What did you mod today?

Ideally you are very right. :slight_smile:
In practice, the BLF-A6 driver is what I had and it does the job, there’s not many stock drivers that have a low mode as low as 16mA/3lumen. If there’s a buck driver for single li-ion cells out there that have that nice low mode I’m highly interested :slight_smile: . NiMh batteries will not do it either because whatever the efficiency of the system, for runtime (the light should last for the two weeks camping trip next week) there’s no better option than a high capacity 18650 battery.

technically a repair.
an ancient dorcy 1aaa.
put in one of those 5mm high cri.
it must have a million hours on it.dim sick blue.nearly useless till now.
neighbors kid has had it 10 years.
its the flashlight equivalent of linus’s blanket.
downs syndrome kid.

Okay, I did a write-up for my light saber mod. It’s on another forum though.

Short version: removed the obnoxious stock switch (was an “outie” so I kept bumping it by accident), replaced it with a better one (recessed, has a light inside), and added a charge/kill port so I won’t have to open the hilt unless something inside breaks. And I did a pretty messy job of it all, but it works and the mess is safely hidden inside. :slight_smile:

A large part of the reason for this mod is that the “SaberCore 2” driver board has ridiculously high power draw in standby mode, shown here after turning the blade on then off again:

Most of that 200mA seems to burn off as heat in one chip, which stays too hot to touch unless power is physically disconnected:

I hope the heat won’t be a problem, but I’ve already heard from one person whose driver refuses to boot unless they blow on the hot chip to cool it off. Their thread got removed from the forum by an admin though, which honestly gives me the chills because it’s kind of an important thing to know. I should probably get some thermal transfer cubes and stick one between the hot chip and the aluminum host.

A few pics:

Not actually the layout I followed, but close enough. All I changed was tapping the switch light off the driver’s power source instead of the blade LED. Here’s the actual layout I used:

I accidentally wired this wrong and didn’t realize it until everything was assembled enough to test. Oops. Much swearing ensued, since it’s a huge pain to move a wire after everything is all soldered together.

The switch had a few posts to connect too… and it had to be done with part of the hilt already in place.

On the driver, I only needed to access PWR+, PWR~~, and BAT~~.

Taking out the kill key causes power to be connected, as indicated by the lighted switch: (this switch uses 20ma … super-high current for an accent LED, considering the Kronos X6 tailcap is almost as bright at 0.5mA)

Magic trick and sanity check.

I made a fake battery so I won’t have to remove the real one. Every time I open the hilt, it risks damaging the internals.

But in the end, it works and all is well.

I can finally turn it completely off by putting a little plastic plug in the charge port. And soon I should have some 3D-printed plugs which are low enough profile to leave in during use, and merely need to be rotated to connect or disconnect power. :slight_smile:

It may be just a glorified green flashlight stick, but it’s really fun to play with.

That is ridiculous and so very awesome TK. :open_mouth:

Light sabers were cool in 1977.

In 2016, they're...

still freakin' sweet!

After 2 hours at 250°C, I’ve still not reached a good color, maybe I’ll strip the ano with baking soda to see how it turns…

Brushed steel on the left, polished Ti on the right

Warning: don’t do this (when the wife is) at home. :smiling_imp:

Well, considering the fact that the first time she met me I was using the dishwasher to clean my 125cc carburetor…putting a flashlight in the oven isn’t really annoying for her

Back on April 30th I modified my then brand new Trustfire TR-J20 with 3 of the 9V MT-G2’s, used 35mm Illuminations Machines reflectors and 3 Trustfire 32650’s with 6000mAh and was seeing 13,500 lumens but it would heat up pretty good.

So today I decided to make a heat sink for it and rebuild it…


I decided to add another emitter and make it a quad, using the Ledil Minnie reflector… which is shorter. So I also cut an 8mm thick 78.9mm diameter spacer to sit on top of the emitter shelf (glued it in with Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive) and then I used the same adhesive to affix 4 Maxtoch 26mm copper mcpcb’s with 9V MT-G2s on em.

