
the LED Seal stuff sounds good. Is everyone using it? Any side effect like measured output drops?
should the wires be clear of the gooey stuff as well or only the surface matters?
should the LED be rinsed/cleaned after the gas soaking? How? I used isopropyl alcohol - seemed ok, anything better?
When I used acetone, I thought the rule was 30 minutes, then that's it, good to do. But it didn't work out that simply. There are several ways of doing the heat method, but again, seems like details are lacking, or skills/knowledge of what to look for are not there. I think what happens is if you have success with a method, you stay with it, so if someone has 100% success rate on a heat method, why change? But for someone trying this for the first time, it seems like the gas method is the best way to go perhaps.
Also with the chemical approach, I think everyone is a little apprehensive about potential damage and long term effects, follow-up care/treatment, etc.