What did you mod today?

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)

A Maxtoch and Convoy fusion.

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

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?

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 :

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

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

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.

Moded my Lii-100 :slight_smile:

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










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.

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

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:

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.

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:

What about making a pack of 6 4/5 sub Cs? The length would be about 10mm shorter than 5 sub Cs. But this would require modification to the charger as well.

You’re right, if its always fully charged that helps.

I have a little experience with power tool packs and rebuilding.
I have upgraded one of my Milwaukee 18V 2400 NiCd to 4300 NiMh. I still kept one pack in NiMh form for the rattle gun, 1/2in drive Impact. Something about the NiCd that dump more juice for the impact gun. Same deal on my buddy’s Snap-off gun as he tried NiMh rebuild and was disappointed. No idea how this will compare to draw to XPH70 on each type of cell though.

Also be very careful rebuilding the streamlight batt pack. I did one of those to a while ago. It’s odd to say the least took 2 tries after a shorted cell first try.

Done a few mods recently. Mostly re-modding or finally modding some lights I’ve had a long time.

First up was my EagleTac D25LC2. I bought this a few years back, it was my ‘first’ modern proper LED torch. When EagleTac first launched the D Series.

It had a very cool white XP-G in it. It was a really nice light, but the tint was not for me, it also had quite a noticeable tint shift on lower outputs.

I had a spare XP-G2 R5 3C on a Noctigon, that pulled from an F13 (never really liked it in that light). And set to fitting it to the EagleTac.

First up, I did not want to mess with the driver (or break the light). On getting the bezel off and removing the lens and reflector, I found the head was quite deep and narrow to get down to the LED, so a bit of a fiddly soldering job.

Also the stock star must have been around 14mm sitting in a 15mm recess. So the 16mm Noctigon was too big. After much filing by hand the Noctigon eventually fitted. And all back together again. Now I have a nice more modern D25 EagleTac with NW tint, slightly higher output than before and the tint shifting on the lower modes seems to have mostly vanished.

Having completed the D25LC2. I moved to modding a zoomy I’ve had for ages. It’s an Ultrafire ZB-006 and is my most compact 18650 zooming light. I originally bought it, because it was meant to have an XP-G in it (years back….). However it turned up with an XP-E in it.

It was ok, bigger flood than an SK68 and slightly better throw. But it never really hit the spot for me. Tint was way too cool and while the throw was quite good for it’s size, it was a pencil beam. The driver was also horrid, H-L-Strobe with next mode memory and PWM.

This host is really thin and lighweight. So I knew it’d never be a complete hotrod, just doesn’t have the thermal mass. So I ordered up a 3.04A Qlite and an XP-L HI V2 3B on a Noctigon from Int’l Out door.

Sadly this turned into more of a pita than I thought it would be. The pill turned out to be hollow (I thought it had a shelf :person_facepalming: )

And the fatter wires from the Qlite driver mean the led would not sit flat. So I’ve had to file out some channels for the wires. Then get it all installed.

End result, nice flood output and tint. But it really didn’t throw very well. The taller Noctigon must have moved the Led just out of focus at full zoom.

Ran it like this for a few days and just found myself annoyed with it. Eventually pulled the XP-L HI out of it and chucked in a de-domed XM-L2 that I had been running in a Convoy S2. Nothing fancy, it was a CW LED (I think from a Convoy S2+ so probably a 1A or something). Tint ins’t too bad de-domed, not brilliant, but acceptable. And for some reason the throw is much better than the XP-L HI and it focuses better now too (aluminium star).

Still not sure how much I like the light overall, but at least it’s a usable light now.

Was bored this evening and so I did my first SRK mod (I know there have been millions of SRK mods before) - and got surprised.
The light has 7 fake XM-L Leds and no solid shelf. I got this light discounted for 20 $ a couple of months ago. Bought it only to see the “legendary” SRK in reality.
Got about 1500 Lumens before modding. I have not done much, just bypassed the series resistor which is realized as a long trace on the PCB, added 2 additional wires to the LED, did some soldering in the tail PCB to decrease resistance and put some thermal compound on the small ring where the MCPCB lays on.
Then I measured output again and - surprise - got about 3200 lumens, with protected cells! I didn’t expect this, more than twice as much as before.
The tint is blueish cold, and of course the light get’s to hot to hold after 30 seconds, the fake LEDs are not efficient at all. But they are still working - the second surprise.

Now I am even thinking of replacing the fake LEDs against some XM-L2 or so, and perhaps putting a copper disk under the LED board.

Another S2+ Triple All soldered stack
Nichia 219C
Fet+1 A6
11A
Was Blue :smiley:






First one of the ex-cops light was the Streamlight 20X, a biggish light like a Mag, I probably called it wrong saying Stinger, I’ve found out now the Stinger is smaller. I also have the one that IS a stinger, and replaced the Luxeon K9 or whatever with an XP-G2 S2 0D. Beam wasn’t all that great to begin with, still not with the new emitter, so I did a quick bit of lathe work to seat the unified bezel/reflector a bit deeper… now it’s a nice hot spot with some throw, he should be pleased with it and it didn’t take much on my part to upgrade it.

Finally got the two old Streamlights upgraded, wasn’t as bad as I had thought it might be. lol