The 4th Annual BLF / O-L Contest; MtnDon's Entry, Hand Made Class

I am loving that wooden carrier, especially with three different woods together!

I tested all the circuitry, switch etc and discovered a small issue. RMM is a great guy and is bending over backwards to remedy the situation. Yet another excellent reason to buy stuff from him rather from Chinese sellers.

There will be a few days for me off this project as I need to return to more of the real life tasks that somehow keep getting in the way of this flashlight fun.

Ah - Bummer! I know how that real-life stuff is, though. It’s hard getting away from it, cause it always catches up with you eventually.

First time in here. Build is looking really good and you thread is very informative. :slight_smile:

Living vicariously through all the other builds. Keep ’em going and keep me sane please. :confounded:

Some of you will readily relate to this… I have made a couple of changes to the project. The basic idea is the same but my execution of my idea has some changes.

I re designed the upper contact plate that also has the driver mounted to it. Post #46 has photos of the first go ’round. The new plate is a little larger. The first plate was cut free hand with aviation snips. It had a somewhat irregular almost circular shape. The new plate is cut from 0.030” brass. I cut almost to the cut line with the snips. Then I mounted it in the vice with a wood backer and filed to the final shape. I think it looks better although functionally there is little if any difference

I soldered 4 springs I bought at mtnelectronics to the down facing side of the plate. I preheated the plate with a butane torch to tin the areas where the springs would be located. Then tinned the spring ends and positioned them. Light action with the torch brought the temperature to the point where the solder “flashed”. Coolong set the solder.

The Omten switch had a wire soldered to one terminal previously. That was back in post #37. I have changed that to be a brass tube. The brass tube will fit up the center of the cell block. There is a series of one tube inside another to get the diameter from smallest which fits the switch tab, up to the larger size. The other switch terminal will still be soldered to the lower contact plate as before. Here’s the new arrangement with a dual layer of heat shrink as insulation. Even though the hole through the bottom brass contact plate is oversize I figure this is some extra insurance in case something happens. (Heat shrink tubing not in this next photo but a subsequent photo will illustrate it).

Yet another change is to the upper end where the LED mounts. Previously I had a wood spacer ring. In part the spacer was there to drop the LED and remote phosphor lower. If the LED was mounted to the metal cap directly the mug jar top metal ring / band obscured the phosphor dome a little. I have replaced the wood spacer with an aluminum block.

I calculated ½” to be a good thickness. Not wanting to drive over to the metal supermarket I decided to make a block from 2” wide x 1/8” thick aluminum strap material I had on hand. Four layers. Hand cut…

I used 10-32 machine screws to hold the alignment. Arctic Alumina adhesive was used between each layer. It seems to hold very well. Clamped in a vice waiting for the cure to complete.

I scribed the curved ends to match the shape of the cell block.

Then did a rough cut with the hacksaw.

That was followed with some use of a coarse bastard file.

Then a finer cut file… followed with some sandpaper. It is far from a perfect finish, but is hand made.

Drilled and tapped some holes. There are a couple of extra holes, one with a broken drill bit embedded in it.

The aluminum block will mount to the underside of the metal mug sealing lid. The LED mounts to the lower face. The finned heatsink mounts to the upper surface of the sealing lid. I used Ceramique 2 heat transfer paste between the mating surfaces. Here are the major components, except for the mug itself. The assembled aluminum block, LED, sealing lid and heatsink can be seen leaning against the cell block. The switch brass post shows the heat shrink tubing.

I’ll finish this set with a shot showing the new driver plate in position on the cell block upper end. The Nanjg driver is soldered over the center hole in the plate. The center contact (+) tube extends down through the cell block center to mate with the tube from the switch. One slides inside the other. My meter can’t read any discernable resistance difference between a single continuous length of brass tube and the section of one inside the other.

More to come…

All the woodwork this year is really awesome! I’m really liking the concept and design you’ve got going here, MtnDon.

What’s he doing now!!!

Never fear. This step was planned all along. Just never hinted at.

Now I have an upper section and a lower section to the cell block.

I think that is all for tonight. I gave the pieces a quick coat of clear spray to help keep the wood from showing all the handling. That needs to dry before the next step. I’m getting more excited!

