A Perfect Dedome?

I have some xylene, or actually, xylol,though I’m not exactly sure where, but next time I come across it I will try it.

I have it because it is a thinner/cleanup for hammered paints. I can tell you that it is NOTHING like paint thinner, lacquer thinner or acetone as far as how hazardous it is.

Fumes will F$## you up - BAD.

and, don’t get it on your skin either. I regularly soak a paper towel with any of the other solvents and rub my hands clean of whatever I’ve been applying.

Try that (or even lesser an amount) with xylene and your skin will begin to tingle, then it goes deeper, and it feels like the limb fell asleep - then it starts to ACHE like someone stomped on it. Then you feel real sick.

ask me how i know.

I bought a mask just to work with the stuff, because I like hammered paints - but unless you HAVE to use it, stay the hell away from it.

Hmm… I have a can of Italian made gel paint remover with a really cute name “DYNAMITT 46” (methylene chloride based) and that thing eats trough everything (eats latex gloves for breakfast) perhaps it would work well for dedoming too…

it will probably lift the paint off the dielectric layer and might even lift the whole layer from the board

This kind of stuff is why I’ve kept the emitters I’ve poofed :wink:

Anyone notice the fourth bond wire? The one that looks like it’s going between the negative and positive substrates? Look near the top edge of the silver circle. I have no idea what it does, but it connects to something really small on the positive plate. I broke it and the LED is still working. Just curious.

Pretty sure its the ESD protection.

Well, I got it in the HD2010, finally. Had some issues with shorting under the LED. Toughest reflow I’ve done yet.
Anyway, Here are the numbers:
HD2010, Dedomed XM-L T6 1A, East-092 (DD) at 4.4A, Sanyo18650ZT at 4.2V
Output: 1022 lm at start, 994 lm at 30s
Throw: 75kcd
Not too bad for an XM-L T6. Tint is a greenish warmish cream, with a nasty uneven hotspot. Still has decent spill.
Not sure why the hotspot is uneven yet. This particular HD2010 never was particularly smooth.
Still have a darn short on the reflector, modes do not work so it must be on the negative side. Silly HD2010 design |(

Ahh, that makes sense. Guess I should be careful with it then :wink:

Is gasoline really that easy? Just drop your led in a glass of gasoline, cover, come back a day or so later… perfect de-dome?

Yep, it’s that easy. No magic involved, just drop it in and wait. I never left one in there for less than over night so I can’t say what the minimum time is, but I forgot one for about a day and a half and it was fine. Sometimes you have a little silicone left around the wires etc… I just left the extraneous bits that weren’t on the phosphorus. One time I carefully pushed some small bits off with my pocket knife but I don’t think you need to. Most people have gasoline in the garage and with gas at four bucks a gallon you could do thousands of de-domes for a fiver.

Hey guys on my earlier comment about where have you been I was trying to kid around a bit. I should have put some kind of smiley in there and didn’t, so here it is!. :slight_smile:

Oh sorry, didnt' mean health risk, I meant long term issues with the emitter. I'm thinking this: take it out of the gas, solder the leads - poof! Or leaving the gas on to evaporate, maybe it would leave a film of chemicals behind, causing bad effects weeks/months later? -- that kind of effect. By "care/treatment", meaning clean-up, spray treatments (LED seal or whatever). But what you are saying nothing is needed, and after one year, no long term effects. This is getting better and better! Looking back now, why did I go so off track? This seems to be the best and easiest way by far, at least for me and many others I assume. Now it seems like the only issue is deciding whether to do it or not - yes there's some risk of damaging a $10 LED (plus s/h) you waited 4 weeks for (the risks though seem less than I thought), but you also have to decide whether the smaller tighter beam, less light in the flood, warming the tint is worth it for the double effect on candelas. Making that decision is easy easy once you understand all the pros and cons.

That's the 'planned obsolescence' fuse.

Well then, mine will not be going ‘obsolete’ by itself then :smiley:

Putting a XP-G in gas oil for 24 hours works fine.

The dome did not fall off by itself though. What happened was that I thought it had not worked so when I took it out of the gas oil i poked the dome with my finger to feel if it had gone soft at all. It had not really but it just slid off!

I then sprayed the die with electro cleaner for a few seconds and that removed any gooey stuff that was left.

Initially worried that I might have broken the bonding wires with my thick fingers I hurried to test it out with a battery and it works.

Thank you very much to the OP and all others who have contributed to this thread and the knowledge we now have. TY! :-)

will the electronics cleaner do the de-doming i wonder?

No, they are made to not mess up plastics and similar stuff.

how about WD-40?

Very unlikely. WD-40 doesn’t attack silicone very well - if at all.

This stuff would probably do a great job. It dissolves Silicone amazingly fast.
http://www.techspray.com/download-tds-document.php?pId=153

At $35/pint plus hazmat it also dissolves your wallet contents amazingly fast. :wink:

I found here on a dutch forum that an electronics guy used petroleum-ether to remove silicone remains. I have some here where I work, I will give it a try. The composition is not far from gasoline, but it is much cleaner. It is even more equivalent to Coleman Fuel (which is also much cleaner than gasoline).

sounds like it is equivalent?

coleman fuel is pretty cheap around here (~$10-$12 a gallon). Which makes me wonder who pays $10 a quart for naptha (same thing different label).

its also a solvent/thinner for plasti-dip :stuck_out_tongue: