What did you mod today?

XP-G3’d my Lumintop Tool. Mounted on a 11mm copper sink pad with a little bit of MX4 for thermal compound. Just love it now. Does seem brighter and nicer tint then what came with the Tool.
Going to use the original xp-g2 from the Tool mount it on copper and use it to make a P60 @ 2.28 AMPs

My first flashlight mod in 3 years so I thought i’d start with working on my smallest lights. Seems my soldering has improved lol

Had to Trim the Plastic centring ring on the sides because they covered the wire pads

Stove in the background is my official new reflowing station LOL

I modified a piece of Gr 2 Ti into a Skunk beacon Saturday. :wink:

(tempting to leave it at that for curiosity sakes
)

Working on an upgrade to a Ti flashlight I built recently I was removing the large piles of Ti cuttings and placing them behind me. The Ti has a way of staying in one piece throughout the cut, sometimes going below the cutting insert and sometimes curling around and piling on top of it. Luckily I had dumped my catch box and only had a small amount of shavings in it, as some of the Grade 2 Commercially Pure Titanium stacked up on the cutting tool and caught on fire. I knocked it off the work piece and it fell into the box below, only to catch it’s contents on fire as well! My cutting oils and a gallon of WD-40 were right there, so the box had to be removed
 singed the hair of my hand as the flames rose to about 2’ tall with the new ti cuttings catching fire but I got it out the door onto gravel where it could safely burn itself out. Moments later, flames still going and smoke drifting, I’ll be danged if a skunk didn’t walk right past the box and come into my shop! It totally ignored me (must be related to my wife), wandered back behind me towards the front door. I had no choice but to vacate.

I guess there were some copper cuttings in the box as well, the flames got low and the box burned away, leaving some small orange flames with a brilliant emerald green flame mixed among it. Beautiful really! :slight_smile:

Crazy stuff. I wasn’t even using oil or cutting fluid at the time so it was pure titanium overheating and catching on fire. Who knew? :stuck_out_tongue:

How remiss of me, can at least show the finished light even without pics of the fire or the skunk, right? lol

You should get a 12mm fet from Mtn to stick in it. It’ll definitely be brighter then.

Wow Dale, that sounds like a lucky escape! I’m glad you’re alright (and the house and your indifferent wife, don’t tell her about this or she might become less indifferent :wink: )

CRX your MC1mod is off the hook!! :beer: I would buy a few of these from ya!! Keep them coming!! :+1:

Modified my Olight i3s and Convoy s2+ with XPL’s but that s2+ mod might end up in “What did you BREAK today?” it turns out reflowing 3 LED’s at same time it is more difficult that i imagined when you don’t have proper equipment.

I changed the stock CW XP-G2 LED that was in the i3s with something a bit more warm, XPL V3 5A3 4000-4135k and it turned out to be very nice, it is my first 4000k flashlight and i know for sure that i will buy some more, seems like this little guy is goin to be on my car keys for a long time now.

Here are some pictures





I wasn’t in the mood for lights today (I know blasphemy, right) but I did make up a thread stop for my lathe. I’ve got the basics of it, it just needs some refining.

Cool!

I NEVER thread with that fast speed, always use the lowest my lathe will run. I suppose a stop would make a lot of difference, probably still would use a slower speed. (scared of a crash, mine has a 1HP motor, capable of seriously screwing stuff up!)

I wasn’t sure if I should be going that fast but it was a test piece so I wasn’t bothered too much.

It’s not about the piece being threaded, it’s about crashing the machine and breaking the slide or the holder or at the very least destroying the threading insert. A crash will usually ruin integrity of the slide, making it sloppy so you’ll never have accurate cuts again and it can yank the piece out of the chuck and send it flying, crashing into other components or you, doing extraneous damage in addition to what’s done to the lathe. Hence, machinists missing fingers or blind in one eye.

Honestly I wasn’t that worried about crashing. Another way is to position the cutter on the back side of the work piece, set the chuck in reverse and work away from the chuck.

I was warned against that, as a jam would unthread the heavy chuck and send it flying, most likely crashing the ways and ruining the lathe.

Very clever. that would be good for doing internal threads . TL recommended threading backwards somewhere here. I think it was in relation to blind internal threads. :+1:

I do everything backards! :question: I learned from an Aussie!!!

I do cut all my internal threads from the inside of the part to the outside. Even threads cut on my CNC lathe as it helps with tool clearance at the turret and both manual and CNC cutting in reverse drags the swarf out of the part
.most times
sometimes
 ummmm
. when it wants to!

This will generally work FOR THREADING ONLY even on a lathe with a screw on chuck. Heavy reverse direction cutting (boring, drilling etc) will un-screw a thread on chuck most times even if the chuck has a lock. For D5, D4 etc chucks, it doesn’t matter. The tool drag on threading is so light you can get away with it. Remember as well that on some manual lathes, you need to reverse the lead screw
others
 the lead screw reverses when the rest of the machine reverses.

Now it gets confusing
 If you are cutting RIGHT HAND threads in reverse direction
 you need a left hand tool and insert
 or grind a left hand tool. I have always said that the hardest part of threading on a lathe is choosing the tooling. I hope this can help. TL

Built another Eagle eye X6 triple XP-L, and an X6 with single XP-L, and squeezed in a small led voltmeter in a Liitokala Lii100 charger to fast check my batteries voltage.

Thanks TL. Your ears must have been burning. :slight_smile:

but only if you want a left hand thread or you have a upside down tool


Hehe for left hand thread tool is on the near side, chuck spinning normal and lead screw working away from the chuck.

One of my first attempts at threading ended up being left hand thread. :person_facepalming:

Need to be attentive with this stuff :nerd_face:

Did some LED swaps today, removed the XML2 U3 3D from the Convoy M1 and installed XPL V6 3D there because this one has lower Vf, U3 was pulling only 3.9A from 30Q, the XPL is running at 5.5A with fresh 30Q.

Then i opened my S1 Baton, removed the stock led, and reflowed the U3 3D that i removed from the M1, this little guy was pain to open without damaging it, but slow and steady did it, now i can enjoy my favorite tint in the S1, yay :slight_smile: