(The TrustfireZ8 RB part two) Sipik sk68 RGB

This thread is a sequel to the mod thread of a TrustfireZ8 with MC-E colour led, that had an unfortunate ending with a partly failing led . Wanting to fix the light I re-ordered another MC-E colour led + driver from Intl-outdoor.com. But what was nagging me was an O.L. remark about the mod:

This encouraged me to not fix the Z8, but instead go smaller (thanks to O.L.): my black Sipik sk68 was going to go MC-E colour.

For this mod not only the led-board had to be narrowed to 16mm, also the 20mm driver board had to be filed down to 17.5mm, with hardly any room to do that.

Some steps shown in the z8-mod-thread will not be repeated here.

During the electric sanding last time the led board got very hot, so this time I mounted a flat block of aluminium on the sander and sanded the board on top of that, with arctic silver in between. This way the board did not even get hotter than luke-warm in the process :

Holes were made to add screws (that I salvaged from an ancient Sony Walkman) and to lead the wires through. Screwholes were also made inside the Sipik pill, (no tapping is needed in aluminium ), plus some scraping away the sides to make room for the screw-heads:

As you can see the pill is hollow, but the led board is so beefy that heat sinking will not be a problem (led draw max 800mA). 1.4 mm was sanded off the underside of the pill to make room for the driver, it will live under the pill instead of mounted in it. To help the driver fit inside the body, the edges of the threading where the pill is screwed in needed sanding off a bit (told you it was critical with this big driver ).

The sanded down driver had on the component side only a hair-thick 'minus ring' left (there was more ring left on the underside). But it looked there was only one 'entrance' from the minus to the driver circuitry, so I soldered an extra piece of wire from the underside of the board to that component , sanded it flat but let it slightly sticking out to the side for extra electrical contact to the flashlight body (picture 1 to 4):

In the final assembly the pill sits right on the top of the driver, possibly causing shorts, but the only possible electrical contact was with a small resistor, I sticked a tiny piece of tape on top of the resistor to prevent that.

The wires coming from the driver were shortened a bit, then lead through the pil and through the led board and soldered in place. Excess solder was sanded away, from the side of the board, restoring the electrical insulation between the solder pads and the core of the board.

Screwed everything in (some arctic silver in between led-board and pill), now it looks like this (my soldering is even worse than last time ):

Isn't that a piece of art!, that clean shiny glittering MCE-dome sitting in the middle of a heap of djozz-junk . (you can't see it when the lens is screwed on unfortunately ).

As I (too late then) found out the Z8 I put a thin key-ring (=piece of spring wire) in between the pill and the lens (just sittin there unattached, works fine), as a spacer because the led-dome is sticking just a bit too far, it would touch the lens without it.

Some glamour pics:

I present it as if everything went smooth as a biljart ball (dutch saying), but unfortunately that never happens to me, there were several moments of despair and cursing (e.g. ripped off driver component A2SHB somewhere in the process, had to solder it back), but finally it worked! As with the z8, the led image is not completely sharp when the light is zoomed in (due to led sticking out more), but I like that.

Here's a video of the light in action in my bathroom (no, sorry, nothing exciting here ) , including all the annoying blinky modes that the driver manufacturer managed to stuff in. As you can see there is a small current leak through the green led, so in every mode there is also a tiny (2% of high?) bit of green. I may once try to fix that (clean the driver?), but I'm ok with it anyway:

When the lens is uncrewed a bit, you do get a sharp image of the led, so let's get once more through all those modes :

Hope you liked this sequel-mod.

djozz

Wanna sell it? LOL

oh no! This light is far too much fun to let go, for a while

update: I went through all the stress sanding a 20mm star down for this mod, and now they have the MCE-colour for sale on 16mm boards at intl-outdoor

That strobe is pure dico mode lol… Well done!

you do realise though that if you hadn’t done that, they would never have put that 16mm star up for sale? The two are inextricably linked :slight_smile:

It is a nice thought that we might have an actual impact on the retailers here on BLF .

So to the fellow-modders: make those RGB-customs, and to Intl-outdoor: be the first to have the colour-XM-L on 16mm board for sale (and a new 4x1000mA 17mm rgbw driver with colour mixing and without blinkies )

Awesome mod,glad to see it worked for you.That strobe would make me hurl!lol.

Holy crap that thing is sweet. Looks like endless fun. Thx for sharing

Everybody needs a little inspiration now and then!

Very nice to take on the challenge.