Copper Goodness for Dale's Solarforce M8

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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I've been busy with the lathe. Dale asked me to do a copper, (I guess it's a pill) for his Solarforce M8. He wanted a couple of extra fins and he wanted it to look nice.

Dale packaged it to survive the most Armageddon.

I think there were 6 layers of that dense corrugated foam stuff...

I must say this is a damn sweet light. I'd like to have one myself.

I took a sh*t ton of measurements and put it all down on paper. Picture is my height gauge. It's well worth the money it cost for stuff like this.

The fins are .070" with .070 grooves which are .100" deep on the stock part. That was a bummer. My parting tool is .091". So I had to grind a special grooving tool. .070" is pretty thin so I made it short. Sorry, no pic of the groovy tool.

All threads on this light are 20TPI. I was surprised they were not metric.

I did a trial run in aluminum to see if my machining plan and math worked out ok. They did.

So, a-machining I did go... I am compelled to say that machining copper is sometimes a b*tch. Grooving especially is aggravating. It took me a while to figure out that I had to keep honing my grooving tool on a much more frequent basis than aluminum or even steel need.

Chucking it up and minimizing runout.

Boring the end for internal threads and the driver pocket. (Note the Mickey Mouse tool bit) It worked great in copper after a little fine tuning.

The dial (bottom left) is to tell me what my depth is.

Bored and OD turned. Freshly turned copper is damned pretty.

Shoulder turned. It took me a while to figure out the angle. I ended up using 31.5 degrees. It might be 31 or 32, but it wasn't 30. Grrr.

Groovyness in progress. Did I mention it was a b*tch?

Internal threads and groovyness done.

Jig for hole pattern for 20mm Noctigon.

Holes transferred and drilled.

Chucked back up after an endo and turned to diameter. I was shooting for 1.210".

I forgot to take pics of boring the hole. But by definition, it's BORING.

Here's a shot of doing the external threads at 20TPI. It was nerve wracking to try to take this while the lathe was actually cutting a thread.

The finished product.

Top

Bottom. I have to debur the wire holes yet. Dale really wanted to see all of these pics so I rushed the pics a little to get this thread done.

It has room for double stacked 7135's on both sides of the driver.

And finally...

I put an XM-L2 in to fit check. The pocket for the star seems just a shade low to me. I have a little meat that I can remove off of the top shoulder to raise it up if needed. Dale and I will decide before I ship it Monday.

This is how it will look when Dale opens the box after he removes the first 3 layers of protective packaging), hopefully on Wednesday.

My thoughts...

Copper is a different animal. I was able to do what I needed, but it is more difficult. I have some video of me making the grooves and it wasn't going well. Boring is somewhat more difficult than aluminum or steel too, but not as bad as grooving is.

I scrapped the first piece that I made after it was about 90% done. It had nothing to do with it being copper and everything to do with me being tired and turning on a hand wheel without thinking and going too far. I bored the LED star pocket too deep. Dale was willing to take it as it was and shim it with a second copper star, but I was not. I may re-machine it by removing one fin and groove and sell it to someone else if there is interest.

Lastly, I am please with how it turned out. I hope Dale is as well.

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Video #1

#2

Last one.

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That’s some top notch expert machining and it looks just perfect! How you get those nice pics while working on the lathe is beyond me. Seriously. Heck, I’m a photographer, have a lot of equipment, and when I’m modding a light I don’t even think about taking a pic! lol (mostly because I don’t want metal shavings in my gear)

Looks perfect, just as I had imagined before I even bought this light. And now with the light baked and coming out that olive drab military shade the copper accents it just beautifully! The MT-G2 at 6A should be a piece of cake for this beautiful beast and I don’t doubt that it will handle direct drive at the 12A I’ve measured before! With Tofty’s 10A switch in the tail, this bad boy is ready to blast some serious lumens!

Thank You Buck! Perfectly Done and Totally Awesome! You Rock!

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Did you, by chance, measure how thick the copper is between the star and the driver pocket? Looks to be around 0.55”? With the entire pill in copper, exposed fins and all, it should be excellent at heat dispersal. OOooo can’t wait to put it to work! :slight_smile:

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Looking forward to red oil drum beamshots .

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Gorgeous work there. Thank you for sharing Bucket.

Dale, was the black anodized finned section from a Defiant Super Thrower originally?

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impressive work !! just beautiful !

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Nope 4 Wheeler, that was the original light. All black in HAIII the Solarforce way. Must’ve really been Type III, with that green/bronze looking finish from baking. When I first saw this light reviewed, I think by Foy, I loved it! That external pill with the fins just beckoned to me to have it done in copper and put an MT-G2 in it. I knew the size could be bumped and lengthened as it’s the middle of the light, with the head screwed onto the top and the battery tube screwed into the bottom it’s a light engine unto itself. You could feasibly make it as big around and as long as you wanted, if aesthetics were of no consequence.

Buck made it perfectly, kept the aesthetics spot on, with 2 fins in length added. I truly believe now that I’ve seen it in these pics, that anything else would have been off balance. It looks perfect, can’t wait to feel the heft of it and test out how efficiently it works! :slight_smile:

Do you have any idea what that copper weighs by any chance Buck? I’ve used a 3 ounce slug under the big emitter in a couple of other instances, but that was/is surrounded by the aluminum host with maybe not good exit for the heat. This bad boy should work beautifully, fully exposed, full copper from emitter to driver. Oh man this is great! Love it when a plan comes together! :slight_smile:

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Cool. That's an awesome idea Dale. Very sweet mod.