More coming… thanks for following…

Did more work today on my project light. I had a small piece of bad luck and cracked the bottom of the mug. It is only acrylic. Unfortunately I could not find a polycarbonate or other better plastic mug. However all this meant was a change in design. I decided to make a walnut disc bottom from a 1/4 thick piece. Here’s the rough piece…

After filing with the coarse and finer files and some sanding I had a more or less round piece.

After some thinking and a little trial and error I came up with a repaired / modified bottom. I was excited and missed a few photo ops. Anyhow I did a trial fit of all the components and have a couple of photos to show. It is not wired up at all. I have to disassemble it and will then shoot some more detail shots. Here’s what it looks like (remote phosphor dome is not installed but it fits in the space made for it.)

Cheers!!! :slight_smile: :beer:

For this trial fit I have only 2 cells in place. It will operate on a single cell or any number up to 4 once the wiring is completed.

The work going into this light! :open_mouth:

Yes. :heart_eyes:

Alright. It looks like it is finished. Unless I implement a mod!

I tore it down, cleaned up the mug shell a little and took some more photos as I finished details and reassembled.

I added a spacer to the bottom of the lower module insert. This was cut from a piece of scrap walnut and fixed in place with some 3M double sided tape. The tape has a little give and will squish down when the module is secured with screws.

Pacman is gonna eat the switch…

I drilled out the mount holes and glued in some aluminum threaded inserts. I couldn’t find machine screws long enough to use a nut so took this route. Looks nicer anyhow I think.

A view of the bottom plate that is glued to the mug bottom. The center hole was used as a positioning guide and is now filled with a section of dowel, glued in. The switch boot is from one of those cheapy zoom lights. The holes with the recess will be used to secure the lower module inside the mug. The other two holes were temporary holes used in determining where / how to mount the lower module. I’ll fill them with a couple short lengths of dowel but was out of an appropriate size.

Next we have the LED and MCPCB mounted to the aluminum block. The star was filed flat and heat transfer compound was used.

A view of the heat sink mounted to the lid. The machine screws go through to the aluminum block. The unfilled outer holes will be used in assembling the upper module.

The lower module insert being secured with machine screws through the bottom. I used a length of dowel rod to help hold the assembly. Stainless steel 6-32 machine screws.

There it is with the lower module secured.

A view looking down inside the mug… lower module secured in place.

A view of the bottom plate

Another view…

Here’s the upper plate. Driver mounted to one side and the cell contact top springs on the other side. (not visible here). The threaded aluminum posts will be used to connect the two halves of the upper module.

Here we have the other side of that piece with the springs barely visible. The brass tube is the + lead from the cells to the driver.

Upper module assembled with more spacers, tube section plus fine tuning washers.

The 22 gauge wires were trimmed and soldered to the MCPCB

The test fitting of the remote phosphor dome. Two small notches were made to clear the spacer posts and another two notches to clear the LED wires. I used a hot soldering iron tip.

The completed upper module in the correct orientation…

Kind of a difficult shot with glare on the mug. This one shows the upper module half being inserted The brass tube of the upper must be inserted into the lower brass tube.

There! Success; upper tube inside lower tube… To properly fit the upper module the colors of the wood used for the two halves must be matched. I use the walnut segment as my guide. The “handmadeness” is revealed by the slightly different spacing of the cell holes around the circumference.

Next we can see when the contact springs are just barely touching the cell ends there is approximately a 1/4” gap between the lid and the rim of the mug. This can be adjusted by removing or installing washers between the aluminum spacer posts of the upper module. This will permit changing to a longer cell at anytime in the future. The lower surface of the lid has a rubber sealing ring. That combined with the heat transfer compound used between the heat sink and the lid should make it safe to have at least light rain fall on the light.

The insert assembly is pushed down and the band tightened to secure the lid.

All set to go now !!!

It does light and moves upwards through the 6 levels of, 2% 6% 15% 25% 50% 100% with 100% being 1.4 amps.

I’ll do some dark room shots when I can

Cool!

Very nice. A toast to the light. :beer:

Illumination… on low; 2%

Tonight I’ll try some dark room shots with the camera on manual settings. I haven’t pursued beam shots yet so some experimentation will be required. I complicated things by leaving the tripod out of town…

Bring it on winter.

A very unique LED lantern design!

Very very nice. :+1: