What did you mod today?

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1298

I had one UF-1504 leftover that had a Nichia219C and LD2 driver, that never had good throw. I redid the mod today, and now it still has its high current forward clicky (‘6A Ebay-switch’ I prefer a reverse clicky but this 1504 first gen. switch design does not fit a standard switch-board), and a BLF-A6 driver and dedomed XP-G2 S3 3D. For what it is worth for a thrower, the tint is pretty nice, much better than the much used (and now unavailable) S4 2B, and the throw is also really good, I measure 486 kcd at a current of 4.1A on a Keeppower 26650 IMR 4200 mAh, 30 seconds after switch-on.

I think that the mods are well done, with a high amp switch, neat spring bypasses, ledboard soldered to pill, area around the led-die blackened, very clean beam in spot mode. The body does not look mint anymore though, decent enough, but the ano is not perfect on some edges anymore.

In the end I like the impressive throw but still find the light too heavy to take on trips.

1299

Almost too easy to be called modding but…

A couple 2 or 3 weeks ago while checking out a comment about an S70 clone on ebay I saw a SRK in gold with 9 emitters on the cheap. Stupid cheap, like $13 or something. So I bought one. It came today… with Lattice Bright emitters making 1683 lumens on 4 LG HE-4 button top cells. Of course I opened it up and checked it out. They had a large FET for a simple driver, no sense resistor, small pair of wires to a single aluminum mcpcb housing the 9 XM-L copycats. So I pulled the LB emitters, dug around through my ever growing pile of stuff and found 9 XM-L’s I’ve pulled from other lights an put it back together with 20 ga Turnigy leads. 1811 lumens rock solid, meter wasn’t budging. Then I remembered having a second one of Richards SRK group buy driver’s put away… so I stuck that in there in place of the simple 2 mode (w hidden strobe) driver.

Now it makes 3881 lumens in High, 1228 lumens in medium and a very miserly 0.38 lumens in Moon. With reversing switch, it’s really nice. :slight_smile:

Perhaps later, if I remember, I can make a nice copper heat sink to assist the thick aluminum mcpcb….

Edit: 4157.25 lumens with the batteries freshly charged and an UCLp swapped in. Works for me! :slight_smile:

Edit: Pics of the driver and mcpcb from the e-bay Sky Ray with omitted “king”. (it’s a SRK but a clone apparently, although the site showed Sky Ray King lights)

1300

Modded… or more like fixed my lumzoo GH10 with XP-L HI and a Zebralight driver rescued from a H600. The reason I didn’t repair the ZL instead was the press-fit bezel and would not longer be waterproof after the mod. Awesome compact angle light with excellent build quality all around.

1301

From the BLF Q8 project, got in the V5.1 drivers and reflowed a couple up, bench tested running the latest Narsil v1.1. It now can blink out the firmware vers #, as well as having full access to all strobe modes from ramping:

Also modded up the new UltraFire U-F10, yes, it's a real, true authentic Ultra Fire here, least it says so on UltraFire.com. It's got the driver in the tailcap:

Here's a close up of the 1 sided driver:

And here's the contact board in the pill:

The mods I made were: XM-L2 on SinkPAD, reflowed to the brass pill top (thick shelf), wires upgraded to 22 AWG, spring bypass's, and a resistor mod: added a 0.5 ohm on top of one of the 1.5 ohm resistors (I traced to follow a FET), and got amps up from 0.85A to 1.25A - moderate bump up, but now it does over 500 lumens in flood.

I'm thinking the MCU runs on power via those 3 resistors (bleed resistors?) that sit between LED+ and LED-, but the what that hard white substance covers is a mystery, but it's very low profile.

Anyone have ideas on how this tail driver e-switch works? No separate wires between the pill and tail.

1302

Had a chance to put some XP-G3’s in a few different hosts, one being a Manker U11. Removed the original board and re-flowed a “3” series High-CRI XP-G3 in place of the original XP-L. Definitely exhibits the hotspot-corona K/temp variation others have noted. The tint is the “creamiest” 5K emitter I’ve seen, more yellow than the Nichia’s I’m used to. Could be exaggerated because of the reflector, (others have said they look better in an optic), or could be further off the BBL line than the Nichia’s, hard to say because the specific tint bins weren’t listed.

Can’t speak to specific comparative output because I can’t get to most of my equipment, but to the eye it doesn’t look like I lost much output, but the throw was improved.

Hopefully I can get into storage and locate some of my stuff, first mods I’ve done in a while and it stinks having now way to measure output. There’s also a box of old lights in there somewhere, there’s a particular one I want mod with one of the XP-G3s, it’s a older E2L Outdoorsman, the one with the factory optic. Originally came with a Lux-III, so it might actually work well.

I’ll try and get some pics up later, can compare between the XP-G3 High-CRI and an NVSW High-CRI, but forgot to take “before” beamshots of the original XP-L.

-Michael

1303

I tried a new production style XPG2 S4 2B in my UF-1504. With a fresh Liitokala 26650, I got 463kcd at 30sec. I only have one new style XPG2, bought from MTN, but this one performs quite well.

Not quite as good as the old one which was ~520kcd.

1304

I think those colors showing in the image of the emitter are literally chunks of different phosphors — coarsely ground up, mixed in some medium and extruded to make the spot on the die. The coarser the phosphor material is, the spottier the die looks and the less consistent the color will be from one LED to the next on the same reel.

There’s an analogy with prescription medicines I recall reading a warning about:

— some pills are thoroughly mixed finely ground active ingredient(s) and binder, and it’s safe to break them (and they’re often scored to make it easy to divide them). When you break that kind of pill in half you get about the same amount of active ingredient in each half.

— some pills are coarse chunks of active ingredient(s) in a binder, and aren’t safe to divide — when you break them you can get all the active ingredient in one half, and just the binder in the other half.

I recall seeing that kind of spotty color mixing in LEDs used in one of the variations of the ZeusRay, when they were cutting corners on those. I’d suspect the reels are from a batch of poorly mixed phosphor.

(from Amount of active ingredient evenly distributed throughout each pill? | Drugs-Forum)

1305

A Maxtoch and Convoy fusion.

Dedomed XML2 U4 and LD-2 driver.
360.000 Cd.

1306

i mode old torch to a new modern led torch with a cree led that can recharge easily and can be used for long time!!
it most fun and useful?

1307

I copied this Ultrafire F13 mod :

The driver is Hi(1000mA) > Lo(200mA) > Str, with ontime memory and cool white LED.

Normally I don’t like cool white LEDs and ontime memory but this flashlight puts a smile on my face.

It’s a nice little mod a $10 host plus driver ($8,53) and LED ($5,99).

I like the driver/LED combination so much I have ordered a Jaxman X1 host from this thread :

1308

This mod is on my list too. Did you measure throw and/or lumens?

1309

No I don’t have any way to measure LUX/Lumens

1310

There is An MT-G2 mod on my list with two 26350 but I don’t know which host should I put in. F13 or Convoy L2. Luckily I need to build one for a friend with F13 host and he sent me a ZY-T08 MT-G2 for some repair and I can decide which one I want to build for myself.

1311

Moded my Lii-100 :slight_smile:

1312

Got all the parts and some free time to mod my Ultrafire C8 with XM-L T6 :slight_smile:
Difference is amazing, at least double throw and brightness.

XP-L HI, new driver, reflector and AR glass










1313

Well done XXX-Man, a good old C8 mod! :-)

I swapped the led of my new Thrunite TH20 headlamp. I got the lamp for under 30 dollars in a Gearbest flash deal lately, well not that 'flash' because the link from the Gearbest deals thread up to now gives the discounted price :-)

I absolutely think it is the best head lamp you can get atm: it looks good (for a head lamp that is), it is small and lightweight, it feels very comfortable on the head,works on all AA-size cells, gives a good output and runtime even on an Eneloop cell, the tiny OP-reflector gives it a wide diffuse hotspot that is made for close-up work, great user interface with ramping and direct access to moon and high etc. etc.

