Many thanks for the info. I am hoping the heatsinks which I ordered from FT arrive within a couple of weeks. A copper slug of around 10mm in height might do the trick if I can find said slug in a hardware store.
Thinking out loud, the plan is to place the LED shelf upside down. With it upside down, the area where the LED is supposed to occupy, there will be a 20mm copper slug in its place. The surrounding area, I will place heatsinks which are 5mm in height. I will have to rely on the threads to transfer the heat collected to the body.
Also, with the shelf upside down, it should focus the LED better as suggested by janko.hrasko as it is sitting up closer to the reflector rather than the default position.
The problem with this approach is you’re not really doing much to improve the thermal path away from the shelf and to the outside. It will work well initially to suck and store heat from the led but the real weakness of the shelf is not really it’s thinness but that it can only transfer heat to the body through it’s small and loosely machined threads with minimal contact surface. Upside down or not the contact area is still pretty minimal and that will be the main bottleneck.
The idea with adding a 34mm slug that fits down into the driver cavity is that this will both collect and transfer the heat out along it’s own contact points to the driver cavity walls. Even if the press fit isn’t optimal you can increase/improve the contact area very easily with a few layers of copper or alu foil.
I’m pretty sure that will do a much better job at keeping the led cool than relying solely on those threads on the emitter shelf. You’ll see when you get the light, they’re pretty suboptimal…to put it kindly. :bigsmile:
Incidentally how easy/hard is it to remove anodizing on a specific part of a light without destroying the rest. Like could I paint on the degreaser/greased lightning only to the inside of the driver cavity and let it do it’s thing or would just sanding the coating off be a much better idea?
flipped shelf isn relying solely on those poor threads… it sits tightly on the rim and with some thermal paste there it isn’t that bad
sure copper pressed really tight would be better but I don’t think that it matters to me that much to have someone machine it for me
I got tailcap lockout!
just unscrew the tailcap, unscrew the b- pcb, take it out
screw the three screws that were holding it to the body
place the pcb OVER the screws
get something that can create pressure on the pcb from the tailcap (I used a lid from film canister) and place it over the pcb
screw the tailcap on and BAM!
when you tighten the tailcap, it pushes the pcb on the screws and completes the circuit
loosen it a bit and the pressure from the springs breaks the contact
Update: I ordered a custom firmware driver from DrJones (mokkadrv - 4 mode) that I’ll be using in this light.
Probably won’t do much work on it till I get this driver, too many projects on the go and I really need to get my BTU-MTG2 monster project finished up.
But I’m keen to see what others are coming up with in the meantime so feel free to post any progress or ideas in this thread so we can have a collection of useful info on this light.
If anyone has any questions or wants any measurements let me know, the light will stay disassembled for now.
Linus. I’ve just encountered the same type of threaded emitter plate on the Yupard I started working on. The COURUI has an integral ledge that the plate threads down onto, but mine doesn’t. I can’t add extra heat sinking that will transfer heat into a ledge that is part of the head.
Allegedly, anodizing doesn't affect the thermal properties in a significant way. It might be measurable, but that doesn't mean much. If your wife says 'it's cold in here!' and you raise the temp from 63.4* to 63.8*, that's measurable, but probably not likely to do anything to stop the complaining. :)
A change in output of 1 lumen is measurable, but how much work would you be willing to invest for one lumen? How many lumens would an improvement have to be to be worth whatever work required to get it?
Sure, I’m just suggesting something that could potentially improve a poor heatsinking solution.
I bet even small changes in thermal conductivity at the interface will have some effect when the contact surface from a loosely threaded emitter shelf is already minimal.
I don’t know how hard it is to remove anodizing though so it may not be worth the hassle, maybe the same benefit can be had by just slapping some thermal paste on the threads instead…
Removing the anodizing won't improve anything, as it's not a hindrance. It's not one of those little things that when combined with a bunch of other little things adds up to something meaningful, it just doesn't affect it one way or the other.
Now, an anodized outside surface has better radiative properties than bare aluminum, but for internal parts it doesn't matter.
No, I didn’t remove the filament. I just placed my probes on each end.
It was bothering me, so I took an emitter reading… 2.22A. Man, those wires sure are microscopic. The light throws great. I only tested off my balcony, but it went through a dark area, accross a highly lit street and lit up a dark alley on the other side.
Well that’s the problem, you’re only reading a fraction of the true current like that. The majority is still going through the wire and not being measured!
For accurate current readings your DMM needs to be in series with the circuit without any other conductor in parallel.
I just got one of these light the other day. I found this thread and I was excited to see it being modded already. I was thinking about a SSR-90 but I see the pill is pretty low on material. I have 3 of the Courui 12 XML lights. One which is heavy modoed with 12 XML2 U2 LEDs and a Hyperboost driver. I did the exact mod on the tail contact plate you did with the screws! I just had to share that! Awesome job!
Here is my 12 XML build thread: Kinda getting off subject of this Courui but Im very proud of my Courui 12 XML2 light! haha!
