A Perfect Dedome?

Hey Djozz, that there flashlight wouldn’t be utterly useless to me!!!

I did my first de-dome last night on a Crelant V21A XM-L. I don't have the know-how to remove the whole LED so I just unscrewed the reflector so the emitter was sticking out the end of the light and submerged the top 5mm or so into a shot glass with a little gasoline at the bottom. The dome slid RIGHT off this morning EASY as pie and darn near perfectly.

My only question is how do I get the gasoline smell off?

I ran the head very gently under water to rinse off some of the gasoline and let it sit out all day to fully dry but it still wreaks of gasoline since the metal was submerged somewhat. Obviously I can't really use any chemicals or anything get the smell off...what about just leaving it out in the sunlight? Would that be bad on the bare emitter?

Please use isopropryl alcohol - rinse it - works well with a squeeze bottle. The alcohol is relatively cheap at drug stores (maybe supermarkets too). I use it every time, works well. Actually I use it a ton on cleanups, solder flux, etc...

Great! So does the alcohol help with the smell or is it just good practice to clean everything when finished?

Also, I have "Rubbing Alcohol", is that the same as "Isopropyl Alcohol"?

Thanks!

Should help with the smell, yes I'm think'n, but I can't smell as well as I used to... hhmm, that sounds weird... Well, dunno if it's the same, maybe look it up on wikipedia?

LOL, the flashlight doesn't exist anymore, I put the led in a c8 pill with a 2amp driver as a drop-in for my Uniquefire UF-t20. The test-thrower host is now empty, waiting for a next experiment :-)

Another one of the benefits of using thinners. When I pull mine out, the thinners evaporates almost instantly. No residue or smell. It’s great!

Djozz,

You are the one of “pencil beam haters guys” :). I have all types of flashlights.

Well I just want to say few words to you and other guys that are sharing same opinion with you.

There are no thing as unusable light. You just did not find use for such lights.

Pencil beam?
I will give only one example(there are more but I don’t have will for describing). Your flashlight is perfect riflescope reflector light, although I prefer aspherics beam better(I described several times why I prefer aspheric, especially for hunting).
Distant spotting and small size light is very important for this type of hunting. You can not mount bigger reflectors like Olight SR95 TN31 on your rifle.

Your tuned Jacob from picture(you did not have to cut reflector in order to perfectly center the beam) really can throw claimed numbers. It can throw even more than that with XP-E2 with slightly larger hotspot than on your picture.

But really nice job. I recommend only gasoline de doming for XP-E2.

Yes, I think it’s the same.

There was someone who mentioned spotting buoys in the night when on a boat, pencil beams reach far and do not put out distracting light nearby. So there are indeed one or two applications, so I'll change my opinion of pencil beam flashlights to 'fairly useless' . Did I also mention that they are fun? I think that 'useless' and 'fun' are very close to each other .

LOL

+1

So true...

I live in California where the gas has lots of additives so I use white gas (Coleman stove fuel). It doesn’t smell as much. I grind down the SinkPAD if it’s going into a pill that only holds a 14mm then reflow on the LED. I had LED’s slide off from the heat melting the solder from grinding. I then put them in a small jar of white gas for at least 24 hours up to 7 days. Bump the dome with a tooth pick and it falls off. After an hour I test it with a small cell with test leads to see if it works, solder it into a light and burn off the smell.

I think that you are not serious man talking like that. But you are from Amsterdam so that is ok :slight_smile:

Fun? If you call 600-800 meters distance spotting fun than fun it is. For me this is some serious fun, joy and need.

To carry one small Nightmaster V2 in jacket pocket or 1,5-2kg flashlight with belt around my neck :Sp?

Not to mention that you will see further in the night with such flashlights. KCD values sometimes means nothing it is important what you can see in the night.

Well city guys in their suburbs really don’t need such flashlights I will admit you that but you would change your mind on “pencil beam” on one of my live presentations of flashlights.

Rubum:

Don’t do that. U can never get rid of smell like that. I know because I tried. Use Isoproply alchol emitter bath after de-doming. It kills any gas smell + it cleans surface.

Yes, for me as a city guy I never need a flashlight, the last power cut here was 10 years ago and if you look at satellite images at night you can see that in the Netherlands there is no place where it ever gets really dark. So for me flashlights are a hobby and I like to explore the limits of what can be made of them, and the concept of really needing a flashlight is quite alien to me, I am quite (but happily :-) ) surprised if anything new that I build is actually something very useful for someone. So thanks for pointing out the usefulness of pencil beams, it makes the hobby even more fun knowing that .

If it’s not really dark, then logically one avoids more ‘light pollution’ in the form of fat beam and spill. So there’s another use for a skinny thrower. :slight_smile:

I made a short video doing a hot dedome here...

Anyone ever try a silicon digestant like Dow Corning DS-2025?

I have some on order. I’m looking forward to seeing how well it performs. Seems like this stuff would effect the perfect de-dome: unlike solvents, digestants leave no traces of silicone.

There's only a residue left after using gasoline if you choose not to flick it off with a toothpick. No matter how many times you try to reinvent the wheel the end product is still gonna be something round that rotates around a central axis. Gas works, is readily available even in parts of the world that don't have indoor plumbing, doesn't have to be ordered from some specialty supplier, and won't harm the LED.

Mfrey…

I think all should stick to gasoline. After gasoline bath use Isoproply alcohol splash cleanup and surface is clean as it never been de-domed after all.

Stick to verified things.

You should all read this funny post in this thread. This was hilarious to me :smiley: It has deep message. It is about different ways of de-doming. I will quote it:

“There may be an even better way. All you have to do is build a rocket to launch the LED to fly close to the sun to heat up the dome, then a super-intelligent robot can poke it with a pin and peel the dome off. Do you think that might work better than just dunking the damn thing in gasoline and then a few hours later like magic you have a freshly de-domed LED?”

I’m going to try it. Worst case scenario, I’m out $5. I think it’s going to work beautifully.