I got the neutral white version but for a head lamp it was still too cool for my taste. I had a nice U5 7A3 80 CRI XP-L (3000K) from intl-outdoor sitting in the parts box for ages so that was to be the swap. The parts:

The white part is a bezel tool that I made from a plank holder. I made it because with my needlenose pliers I could not open up the bezel and even scratched it a bit :-( . This tool got it open nice and clean, there was no thread-lock, it was just screwed in tight.

There you go, here's how the ledboard looks like, a dedicated little copper board that appeared to be DTP.

With the ledboard removed you can see that it sits on top of a groove that actually is the battery compartment, this is a tight design :-) . The thermal paste looks a lot like Arctic Silver.

I reflowed the new led and assembled the light without problems. and now the headlight emits a cosy warmish light that is to my liking, at high on a freshly charged Eneloop @30 seconds I measure 215 lumen (so a bit lower than stock), it is great for camping and reading books.

1314

Small Sun R804
This $3.50 light got a new XP-G2 S3 3D emitter flowed and a single mode Nanjg 102
WOW pretty sweet and powerful compared to its original state.
Grand total $8.55
Still needs glass.

Next to my I3S Brass

Wall from 6ft

1315

Converted my neighbor’s old duty light, a Streamlight Stinger, to LED. He is a retired cop and this was his beater EDC, a 6V tungsten on/off rechargeable. He wanted to keep the NiCad battery system so he could continue to use it on the wall charger as usual, so I put an XHP-70 in it in direct drive. The NiCad pack is old, low, and barely runs the big emitter now but he’s supposed to get me the charger so I can further test it. (will probably order him a 3500mAh NiMH pack, this old one is 2400mAh NiCad)

Anyone know if the NiMH pack will deliver more direct drive current to the big XHP-70?

I found a stippled reflector in Justin’s kit that fit the Streamlight (well, after some modification) and it works pretty well. I still need to trim it back a couple mm for the bezel to screw down all the way.

I made a 5mm thick spacer for the 26mm MaxToch copper mcpcb to center in, cut an emitter pocket in the surface so it’s flush on top, this is screwed down with a 1” long ground screw that was already present in the light for the tungsten bulb. This allows the set-up to pretty easily be reversed if he ever decides to retro it back to OEM. This spacer isn’t a press fit, but it’s snug enough that it is a bit of a bugger to push down into the head… it’ll go if perfectly straight and true otherwise it binds. Getting it back out is one of those deals where you have to squint-just-right-and-hold-the-tip-of-your-tongue-out-the-left-side-of-your-mouth-while-holding-your-head-tilted-slightly-right kind of things.

I’ll get a couple of pics when I do final fitment later today. :wink:

1316

I think that 6V system is 5s, in which case it would not be high enough voltage to drive the XHP70 well. A 6s NiMH would drive it well.

1317

Ah, but the host is what it is and that isn’t going to change. Retired cops are well set in their ways, it’s gotta sit on his wall charger like it has for 25 years or it just ain’t right, ya know?

It’s brighter and whiter with much more coverage area than before, so, now that he’s retired and only looking for things that go bump in the night, it should suit him ok. A fresh charge on a new battery pack should show 7.5V, that’ll have to be enough. (NiMH 1.2V cells typically charge to 1.5V or so. 5 of these would net 7.5V when fresh. Since it has a wall mounted charger and the light resides in that charger, I’m gonna have to assume the charge level will essentially always be full.

Not likely to convince him to use a pair of Li-ions and take them out to recharge them. I might just show him what it can do with those, the difference might be impressive enough to him to do the convincing. :wink: