MRTdiver's custom Minimag build thread - Updated "Tests and Beamshots"

Weā€™re planning for 6 chips or 2.2-2.3A and if his cells canā€™t supply that hell get some imrā€™s. Iā€™ll test the driver with an efest 14500 first to verify it before installation. Twice the overall current with 3 times the LEDs as 261L. The lower drive current per led should increase efficiency but since the Nichia isnā€™t as potent as the xpg2 I donā€™t expect any miracles. I think it really depends on the bin of the Nichias.

RBD - I just love watching you do your thing!Smile

Finally got back to the shed tonight for some swearing and crying I mean sweating and grinding. When we last were all here I stopped with a slightly smaller copper cylinder and some discs. The discs I annealed on the stove top and flattened in a vise between two steel washers.

Then I took some plain awg20 copper wire and wrapped enough around some pipe for the 5 spacers that separate the discs.

Then I carefully worked it onto the cylinder to size the diameter.

Then I just cut the wire in a line down the cylinder making 5 wire rings exactly the right diameter.

Then I fluxed the cylinder and put the discs and rings on and cooked it over a low heat and added some solder.

Oops! Itā€™s crooked. !#%. I had to clean it up, reflux, and reflow it a couple of times before I was happy with it.

A little preliminary clean up then itā€™s off to the drill press.

And hereā€™s how it looked after about an hour and a half of sanding.

Right now itā€™s still a few millimeters larger than the Minimag head and I think Iā€™ll leave it the way. Next episode Iā€™ll bore out the head and cut it to allow the fins to sit between the bezel and the head grip.

update

Upon further consideration MRTdiver decided it would be better to have the fins flush with the rest of the head and aestheticly I agree so I chucked it back in the drill press and sanded it down until it was ~.2mm over the head Dia. With the fabrication done on the pill and driver I went ahead and epoxied it into the head with JB weld. Canā€™t make it bigger now.

This was the best of about a dozen pics and I give up.

Coming to a theater near you. :bigsmile:

Simply orsm Rufusbduck. Seriously I have no idea how you guys do these amazing things until you explain it in pictures. The light OL is building I was stuck at getting the reflector to fit in the head as I could not hold it in the lathe. It wasnā€™t until a member here posted pictures on using a drill press as a mill/lathe that it all twigged. Thanks. :beer:

Awesome work Rufusbduck. Its always amazing seeing what some people can do with just common tools and their hands. Simply amazing work, I am impressed. :wink:

Thatā€™s it, Iā€™m packing up my gear and heading over to your shed! Photo documentary and video light modding 101! :slight_smile:

As always, beautifully excellent work there Scott! And as always, the extra mile has been run, surpassed, and fine tuned.

Steve said it well. ORSM!

Qlite driver and triple optics arrived yesterday(thanks Dale for the heads up about RMM). Still waiting on noctogon triples from IOS. Catā€™s away this weekend so should get more done soon. Future mod updates will have link to post # updated in the op title

Shame you didnā€™t pick up a couple extra Noc Tripā€™s while you were at it, got mine today with some Panny PFā€™s for the M8. :slight_smile:

I ordered 4 from IOS and RMM is out of stock so its wait or use an Alu pcb.

How close is IOS? I just got one from RMM today. Need it?

I ordered them 2 weeks ago but they sometimes take awhile. Iā€™ll need it soon so if you send me one I can replace it when they come in. boring the head tonight and making the pill tomorrow. After that it will be several days before I can get back to it. Enough time for it to get here(yours or theirs). You would have my undying gratitude ( well, lasting as long as my short term memory anyway).

Iā€™ll pack it up tonight and get it to you first thing in the morning. (Or ASAP, Ice being the determining factor) Want the little cross-overā€™s too? Iā€™ll pack em.

Great. If the jumpers are packed, fine. If not I can live without them.

I stayed up late last night to bore the head, cut it, and hone the inside to fit the fin section. It starts on the drill press with the head pressed into a block of wood. Using first a step drill and then a 3/4ā€ hole saw to widen and deepen the bore.

Last time I cut the the head freehand with a thincut dremel blade. This time I took a page from OL and used the same blade but in the drill press instead.

After that it was just a matter of spinning some wet/dry sand paper in the two pieces to get the ID from 19mm out to 19.4mm when the parts would slip over the fins without too much play.

The fit is nice with very little play but room for some epoxy. The parts donā€™t get glued until the pill is done with led and driver both installed.

To that end I stayed up even later and made the pill. The copper on 1ā€ fittings is much thicker than the copper sheet I have(1mm instead of .5mm) so Iā€™ll use a piece of that(annealed and flattened) along with 1/2ā€ pipe and 1/2ā€ coupler. Here Iā€™ve already soldered the thicker flat piece to the 1/2ā€ pipe and filed it flush.

Next I press these two parts together and solder them as well.

Now to test the fit in the fin section.

This is a very snug press fit. Not quite requiring a vise but not at all loose. With the copper noctogon soldered to the top it should have good heat transfer to the fins. About 7 hrs work in this post including photos.

Thanks for the detailed pictures. I could follow what was happening with what little grey power I have left. I could also well believe 14 hours if you had said that. I would have taken 30 and theres not a hope it would look like the perfection you have created. Nice work indeed.

Beautiful craftmanship! Love that attention to detail! Thank you for sharing :-)

Iā€™ll have to turn down the noctogon before I solder it to the pill. The optic peg inserts fit the ID of the fins but the posts do not so thatā€™s how much material needs to be removed. Also, the outside of the posts will need to be sanded down as well. Alternately I could cut 3 slots in the fin tube and that might reduce the leverage on the posts caused by a fixed board and rotating bezel.

The anodizing on colored Minimags is very weak so I donā€™t count on it to isolated the head from the tube electrically. Instead I isolate the driver ground from the pill and give the driver a second ground contact plate that can only contact the polished end of the tube. I learned that trick from JohnnyMac on one of his Micromags. It works great but itā€™s a whole lot easier to just use a single sided board and stack extra chips, JM couldnā€™t on his build as he was using a buck driver with no gnd ring at all. In this case the 15/100 program isnā€™t readily available on a single sided nanjg board so needs must when the devil drives. Here is the pill and driver from my edc triple Nichia Minimag. The pill is much the same except this one has an OD of 20mm instead of ~17.5mm for the pewter Minimag.

The pill on the left holds an XML and is cupped the other way. This pushes the led closer to the driver but maintains a large contact area with the head. The two are interchangeable in the same light. I did a poor job centering the mcpcb and the lens holder sits cocked as a result.

I love watching your work Scott. its awe inspiring.

Something about triples make them irresistible. :heart_eyes: Itā€™s just so beautiful.
Loving this build!