What did you mod today?

I should clarify, I already planned on running HG2 cells in this light. They fit fine with the “long” tube and driver spring in place.

I only mentioned the length issue as a caveat to others who may attempt my “bass-ackwards” driver configuration. :laughing:

19 mm here as well, but did not have any issues fitting 17 mm drivers.

Also managed to get rid of the beam rings and get decent focus (but not centering), on the one refitted with an XP-L Hi. Used a 0.9 mm gasket meant for an XM emitter with a 7 mm aperture reflector. (Think these are the ones: https://www.fasttech.com/products/1616/10001923/1581402 )

Geesh! That defined hot spot is what I LOVE about the D80! Nice shot!

Unreal. I have 5 drivers here that are still completely intact (I rob resistors and brass buttons and stuff then throw em away) only 2 of these 5 are of similar size.

1 is 16.9mm
1 is 17.5mm
1 is 17.7mm
1 is 17.8mm
1 is 18.8mm and this one I absolutely know is from a newer BLF SE because I marked it when I took it out of blueb8llz light.

I never paid attention to that before! Crazy.

Notice the calipers…

I’m thinking that Dale, DEL, and I have BLF D80s with slightly different dimensions in the heads.

Both of my samples from mid-March look like this:

17mm driver - 16.75mm width under shelf = 0.25mm total overlap

Divide 0.25mm by two, and a 17mm driver would have a ring of 0.125mm overlap with the shelf in my lights.

Today I built myself a Jax C8 mini with LD-2D 6Volt driver, XHP50 and two 18350s. It took some improvisation to get the 20mm driver with 13mm height into the 17mm pill with 6mm deep cavern! And I still had to get the two 18650s inside.
Finally everything is inside, the torch works and it pulls 2.6 Amperes :slight_smile:

Funny little thing burns a hole into the night…

I use a steel pair in the workshop, but keep one of these at my desk.
So much safer to measure lithium cells with :laughing:

To be honest my replacement drivers overlap the shelf my very little, but I do not see them falling in. For electrical contact, the overlap with the retaining ring is important, and that is more generous.

Uh oh, I’m busted! :laughing:

To my credit, I had enough forethought to NOT measure the HG2’s length with them! :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll get a set with plastic jaws for my electronics toolkit. Thank you both for the safety reminder.

I was afraid that with such little overlap, the pressure from the cell might punch the driver into the recess under the shelf.

I will try your method with the other D80 and another 17mm driver and report back.

Spent a solid day doing some small stuff with the bulk focused on a D01 mod. Reinforced positive contact ring, bypassed springs and traces, mounted a FET driver onto the stock driver, sanded the copper heatsink and the maxtoch mcpcb to 1500. All that is left is to solder the leads to the mcpcb and the switch wires to the driver.

Speaking of switch wires… Is there a particular orientation to connect them to the sides of the OTC on the FET driver or does it not matter?

Great video, X3, I enjoyed that very much!

You could do with a simple led-tester, saves you some time :wink: I use this one, it even works with 3 leds in series because it is powered by a 9V alkaline. It comes with small alligator clips that are very handy, I just swapped the momentary switch for a small clicky switch to be able to use both hands.

Thank you for the kind word, I saw the tester in one of your videos and it seems prctical.
I was too confident in my skills so I waste some time but eh, that’s how you learn things !
The second time I checked them with my DMM, one by one and everything was ok.
I guess one solder joint was not good because orientation were the same before/after…

Bored the driver bay of a Convoy L2 out to take a 22mm MtnMax Buck driver, threaded the bay and made a new threaded brass retaining ring, de-domed an XP-G2 S2 0D emitter on a 20mm Noctigon and used Simon’s new XP centering ring. With a 26650-18650 adapter and 2 Efest 18350’s it makes 2.53A at the tail (about 5A to the emitter) for 306.5Kcd and 1107.25M throw. Nice! :slight_smile:

JB welded a side switch to a Novatac Special Ops. 219c dedomed, Q-lite star firmware driver.

Gotta love JB Weld. The Stick formulations, especially Water Weld, are fast set up and I love the jelly-roll layout. Slice off a piece, knead it till it’s mixed and plug-n-play. A few minutes later you can drill and tap it. :slight_smile: It’s white though, sometimes that matters. I haven’t tried a Sharpie on it, hmmmm….

Had a Sunwayman C10R laying around. Purchased it a few weeks ago from Illumn on clearance. Sunwayman used a single head for many different lights including the 1x18650 C20C. The C10R is the 1xCR123 version. Nice shape, crappy output due to its low power driver and old cool white XML1 LED.

I wanted to turn this light into a small triple-XPL HI light. However .... 1x16340 just isn't enough power for me. I wanted more! I removed the guts of the light and examined the available internal space. I ended up performing the following mods:

  • Mounted a new internal momentary switch in the button well. One side of the switch is connected to the head with conductive epoxy. The other side is soldered to a small brass strip that passes through the LED platform to a small wire and then to the driver.
  • Added a 17mm BLF17DD FET driver with moppydrv momentary firmware from MtnElectronics.
  • Mounted the driver on top of the LED platform where the LED star used to sit. The driver is not glued in place, but is instead held down via tension fit with a surrounding spring-loaded copper strip. A piece of a spring is soldered to the outside of this strip and presses into a small spot in the head where I ground off the anodizing. The strip then presses the side of the driver for negative connection.
  • Added a 20mm triple Noctigon with 3xtriple XPL HI (2x5000K and 1x4000K). The star sits on top of the spring loaded copper strip.
  • Added a Carclo 10507 optic.
  • I soldered a small copper disk to a short piece of wire passed through a small hole in the center of the emitter platform. This wire is then soldered to the positive battery terminal on the driver. When the light is assembled this wire is folded up under the driver.
  • I used arctic alumina to pot the LED positive and negative connections on the driver.

Essentially the driver, emitters and optic all sit where the original star and reflector used to sit. The space where the original driver sat is completely empty. The new switch is very flat so a longer battery slides below it. The light now fits an Efest IMR 18500 cell.

Powered it up and it works! Took a couple tries to figure out the best way to get positive and negative connections. Output is VERY high. At a guess maybe 2500 lumens with a beautiful neutral tint. Not bad for a light that in its stock configuration was rated by the manufacturer at 190 lumens.

However, this light has pretty limited heatsinking. The LED is not mounted on a star and I didn't use thermal grease where the sides of the star meet the head. I figure if it becomes a problem I'll notice when the star desolders itself. If that happens I'll add the thermal grease and learn to live with the hotter head.

sounds good, but that mod screams pictures, firelight2 !
(but I do not always take pictures either…)

I found that an Olight S10 clip perfectly fits a Thorfire TG06 for a deep pocket carry :slight_smile:

Graphitized some more small lights in the collection