The filled head is now ready to take the heat from 4 MT-G2s and the light weighs in at 3.5 Lbs with no cells in the tube. :slight_smile:

I made an “X” out of copper sheet to solder the positive pads on the mcpcbs to, then soldered an 18 ga lead to the X for power. A longer 18 ga negative lead makes the rounds and is soldered to the negative leads at each stop. :slight_smile:

It was doing a bit over 12,000 lumens with the cells low, they’re on the charger now. I was hoping for 15,000 but don’t know if I’ll get it with that long negative lead, it’s bright though, for sure!

Nice one Dale.

This is kind of a test to see if can post pics from imgur on my phone.

I sometimes hold this little light in my mouth so I cut the end flat and placed a rubber sleeve over it so I don’t grind my teeth.

https://imgur.com/a/vabTR

I don’t have specific emitter voltage from up top, but a tail reading of 22A is coming off the 3 cells, so is that up there in the 268 watt territory? I know the 9V MT-G2 can do a forward voltage up over 11V when pushed hard but I haven’t opened it back up to get top side readings.

The heat sink with thermal paste on it works beautifully, transferring heat all the way down to the battery tube. It takes a little while for the entire head to heat up, but it heats up pretty evenly, something it didn’t do in stock form. They had the lower head section (above the driver) open, empty, nothing but air, and all along that area is heavily finned on the outside. Filling that void with aluminum really makes use of those fins, and with plenty of heat being made it’s a necessary evil.

Can’t believe the 3.5 Lb weight, I didn’t put any copper in this one (save for the 4 MaxToch copper mcpcb’s)

268w is up there. Depends on how much voltage droop you’re getting under load. Still, it’s big Power for 3 cells :crown:

I discovered that my original inside-the-spring 20ga wire bypass on the switch as broken so I did a through board bypass with 18ga wire by modifying the large switch and it’s housing to let the fat wire fit into the tail cap assembly.

Now, with freshly charged Trustfire 32650’s I’m seeing 14,628 lumens out the front. I’m going to have to call that success, being as how it’s a little more than 10,000 lumens more than the stock light was making with it’s 12 XM-L emitters. :wink:

That is a great flashlight, Dale! It must have been tough for you not to put tons of copper in it, even to the point that I like it now :heart_eyes: :stuck_out_tongue: :wink:

From me not a mod, but an observation. My first triple build, back in 2013 was a Convoy S5 with Nichia 219A 4500K high CRI’s on a Illumination Supply triple non-DTP board (Noctigon triple DTP boards were not there yet) and a Qlite driver with 4 extra chips (there were no BLF developed FET-drivers). It is still my most used light, I use it attached to a small stand to illuminate things all the time, for hobby and photography, but also on trips it goes in my luggage. But it is never been mis-treated or anything. It is also one of two triples that I made without glass lens to protect the optic. And look at it now, scrathed, bended and cracked (still works fine though), I’m glad that all my later triples have glass lenses, to protect the optic from bending and scratching, it keeps the light more waterproof too.

Thanks Jos, can you imagine how heavy it would have been with a 3” Copper heat sink? OMG! lol

I “downgraded ” my Convpy L6 from :


XHP70 1C shaved dome
To :

XHP50 J4 5B

I don’t have any means of measuring Lumens or Lux, but to my eye the spot looks more intense.

Nice work Khas, the spot does indeed look more intense and defined. Cool! :slight_smile:

I just got through messing around with an old 3D MagLite that I’d modded before. I put a press fit copper heat sink in the top of the battery tube quite a while back with a COB on it. Using 3 26650’s to drive it from a Zener modified 7 mode driver the COB didn’ t like level 7 and would go blue very quickly. The tint was warmer than I like anyway, so today I pulled the COB and put 3 XP-L HI on the big copper sink, wired in series to run the 3 big cells. I used a Ledil Laila 50mm triple optic, kind of a bugger getting everything lined up but the beam profile looks nice so I’ll take it. 4400 lumens out the front. :slight_smile:

Not a flashlight but LED light none the less.

Made some bayonet bulbs out of some T10 (194). Cant buy the Warm White tint I wanted in that BA9s base so I made some. 8X 5730 SMDs 12V DC in WW.

Will be City lights inside the European spec headlights in my 1983 VW Jetta. Oh, the ’68 bus will get a pair too.

Interesting. And what part did you modify?

Isn't it obvious?

Today, PhilipSmith modified the concept of this thread to SPAM a Tank007 photo.