hhmm!! Good idea!! Believe it or not, I stopped at Harbor Freight last night on my way home from work and bought this: http://www.harborfreight.com/4-inch-x-36-inch-belt-6-inch-disc-sander-97181.html. Plan on taking down the back of the reflector a little to see if that helps. Also, want to sand down, a little, the plastic LED alignmnet pieces - thinking they partially block some output as well - done it before on other lights and it helped.
But -- gotta look at what you did first. What gauge wire did you use? I used 20 gauge on the long wires to the driver, and 22 gauge for the 2 star to star wires. What I did different this time was angle the wires to overlap the star more because last time, I had a partial ground on an exposed wire to the reflector. So for this time, I got more wire insulation on the top of the star but less risk of grounding -- can't win...
I should have used the 22 gauge for the driver as well - don't think the 20 gauge makes any difference -- should have had detailed notes on all these mods... argh! Also got a Shocker in from JOE that vinh mod'ed - it's got a worse out of focus condition than mine right now so I'll need to re-do that one as well.
Oh --- comparing these side by side, the vinh one is supposedly U2 1C's de-domed and mine is IOS U2 1A's de-domed and what a tint difference!! The 1C's came out pretty dark yellow. Still wonder if they were actually T6 3C's -- so much yellow when de-domed...
So the XM-L2 U2 1As from IOS has better tint when de-domed? Iām currently using XM-L2 T6 1Bs on my Shocker, K40 & T08 and Iām not sure whether to upgrade to XM-L2 U2 1As or XM-L2 U2 1Cs from IOS.
Does JOEās Shocker have the doughnut beams at 2 to 3 meters. I had that problem before when my reflector was not properly seated.
Yes -definitely visible at 2-3 meters and the center beam looks ugly even out at 5-7 meters. Couple of weird things on vinh's mod: he replaced the carrier springs but didn't copper braid them - resulting amps was low - don't think the spring replacements helped at all. When I took the same cells, moved them into a copper braided Shocker carrier, amps went way up. Also, he used thermal epoxy under the stars that looks like Fujik, and they all moved and left a trail of epoxy to the left of each star -- same thing I see in a factort Shocker. It seems to be from tightening the bezel, the reflector spins along with the glass and o-ring.
Yes - 1A's seem to come out well de-domed. I've been de-doming TN31's and my K40, but I believe they come with 1C's, so they do come out a bit yellow. With the de-domed 1C Shocker, it 's really dark yellow though. I could look at the exposed LED and the phoshor appears to be a darker yellow that a 1A, and only other time I noticed that is on a de-domed T6 3C, so I'm not so certain it's 1C's as vinh said they were. He buys the emitters from IS and they offer both U2 1C's and T6 3C's bare - no 1A's unfortunately. IOS has 1A's, but not bare, but his pre-mounted on Noctigons are a lot cheaper that IS's bare emitters.
With domes, the warm T3's and T4's beams look a lot better - don't notice any yellow at all, but I see yellow in 1C's and 3C's.... weird
I tightened the reflector retaining screw real good first before tightening the bezel to prevent or minimize the twisting of the reflector. Excess twisting of the reflector also cuts the silicon skin of the lead wires.
Oh - vinh's light had no screw in it, it was totally gone! Fortunately I found one that fits, just got to cut it down. But yes, I'm doing the same thing - tightening it up good. I got in a Shocker from the factory that had the stars twisted around so bad, one partially covered the wire hole and cut the silicon on one of the wires. The light worked but had lower output than expected and as I got from the others.
Its exactly the same when I opened my Shocker - streak of fujik from the stars because of the twisting and a lead wire with cut silicon. I think its the lead wires coming out of that hole from the pill that stopped the reflector from twisting further.
I guess the people assembling the Shocker did not care much on the lead wires shorting with the pill.
Iām currently waiting on another torch before doing some beam shots with the BTU Tom was kinda enough to do up for me but today I decides to do some measurements with my cheapo MS1010 light meter to see if it and the light were in the same ballpark as to what Tom observed. So down into the basement in my building I went with measuring tape in hand to mark out a 5meter and 15 meter (could have gone out to almost 50 meters down there) line to measure from. I took down three lights with me:
XIN TD V3 U3 with Samsung 20R
5meter:
low 71 x 25 = 1775kcd
med 359 x 25 = 8975kcd
high 1042 x 25 =26050kcd
Stock BTU with dry driver, U2, Samsung 20Qās
5 meters:
low 259 x 25 = 6475kcd
med 1303 x 25 = 32575kcd
high 3010 x 25 = 75250kcd
turbo 4170 x 25 = 104250kcd
15meters:
low 29 x 225 = 6300kcd
med 149 x 225 = 33525kcd
high 342 x 225 = 76950kcd
turbo 479 x 225 = 107775kcd
Tom E Shocker with Samsung 20Rās
High:
5meter: 17900 x 25 = 447500kcd
15meters: 1994 x 225 = 448650kcd
I only measured on high for this one as I was interruptedā¦. and to be perfectly honest some of the people in this building I donāt want to be alone with in a dark basementā¦
All torches were strapped to my new MacGyverāed tripod mount while I went with the meter out in front to find the sweet spot for the reading. This is my first real decent attempt at taking readings so I donāt know how accurate I or the meter was in all this but the numbers look in the ball park. The distance should be within + or - 2 inches of those distances as I really focused on not moving horizontally and only vertically during the testing.
Wow! I feel somewhat relieved. Sometimes I dunno - am I the only crazy one seeing these #'s or am I just plain crazy ? Well Trent, you are the only chosen one at the moment - I'm having a tuff time repeating what I did there...
Oh - what's crazy is that your other lights are measuring a little low. A stock BTU with a DRY driver and 20Q's should be doing way better than that. Are you hunting for the brightest reading?
Crap! That mod'ed Shocker is freak'n awesome!! All the best with it! Oh btw, I'm ordering one of those FT camera lens bag you recommended for the Shocker (here), though I don't have a Shocker of my own yet .