What did you mod today?

I found this statement also in an old thread on the other forum. I can’t find real info why this color changing is happening. You know HA3 won’t work, but why?
And bummer since that would mean no shiny brass colored X5/X6 :frowning:

But wait, for me all this started with this thread:

And the specs of the Meteor clearly say it IS HAIII!
:-/

Hi,

Thanks. I think/hope they should be ok for all browsers now. I think that the SSL links is what might have messed it up.

True HAIII anodizing shouldn’t turn colour when baked. I don’t think there is any true HAIII that isn’t black. Time to question the specs. I’ve blasted real black HAIII with a blow torch with no change at all.

Well too bad, luckely we got the cheap ones! YAY!
Flashlight burning on a stove is very nice to do.
We did it again with the Ultrafire C8.
Tricky, 4 parts that all behave different because size and shape.

The color of the different parts is not a 100% match, we stopped a little too early, so the really brass that the tube of yesterdays had was not reached, however, this looks a lot like copper now.
Also hard to get in nice on picture
Before and after:

I’m in a modding streak I guess. I had promised an Oslon SSL80 4500K 96CRI build in my test thread, and this need was emphasized by Ouchyfoot in his Oslon try-out thread. So I thought let’s make it a nice triple. I had an Eagle Eye X2 spare that had been my bike-light until replaced by the BLF-A6, and one of the shorty tubes from ReManG’s effort fitted it so this has become a 18350 shorty:

Specs from front to rear: clear o-ring instead of green stock one, stock glass lens, Carclo narrow optic, 3xSSL80 4500K 96CRI, triple Noctigon, 20mm diameter x 8.7mm aluminium spacer, flattened brass pill, BLF-A6 driver with 680Ohm bleeder over C1, silicon wire bypassed driver spring, flatted copperwire made into a ring as extra spacer between pill and battery tube because the battery tube is just a bit too short for a 18350 battery, intl-outdoor Be-Cu short spring on tailboard, PD68 switchboard with white small Omten, PD68 dumb six-led lighted washer with 3x 22KOhm resistors and yellow/orange/red leds, translucent silicon tailcover.

I think it has become one of my cleanest mods, every problem was solved with a quality solution.

Measured without the tail it draws around 8 amps on a purple Efest 18350 and about the same with the black Keeppower IMR. 8 amps is a bit too much, I was aiming for 6, but the switch will lower the current somewhat, and the battery drainage will solve it as well :slight_smile:

The turbo output at start was 860 djozz-lumen, 725 after 30 seconds. Moon is 0.2 lumen.
Some efficiency numbers. At turbo the efficiency is a mere 26 lumen/W. Even budget cheapies (from the time when they were still using Cree’s btw) did 40 lm/W. It is no wonder, the leds at 2,7A are already on the flat bit at max of the output curve, SSL80 leds have small 1x1mm dies, and you can not make 96CRI for free. At low currents it is much better: level3 is 32 lumen with 56 lm/W, level 4 is 101 lumen with 50 kumen/W.

The tint/colour reproduction is outstanding, less rosy as the Nichia 219A 4500K 92CRI with which I just compared it, but more plain white, I like it even better.

And the tail-illumination is wonderful, a bit less bright than last mod which is much better at night, more an indicator than a bright beacon. The moon mode draws combined 9.6mA because of the bleeder resistor, this limits the moon setting to about 3 days. When off, the tail leds on a fresh battery draw 0.3 mA, assuming that the current lowers a bit when the voltage gets lower, it will drain the battery in about 4 months.

looks like you built a campfire under the tail, nice!

Now if TK could get those to flicker….

That’s some unique looking C8 you’ve made there :laughing:

Just for laughter i did tested this “baking” treatment on a blue convoy s2+ middle piece that i had left from a 18350 conversion

It started from a blue to a weird color that… it had just a little blue but mostly gray

Then few minutes later it started to shift colours again, this time towards golden tint, and for some reason i like it

And some before/after

I might do this to the rest of the flashlight, just to make it a bit different, because why not :slight_smile:

Nice mod Jos!

Bobbymk, that is the best color, we should have kept the C8 on the flames a little longer.

You know this YouTube channel Simple cooking?
He uses a song, simple cooking as lyrics, my son and me are running around singing “flashlight cooking” :smiley:

My wife asked to do hers as well.

And an yellow golden tube we just left on to see where it would stop, a shiny grey.

Next up a SRK :slight_smile:

Baking ano goes back a bit here:

With the “Orange Dry” thread here:

…and promptly followed up by the “Dry Orange” thread here:

I’ve baked a couple of my lights but don’t really prefer the change. I have used it to separate lights when I have more than one host of the same style, and selectively bake a bezel to make one stand out from the other.

Well I like it, lots of fun.
On the gasflames it is really fast as well

The SRK turned out shiny silver with an extremely light golden tint in the head, very beautifull but very hard to make a pic from.

We have tow mere identical zoomies, 1 is my wifes EDC, she loves it and will not part with it, even though it is not a high quality.
So we baked the second one, t turned out very bright light color, like platinum.

And in the process of doing all the rest my wife liked the new olors and asked us to do hers as well.
We cut off the heat a little sooner to keep it a tad goldenly like.

Here ou go
left the original looks.
middle the first one changed
right the EDC of my wife, she is very content with it.

The images are still not working for me. I tried Chrome and IE.

Great mod djozz. I don’t know why you were worried about getting a weird beam from the Carlco optic. 96 CRI with negligible yellow or rosy tint is getting closer to real sunlight all the time.
The illuminated tail cap modding is still over my head. I need a dedicated “how to” instruction thread with with clear detailed pictures.

Have you read the tailcap thread OP in the month or two? I tried to consolidate most of the basic knowledge there. If you would like some more info added, I can take more pictures or something, just let me know. I just don’t want the OP to get too cluttered. There are a million different options now, and sometimes it works best if you post what light you want to put it in and people can chime in with tips/suggestions

I started reading the thread, but the pictures were blurry and I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Then the discussion favours electronically minded people who already understand what going on. I’m a “see spot run” guy when it comes to the technical parts. I need simple instructions with clear easy to follow pictures. I catch on fast, but a concise uncluttered primer deploying the KISS methodology is needed for my aging brain to understand.

Ouchyfoot, I have been thinking about doing a build thread on the dumb tailcap boards, with pics or videos. Still waiting on parts… May give it a go soon.

I’ll be watching for it. Thanks from me and others.

Built up a C8 XP-G2. Baked a M2

This has by far been the most involved mod I’ve ever done. I spent 5 or 6 hours last night tweaking, test fitting, tweaking, test fitting, filing, and more test fitting but I think I am finally done with the bulk of the tough stuff. I got the driver all set up and potted (after quadruple checking everything was working). Switch is set in place and the leads are ready to be attached to that beautiful MTG2 board. I’m just waiting for the thermal glue to thoroughly set up before making the (hopefully) final 2 solder joints.

Nice. I’ve never even attempted a mag build because it just seemed like so much work! So kudos.

I spent part of my evening in Eagle designing 14mm single-sided FET+1 board, before I realized wight had already done basically the same thing. Doh! I will say I like mine better though haha

A short mod, but one that I wanted to do for a long time already: replacing the led of a AAA cheapy (brand-less, from Fasttech, but it is exactly the same build as the Singfire/BLF 348) with a ‘led4power’ 365nm led and replace the lens with a 10mm ZWB2 UV-pass filter. I thought it would be great for banknotes, but it is actually too bright for that without protecting glasses, unless it is for checking for a brief moment. It is not as innocent as it looks…