Solarforce Z1 - 1600 lumens on your keychain

Got a Z1, need to know if there's a non-destructive way to unscrew the head off the pill. (does it even screw on? or is it pressed in, like the switch/tailcap parts?)

Heh, nevermind! This one came apart completely by accident.

Now, guess what happens next... 0:)

Just got one the other day and I really like it. Why must you guys always mod lights and make me hate my stock POS. |(

Oh it's very nice for what it is. I'm going to leave one stock and keep it on my keychain, the lasts-forever CR123 is perfect for that. Very practical.

But this other one is not going to be very practical, at all. :evil:

17.3mm OD! Yikes!

That’s just gorgeous. Me likey, me likey alot.

How did you turn down the optic? belt sander and inhuman patience? dremel and inhuman dexterity?

Inquiring minds must know!

You are a fiend! I love it. FET to boot right? And how did you whittle that down and what does the beam look like?

It will need a spacer, there's not enough threads inside the head to shorten it any.

A 17mm driver won't fit inside the recess in the pill, but it will fit inside the battery tube just fine. I may just solder it to the rear face of the pill.

Neat

Ahh, you used proper tools. Basically, you cheated. :stuck_out_tongue:

As punishment, I’m afraid we’re just going to have to put up a “comfychair modded-z 2 1 group buy” thread.

Holy…
Just gorgeous!!!

Oh, beamshots plz!!!

Proper tools?! That's about the most improper use of a $100 drill press there is! They even specifically mention it in the instruction manual, right after 'Do not eat' and 'Do not use underwater'!

Cheap drill press, cheap vise, all the fixturing stuff is made from scraps (the guide pins used to be the rails inside old CD-ROM drives), etc.

:stuck_out_tongue: I have a Chinese not-dremel and a knife I’m not allowed to put back in the kitchen… so “proper” is relative.

Love the work anyways. And congrats on the lateral thinking, if not for proper safety measures.

Edit: I’ll note you didn’t object to me turning you into a one-man sweatshop and assembly line, so I’ll get right on that.

I love the way you achieve some fantastic results cc. Thanks for posting the pictures.

Comfy, maybe I’m getting one really cheap. How easy is the disassembly? I for myself just want to swap the G to a 219B.
:bigsmile:

I used copper pipe sections, cut into C-shapes, and used pliers on the pill threads and pliers on the head. One light came apart before I even tried, the Loctite didn't bond, I guess. I was just unscrewing the pill to change the battery and the head unscrewed off the pill instead. The other one required pliers but wasn't too bad, the Loctite is only in one smallish area and not slathered all over everything like some lights I have seen.

Original LED is on a 14mm board, but the ID of the top of the pill is 15.5mm. Wouldn't be much trouble at all to file down a 16mm copper board to fit, but thickness would be an issue. You might could make up the difference with a thinner o-ring at the lens, the stock one is fatter than it needs to be to make a seal.

The driver can only be removed by pushing the LED wires down through the holes, and using a rod/wire from the top to press the driver out the bottom. Driver is a two-board setup and pressing it out is inevitably going to tweak the pins between the two at least a little, but it's a pretty basic setup and is no big deal to straighten or resolder the pins if one of the solder joints breaks. It's only held in by a white plastic retaining ring (on the battery side) and only gets a ground connection through sheer luck of how well it touches the step inside the pill. I would consider adding a separate ground wire soldered between the contact board and inside of the pill.

you're the king of common household tools extreme modding, comfy! I love the neat stuff you do with cheap tools.

Now that I have been looking a lot at drivers lately (thanks to you): is that D14D part a FET they are using on this driver, and can you beef it up with one of those 70NO2's to get more amps?

It's a little boost driver (it'll run the LED just fine from a single 1.2v NiMh), I don't think the boost driver's performance is dependent on the FET like a linear/DD one is.

I don't know for sure if that R200 is a limiting resistor, or a sense resistor. Either way, tweaking it should also tweak the output.

Disregard that part - I checked the o-ring and it's thinner than I thought, it's 1mm already. You could omit the o-ring and glue the lens into the bezel with clear silicone and get most of the room you need to fit a thicker MCPCB. Still might require a bit of sanding on the bottom of the copper board.

Spacer will end up somewhere around .200"-.210".

Plan is to bend the shelf in the pill upwards a bit, then press in the spacer to force it back down flat. And then rivet the whole mess together with the .250"OD copper tube through the middle.