Modifying the FandyFire Rook, what to do with this driver? *Pic Heavy*

Seemed like some curses were in order and, well, Perry get’s cursed every day and seemed like a likely candidate. :wink:

I went to a great deal of trouble to get the reflector bored out neatly and smoothly, finish sanding the cut with 600 grit sandpaper til it was velvety smooth. And yet, putting it all together the silicone on top of the emitter still got cut. Luminus surrounds the die with that oddly shaped X type “window frame” and then put’s the silicone dome inside it with flanges of silicone that cover the frame on top. Having the reflector seat on top of this frame cuts the silicone off and makes little bits and pieces that stick and don’t want to come out. The lens itself appeared pretty doggone clean after the cutting ( I used a new carbide bit in the Proxxon ) but at this level of magnification it shows much more “stuff” in there than I realized.

Still thinking about doing a light orange peel effect to smooth the beam profile but as I really like the quality of the reflector it makes me hesitate to do so. Can’t go back from something like that and there’s no readily available reflectors to replace this one.

Nice mod. I may have to copy you. Yeah, you're right, the Rook has terrible parasitic drain.

Requested pics, and then some…

The Rook doesn’t have parasitic drain anymore, with the new driver in it. :wink: And now it’s even got a bit more heat sinking, for what it’s worth…

The gap between the added heat sink and the walls of the head isn’t as big as it appears. The space measures 1.03” and the rod I cut that off of is 1”. I know, I know, I meant to fill the void with thermal adhesive but got in too much of a hurry, now the light is put back together and I’m not sure I can get the driver/contact board back out. I’d been using a screwdriver to punch it out through the switch wiring holes in the driver shelf, but now there’s not much of a hole there, as it’s covered by the aluminum heat sink. And the sink itself is strongly glued in with thermal adhesive. But it does help, on high it takes about 20 seconds longer to feel the heat coming into the head. :slight_smile: Lot of work for a 20 second extension, no? lol

I was playing around with the Rook some more, looking at the artifacts in the beam profile, and decided to frost the reflector. I found that I still had some reflective clear Krylon from a previous project so I used it on this. Might have gotten a bit carried away, meant to have less of a frost effect but oh well, it is what it is.

It still has a hot spot but the artifacts are gone, the beam profile is very pleasing now and it’s much more of a flooder. I’ll have to take lightbox readings again and get some beamshots…the cells are on the charger.

I got beamshots of the Rook as well as the C8 that is equally equipped. Since they are the only 2 SST-90 emitter lights I have, and they're both running the DD FET driver, they are a head on comparison. Because I took the frosting of the Rooks reflector a bit too far, the Rook no longer has as intense a hot spot and the throw suffers for that, as seen here.

The Rook is the base shot, mouseover for the C8.

Looks like maybe I get to see if this paint will come off and start over... don't know.

Oh Goody! I get to polish the reflector! Which means that de-natured alcohol didn’t take the reflective paint off, so now it’s ugly, of course. Beam profile isn’t so bad, but it’s ugly to look at the reflector. So I’ll polish it. :slight_smile: Start over.

They look neutral white, is that what they look like in person? Do you know the tint or output bin? Where did you get them? I think I need a SST-90 light ASAP.

I have a few extra of those 10mm TIR reflectors if you need one

hmm… I wonder if the rook and the sky-ray S2 are lego-able. It looks at first glance the might be. A little battery flexibility is always nice…

I got em from Kai domain for $14 ea. bare, stuck em on Noctigon MT-G2 stars.

I got all the paint off from last nights venture. Also got all the silver reflective surface off. :stuck_out_tongue: Now it’s a gold reflector. No kidding, gold as it can be…the brass plating to allow the vapor discharge coating to stick. :wink: Actually looks pretty cool just like this, but of course I won’t stop here. I will, however, get some lightbox readings on what it’s doing when in this state and I took a photo… will share that later when I get it uploaded.

War Hawk, this things got a ~35mm x 35mm reflector in it, the little 10mm TIR wouldn’t work at all. But thanks! :slight_smile: I actually do have some TIR optics, hmmmm… think I’ll just polish this aluminum one, it’s nice and heavy, will add heat sinking to the equation.

Always wondered what reflector looks like down to the brass under layer. Hope you post a pic eventually.

I have a 35mmØx16.4mm LEDIL single TIR on the way, whenever it gets here you can have it if your interested, I went a different route. Another cool option would be a fresnel but the guy that sells them is out of 38’s right now.

I’m curious to see the reflector now.

I think the reflector and it’s size is one of the things that appealed to me about the Rook. And it’s miniature SkyRay King look.

Trying to take the frosting off, well it wasn’t working. Trying to polish it off, left the brass?? base layer which looked like this…

Looked neat, but robbed too much of the output.

So, I got my stubborn hat on and petitioned Congress and in the end, prevailed. Let me say though that the brass or whatever it is DID NOT WANT to be removed! As it turns out, this is probably a good thing because I had to up my game on it to accomplish what I wanted. When they turned the reflector there were fine circumferential lines left under the plating…and these tend to make rings in the beam as they are opposed to the path of light. So I hit the darn thing with 320 grit in a top to bottom approach and cut out all the fine circumferential marks. By the time I was done sanding and polishing, it’s even better than it was to begin with! :slight_smile: A ring of the brass or whatever remains at the very base, that small portion of the flat that’s left after I opened it up for the big SST-90.

That little “frosting” experiment got kinda costly in time and effort! :wink:

Whoa!, that is fantastic. and that brass ring looks fricken cool.

So now that is bare aluminum, right? It will start oxidizing amost immediately. How will you seal it? Car wax maybe?

That looks great, what grit paper did you go up to and then what type of polish? I have a light I need to do that with.

I agree the brass ring at the base looks sweet.

It is indeed “bare” aluminum, except for the bare part. The polish is wax based so it is sealed even before it get’s to a full finish. I took short cuts, from 320 to 1000 grit under running water. then Mother’s Billet Aluminum polish and a final seal of Renaissance Wax.

What are the reflector dimensions?

Nice!

Without taking it back out of the light, it appears to be “square” at 35mm x 35mm.

I don’t have any way to mount such a thing as a reflector to spin it up, so all this was done strictly by hand. Left hand held the reflector, right hand sanded and polished. Only took a few hours…

Cutting the emitter opening larger I freehanded the reflector while holding the Proxxon rotary in the other hand, eyeballing the dimensions. Worked out pretty well if I do say so myself. :wink:

Even though the Noctigon is thinner than the 2mm aluminum star that was in the light from the factory, the Luminus emitter is very thick and takes up the difference plus a half mm. So the bezel doesn’t screw on all the way, with the reflector sitting on top of the window pane around the emitter. (bottom of star to centering ring shelf for the reflector measured out at 2.5mm, bottom of the Noctigon to the top of the window pane on the SST-90 is 3mm) It’s all good, because this allows good firm pressure on the Noctigon/Luminus to hold it snugly against the shelf and keep the thermal paste a very thin layer.