What did you mod today?

Nice mod Andi. If I had time I’d love to have a play with the XHP35.

I still hope to get there too but I fear, since I can only start off on saturday, that I will not be able to get to south Germany in time (and rush back to Amsterdam on sunday)

I made a little heat sink today for a friend…

It’s 71.35mm across the top. :slight_smile:

Very clean work there Dale.

Thank you sir. Adding 11 ounces of heat sink to the TR-J20. :wink:

Today i got bored so i decided to do some modding on my ultrafire sk98, this is a flashlight that i bought few years ago when i didn’t know anything about flashlights but at the time for me it was very good and i loved it, until i later i discovered that is sucks compared to a lot other flashlights :slight_smile:

My first mod attempts were done on this flashlight and they did not came out very successful, i managed to destroy the driver and the dedomed first gen XML T6 in one go, shorting an li-ion it is a bad thing to do :slight_smile:

Now i decided to actually revive this thing, so here is what i did :slight_smile:

First i chopped some alu. star so i can fill that hole in the pill, not the best work in the world but sure it is better than stock.



Next was the LED, XP-G2 S2, new gen, reflowed on noctigon 20mm pcb, and dedomed ofc :slight_smile:

After the LED it was time for the driver, after destroying the stock drier i installed qlite rev.A with 3 chips removed, now i soldered back one 7135 chip and reused the same driver with changed LED wires.

After doing all this it was time for the tail cap and switch assembly, it was very bad and damaged from using protected NCR B so it was time to fix it.

Before

After



And after all this the flashlight was completed, i started this without any expectations and now after all things i done i kinda like the result, it is no match for some other mods here but i think it deserved new life.

Some numbers:
2A at the emitter for a total of 29600cd @ 1m or 344 meters of trow :slight_smile:


Finally had time to finish S2+ triple XPG3, I used new X6-X5 driver from BG and got some strange behaviour, Strange behaviour, according to product page there should be 6 modes, I “click” thru them in ascending order and get to 6th, sometimes 5th mode it just blinks (split of a second) like it entered that mode but then immediately switches to first, lowest mode, same thing happens when I go reverse, medium press to go from lowest mode to highest.

BLF X6 X5/Astrolux S2 S3 SS SC Flashlight Driver

Any thoughts about it?

It sounds like you may have gotten the Astrolux A6 driver.

Astrolux A6 driver

Try programming it using the A6 UI and see what happen.

Yeah! :+1: way to go BobbyMK!
Our motto is “we never give up, even if it kills us”…or takes a year or so to get around to it. Mod fails just eat away at your craw until you overcome them.

Nice job on the aluminum pill insert.

What exactly happens I don’t know, but I had that and it went away with a good highdrain battery.

Using a protected battery can sometimes cause misbehave like you have, so if you are using one i suggest to try it with unprotected high drain battery.

Thanks, Ouchyfoot.

I actually wanted to chop a noctigon XM board but then again i didn’t wanted to destroy it for this light, but now if i would knew that it will work this good i would probably fitted the noctigon :slight_smile:

Make sure you have solid ground contacts, and a high drain cell. The ATTiny25 is sensitive to slight changes in current and exhibits this drop-out behavior if everything isn’t just right.

O yeah, I forgot to mention, I tried Panasonic 18650PF, Samsung 30Q, Samsung 25R, happens no matter the cell.
I have LG G2 cells that I didn’t try but somehow I doubt it will make a difference.

P.S. I also had it assembled with older Astrolux S1 A17DD-L FET+1 and it worked just fine…

My version of the Lii-100 mod:

Very happy with the clean end result :+1:

That’s a very good looking mod, it looks like it was made that way. I did the same mod and it don’t look like that at all :weary:

Very nice work :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:

That is one neat clean cut out for the volt meter.

You did a cleaner cut than the stock ones for USB ports

I do hereby put forth my nomination for zipelgas to modify a group buy set of this battery charger with voltage monitor. Do I hear a second? :smiley:

I had the same behavior on a triple 219C with the same banggood driver you had (used the Kronos X6 driver).

I’m not an expert, but what I saw was that too many amps caused it to shut off in the highest modes. The low vf of the 219C means that it’ll suck up lots of amps. I think I read that XP-G3s also have a low vf. If I used a regular NCRB, I could go to the high mode no problem. High drain cells just made it blink and shut off. Strobe mode wouldn’t work either.

I swapped it to an A6 driver, and it works fine.

I reused the driver with a triple XP-L and it just barely is under the amp threshold to cause the high mode to function. If I try to take a tail reading with my clamp meter, high mode doesn’t work because the low resistance of wire. But high mode works with the tailcap due to the added resistance. I think 14+ amps causes that banggood X5/X6 driver to act funky.

RMM said his driver wouldn’t have that problem due to better parts and layout.

I’ve been working on a mod for a few days and it seems that it can’t decide wether it’s a success or a fail. Is it possible for a flashlight to contract the ZiK virus and shrink its brain?

It all started out to be an RGBA using a board with four Luxeon Z. Unfortunately, the board that came with the four coloured emitters was square, so I had to grind it to fit a Convoy S2+.
Ahhh. There goes that stupid ouchyfoot again, always trying to fit a square board into a round hole.

I figured I’d grind and drill blank board, and then reflow the emitters from one board to the other.

I won’t do that again!

These little Luxeon Zs only like to be mounted once, at least on a multi board. I’ve done these boards before using a new board and new emitters with solder paste and everything snaps nicely into place. Taking them off one board and transferring them to another is a horror. They only have two pads with a hair between them, that goes for the board as well. Removing them, some pads retain solder, some come up bare, so more paste must be used.
The old solder doesn’t want to flow, and excess just spreads to fill the gaps between the pads, or attaches itself onto the neighboring emitter. Trying to shift them around just makes matters worse. The next thing you know, all four emitters are attached to each other all cockeyed. The more you work to fix it, the worse it gets. Finally the emitter pads are all clarted up with solder in one big shorted mass. Not to mention the ones that get tipped ove into the hot solder.
After an hour of work and six ruined emitters I said “to hell with this”. I went from RGBA to RGBR/O to RGBW.

Three deep breaths. I heated the board for the hundredth time and wiped off all the solder with a damp Brillo pad. Fresh start. Four new emitters. RGBW. All working.

One of the main reasons I wanted to build this light was to test that waffled optic. One of the main faults with multi die emitters that work independently in a reflector light is that because they are all offset, the beam profile looks like a donut with a bight out of one side. I was hoping this type of optic would even that profile out, and it does. I just thought I’d mention that now in case I lose my train of thought with my woebegone whining.

Standard RGBW driver. I didn’t bother changing the wires because it’ll only be driving one emitter at a time @ 700mA

I sanded and glued down a plastic ring to keep the optic centered.

Sure, it looks sweet, but there’s something wrong with its brain and I can’t figure it out.
((more whining to come after these messages)

Now the problem is that it cycles through all the modes W-R-G-B-police strobes etc just fine. Once, sometimes twice. The next time it skips the strobes and goes to white. Then it goes from white to red to white, sometimes a green shows up, the back to white then only white.

If I set it down for five minutes it works fine, then gets all mixed up again until I only get white. I’ve resoldered all the wires. (Cheap melting Chinese wire), beefed up the ground, but nothing works. It’s sporadic.