Well, this one was fighting me all the way trough the building process and it took almost two months to finish this project. Problems with driver, LED’s, focusing and almost anything that I laid my hands on. Never the less, when I look back, it was fun to customize this zoomie to my specs. Everything that was done is probably unnecessary and overkill but what can I do? I like my flashlights highly customized and built to my imaginary standards.
Few words about the problems that had to be solved:
- Driver problem - I accidentally cut trace when removing it from the pill. If interested, there is more info in this thread - MTN FET driver thermal step down issue? - Problem Resolved
- LED’s - well known problem with new XP-G2 S4 2B, I never managed to get the old one. I have thrown away exactly three new XP-G2 S4 ordered from IOS, and six or seven XP-G2 S2 ordered from FT and Kaidomain all due to ugly color when dedomed, high VF and low throw in general. Finally I managed to pick a few “good ones” from Kaidomain (Triples in series on aluminum star) that showed good results.
- Focusing - It was very hard to focus properly due to the changed pill dimensions (height of the pill). It was mainly trial and error kind of thing.
Let’s start!
1. Brinyte B158
2. Disassembled.
3. I don’t like forward clickie switches. Plan is to swap it with omten reverse clickie. It is going to be mounted on a new contact board.
4. Made a groove in the contact board to accommodate 20 AWG wire. Due to the height differences, new omten switch is raised by few millimeters with epoxy putty.
5. 20 AWG wire threaded trough the grove and spring.
6. Preparing for spring and brass lid bypass.
7. Copper top added. Just a small amount of solder is needed to finish the bypass.
8. Switch mode done. Cleaned and polished.
9. Pill is cut. There is no turning back now.
10. Copper cylinders cut and trimmed to fit inside the brass cylinder.
11. Tight fit.
12. Soldered. Time to do some cleaning.
13. Copper brass ring cleaned and polished. Preparing the base, three 1 millimeter copper circles soldered together.
14. Ring and base joined.
15. Another look.
16. Pill cut and trimmed to fit inside the body. Maxtoch 32mm was almost the perfect fit. No problem there.
17. Perfect fit for both pill and MCPCB.
18. Repaired FET driver, finished hybrid pill and dedomed XP-G2 S2 1A led.
19. Preparing the 20 AWG wires. They are going to be connected to small copper plates and everything should stay below the led.
20. Wires soldered.
21. Top view.
22. Bottom view.
23. Assembly day. MCPCB is mat painted with heat resistant paint (for ovens). MCPCB is going to be tightened with 2mm screws.
24. Polished copper pill in its place.
25. Almost done…
26. All wired.
27. Arctic MX-4 thermal paste is added and MCPCB is bolted down.
28. All done!
Also did some measurements:
XP-G2 S2 1A dedomed is pushed at 4.95A on high so it is a probably from some older batch with low VF.
270 Kcd at 5.3 meters after 30 sec.
Not to bad, I’m happy.
If you like my mod please comment. I’ll gladly answer any question.
Cheers!