Aluminium Twisty

Nice light okwchin.

lol...took me a sec to catch that! Though Okwchin has got great skills in his own right. I love the mod, but agree about running it too long on high. That pill looks mighty thin, but that's the price to pay for such a compact light.

What host is that?

It looks really nice.

I think it's killer looking. Love the aluminum finish.

Foy

Really, really nice! 8)

Pretty da*n cool! Nice work.

The host came from a bar of 2020 Aluminium, 10 hours on sketchup and about 20 hours in the workshop. So if this torch was to sell for $100, that would be about $5 an hour. HAHAHA seriously dont know how budget torches can make money, shipped at $20 each.

So, real unique custom work! Very impressive!!!

@ Match: That's what I meant by "matching", the next level after modding ;)

Im really liking this beam indoors. You can completely fill an A4 sheet with totally hotspot free light from 2 feet, so its great for reading. Thread wear is higher though, for this alloy? and the fact that its a twisty on an alum body. threads go black within a couple turns!

Are there any switches that are rated for 3A though? Im considering fixing the head on, and installing a tailcap switch (adds at least 10mm though!)

Very purdy!

I've worked on it for a little bit more, and I've fixed the issue with the gap.

I thinned out the pill on the emitter side. Reduced it from 4mm to 3mm thickness (still double what most budget torches have). This has effectively closed the gap between the head and the body when in operation, and having a very small line in the off state. I have also added anti-rotation locks for the driver board, stopped the driver rotating within the pill which is peace of mind for me.

I've also added a GITD o-ring which looks awesome!

Ill try to get some pics later

ninjas are circling your house as we speak..hanko and kuku have a hit out on you . i chipped in too cuz I had a few bucks in my paypal .one less D-10 guy is a good thing .....run lola run

did you say lotus was made in america ?..that's why i love ya .

Lotus in america...? Never said that... Especially if its was a british company now owned by malaysians.

Yay, a low quality low light picture from my phone, but you can see *FINGERPRINTS!*, and you can also see that the gap between the body and the head is effectively reduced to a minimum now. It was achieved by thinning out the pill. My first attempt at end milling! The actual metal behind the emitter is sitll 3mm thick, so plently of material behind it still.

In addition to thinning out the pill slightly, I also added anti-rotation grooves in the driver side of the pill with which the driver can now lock into.

Thats a very nice looking light okwchin! I really like big hot spot/floody lights for indoors.

Now those of us without such skills can only dream about having a unique light like that.

That's one seriously lovely light.

Its a nice light, until one fries an emitter... :(

See if you can spot why the emitter is dead? .... wrong computer. Dont have the pics on this computer.. Will post pics later. but

I can say that I suspect its related to excess solder, and a possible "semi-cold solder" joint.

We can see the burnt die....

Can you spot the problem LED? I obviously didn't see it till it started dying...

Just a little too much solder under that emitter... that 0.1mm of possibly cold solder meant soo much thermally!

Im definitely going to push the emitters harder onto the base when re-flowing my emitters in future

Ouch. Well, one shouldn't be too bad to replace. Are you using hot air to reflow?

using an 60 watt iron with a broad flat tip.

It's not hard at all to re-flow emitters, but this one is just annoying because it means i have to unsolder the wires to the driver, remove all my interlinks, remove the thermal grease (Artic silver 5 is SUPER hard to remove - SUPER SUPER fine particles) and then replace all of the above.

Well that is bloody lovely! :)

All fixed, and a new photo too of the GITD. The wonders of a point and shoot vs a phone camera. With a bit of gold Ti coating to go with the aluminium. The GITD is only that bright for the first 5 seconds... after that its pretty poor... and these are the really good light blue o-rings from DX. Maybe I need to get some real GITD powder instead of o-rings with a few particles in it.