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I don’t know how you guys go by all the measurements. I can take the measurements, write em all down with some neat little pictures. Then when I start working the part, I do it by eye. Forget to measure. For example, the last light I worked on was a Tangsfire C8. The aluminum pill had a retaining ring threaded into it to hold the driver snug. But the factory driver was bare of all except the spring on the battery side. My Qlite had chips on top. So the driver shelf needed to sit further into the pill. Now, I looked at it and there was room for this even considering I’d stacked 8 extra chips on the inside of the driver (12 on the inside total) so I stepped out on the porch and cut the shelf back.

To do this, I mounted the aluminum pill to a 1/2” rod of aluminum with 2 sided Scotch foamy tape, the stuff you put an emblem on the car with. Stuck that rod in my Makita cordless drill and spun it slowly with a zip tie holding the trigger. Then just eyeballed the cut with a dremel 1/8” carbide bit. Took it inside and the driver fit into it perfectly, the retaining ring screwed down on top of the chips of the driver and was flush on top with the pill, piece o cake! :slight_smile: Forgot to measure anything, not sure I’d have known how to transfer measurements anyway. But hey, when it works, it works! I know, repeatability is key. But I’ve been a carpenter, a cabinet maker and trust my eye to see what I need by way of measurement. So far, so good. All those measurements get confusing! lol (Ya think it’s because I don’t know how to use a lathe?)

To see a part like this one, with all it’s intricate fins and threading…well, that’s kind of staggering to think about making. Don’t know, perhaps I could, but not with the equipment I have and not to the degree of perfection that Buck shows up above. That’s just dam* fine work right there! Buck, I am not sure how long you’ve been doing this kind of stuff, but there’s a guy on the other site that’s almost legend that they call Photon Fanatic, he made my Texas Poker in Titanium and copper, by my design and using my 5” bar of 1” dia. Grade 23 Ti. And his work is exemplary of a master machinist. Your work? Right up there with that of the Master! Some people have it, some people cannot be trained to do it. You’re one of those that’s got it, and I love what I am seeing!

Beautifully done Sir! I commend you, and recommend you, to the highest degree!

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Loving your work! Eye candy is always good.

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Thank you for the step by step pictorial. It may seem like simple no brainer steps to someone as yourself but they are certainly invaluable to someone starting out with a lathe (such as myself.)

I learned a lot from your post. Thank you.

AZ

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Awesome machining!

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Astounding. Love this stuff and when I win the lottery I’ll call you to outfit a shop for me and learn me how to use it. Deal?

Amazing planning, execution and detail. Not to mention dedication to perfection. (slow claps)

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Holy moly that looks awesome!!

Excellent craftsmanship, thank you for taking the time to get some shots and document the process.

Dale will be ecstatic to see this work of art.

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Wow, this is absolutely amazing work. I love the multipass threading, which I have tried in the past. How many passes on the threads to get to full depth? (I estimate 2) Do you have any pictures showing your lathe? It’s hard to estimate its size. This year I am definately in the market for a small lathe, as I have a bunch of projects I could work on. I had a micro milling machine, and did some small custom gun parts on it, but it was just “too small” for any real work, and struggled with the simplest of things that come easy on a larger milling machine, which I have used with ease in the past. I should have went for the next size up on the milling machine, instead of the micro, and it would have made a huge difference in usability.

Thanks for posting some “in progress” pictures of your great work, it is really inspiring. Unfortunately I find myself doing exactly the opposite way too many times. When I am so busy with a project, I never take enough progress photos, and at the end, I wish I had so I could share it with others.

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Thank you for all of the compliments. I am however still only a hobby machinist. Professional guys could do it in much shorter time with less agonizing and re-measuring etc.

Dale, it's a sneeze away from being half a pound... .49lb.

There is a little over .9 inch of solid copper between the LED and driver pockets.

Drdanke, that external thread took about 25 thousandths advance on the compound dial. It was something like this. Each number is a separate pass:

.005, .004, .003, .003, .002, spring pass and fit check. .002, .002 spring pas and fit check. From there it's .001, spring pass and fit check until it fits just so. Single point threading takes concentration and deliberateness. I don't go very deep with the depth of cut even to start off. Hastiness just doesn't pay in the machining game. At least for me.

I guess I should define "Spring Pass". It's just running the bit through at the same depth a second time. Usually there some small deflection in the tool when cutting. The spring pass usually removes a very small amount of extra materiel that was left due to the deflection of the previous pass. It also makes for a nice finish on the thread face.

My lathe is an 11x27. Here's a short video of when I first got it. Here's the link for Youtube in case the embedded one doesn't work. http://youtu.be/hPcRNcOY-Nk

http://budgetlightforum.com/&lt;iframe width=“640” height=“360” src=“/www.youtube.com/embed/hPcRNcOY-Nk” frameborder=“0” allowfullscreen></iframe>

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Youtube link doesn’t work.
Btw. Beautiful mod. Copper pill looks amazing.

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Great job for a “hobby” as you say!!! Wow, wish I had that rig & the skill set to use it. Keep up the fine work! Also great photos.

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Your technique is just like what is done in precision gunsmithing. Absolutely the only way to get nice and tight threads, is to do thou, or sub thou passes(spring passes), and you just have to keep test fitting. A lot of machinist, outside of toolmakers, will just trust their measuring and their adjustments, and do a single or double pass thread, and call it good enough!

Oh, and the YouTube video link didn’t come through correctly.