Jerommel's hand job CLIMAX (and anti-climax)

I got close!
This close:

And then it broke down again…
I shouldn’t have pushed for the deadline i suppose…
Also, i was warned about these TIRs that they eat domes…
It turns out they really do…

Oh well, i’ll get it fixed, but not in the coming days…

WASTED:
1 driver for nothing (so i now have a light without one…)
2 Nichia’s (Yes, they do have a very nice colour rendering :slight_smile: )
1 TIR (eaten by superglue)
1 switch (oh well…)
1 tiny alu knob (I have 3 more, which is one too few for what i bought them for…)

Okay, that alu knobby might end up being used eventually, but it’s not easy to suspend it in position with no space…

In all, stock flaslight parts used:

switch
tailspring
TIR

What more is there to say?
I’m obviously very disappointed because it only worked for half an hour or so…
I have a ground / minus pole problem too now…
It doesn’t turn off… :~
This means: Yes, the LED still works!
Only purple / blue…
The TIR took the dome with the dye clean off…
(Didn’t expect it to be that purple though.)

Nothing more to say.
Preparing for France now, leaving wednesday.
I made quite a mess here because of this build-off :slight_smile:

Aaanyway, thanks for watching and moral support, laughs and tips !
Next time it will be even better.

_
————————————————————————————————

Hi all,

Latest developments (click)

As it is my first flashlight build ever, I decided to keep it tiny.
It will be an AAA flashlight.
Just a simple tube, maybe a slightly larger head, but the plan is a tube, straight and simple.

edit:
That’s a bit boring, isn’t it?
So i decided to give it a 90° head :slight_smile:

I bought some AAA step up drivers earlier, but they push a whopping 500mA, which is about 2 Watts, which is at least 1 A drawn from an AAA, probably even more from a NiMH.
Cant see any resistor to change or something.
So I might be putting some stuff together myself (recycled stuff), top it off with a single 7135, make it 1 Watt, which is still quite a lot for an AAA flashlight i.m.o.
Maybe one of you has a great idea?

edit:
I found a 10mm driver :smiley: Problem solved.
But it may be a bit too low power for my liking, we’ll see.

But first I make the body.
It’s small enough to cut threads with a simple hand threading set
I have “1/4BSP19” here.
That’s very close to the edges indeed…

I also want to try for the first time, to anodize the body.
I already have the battery acid and the demi water.
I even have black textile dye stuff. (Never dyed them favourite jeans afterall…)

edit:
Who knows i will have the time for that too, because i’m running late with this project…
It sometimes takes some time to come up with solutions.


This is scratch…


Powder coated…


Burnt and filed off the coating.
Drill it out to fit an AAA, finish that later, drill-battery low…


One end needs to be smaller for the thread, so I put on a sleeve of copper (15mm pipe) to protect the rest.


Twisting these pliers round the end, nice and course :P, to narrow the end.


Threading.


Threaded.


Drilling out the pipe to fit AAA (drill charged :slight_smile: )


Some more pipe: the tail. I ground that 13mm speed drill to some 12mm to drill out the tail bit.


Threading the inside of the tail.


Looks promising…


And there we have the 2 parts screwed together.

…to be continued…

After a period of reconsideration and denial, i picked up on this again, with some new ideas.
Had to start over again because the first attempt was ruined…
So here’s a pic of how fairly nice you can drill out a tube with a spade bit (speed drill)

Practice makes perfect better.

New part: tailcap. This will turn out to be part of the head, as you will see.
Let’s call it the head bit.

I was rather proud of the threading and the rim without threads (i cut them away) that will slide over the o-ring.
The new main tube wasn’t threaded as nice as this, nor as nice as the previous main tube, but good enough…
But the head bit, where the threads are removed, was just too thin…
That wouldn’t result in a satisfactory handjob, so i decided to give it a little head :bigsmile:

Still a lot to be filed / ground away…
The head bit has to fit inside this actual head.
Hours of dremeling and what not later:

Problem with the thin rim solved…
Yeah, maybe I should have made that from 1 part, but i plan on 2 a colour finish, so it comes in rather handy. :slight_smile:

Because of the change of plan, the main tube had to be plugged.
I had some left over cheap thin but strong magnets, 2 pieces.
Packed them in alu sheet:

And then I forgot to take pictures for a while… :stuck_out_tongue:

But here’s the parts for now!
You can see the magnet is in its place now:

So this is the idea for now:

It will be a quest for ways to fit driver, led, switch and optics in the head…
It’s all rather tiny… :slight_smile:
It’s 66mm in length.
Tube diameter is 14mm.

(updated june 16, scroll down)

I made a slot in the head part, to fit a tiny rectangular MPCB, which will be made of a noctigon XP 16mm MPCB.
I choose noctigon for this because i think i can use all the heat transfer i can get.
I have some on their way, along with Nichia’s of which i plan to use one for this.

Introducing the switch i will use.
Small reverse clicky, couldn’t find anything smaller.
I gave it a centring ring.
Also in the picture a tiny alu knob, which will be sacrificed to make a button for the switch.

It will be a challenge to have that button there without wobbling, let alone waterproof…
A rubber boot would be simpler and waterproof, but i like this idea so much better. It just looks so good. :slight_smile:

Okay, so this:

is all put together for the picture, stuck on my old steel callipers with its tail magnet.
There’s a little felt drum inside to hold the switch in place.
So yes, the volume of that drum is all the space i have in there for the electronics…
It will take the + from the battery, it will switch the - at the top.
Somehow some leads will have to come out to solder on the MPCB.
This will be a challenge… :frowning:

You may have noticed i cut some threads off the battery tube.
I was sorry to have to do that, but it’s the only way possible…
It is 2½ turns screwing the top on / off.
Sounds like too little, but it has relatively big threads, so i don’t expect any problems.

It’s June the 16th.

More pictures of, and comments on progress, which is a bit slow…

Some parts to use:

Chromed ring from an old switch there, and the piece of tube with outer threading will get jobs.
Also introducing the TIR i will use. It’s these: http://www.fasttech.com/product/1250301
The one photographed is a little scratchy from handling and trying etc, but they come in 5, so it’s not a disaster.

So, this then, would be the pill:

It keeps the switch in place.
Piece cut out to flush it with the head-part, where the LED base will sit on:

Doesn’t look too impossible. :slight_smile:
I also opened up the rest a bit, to make room for the optics.

Still some threaded alu pipe left, and that chromed brass ring.
I didn’t take pictures for a while, because i needed all my attention for soldering that chromed brass ring to the aluminium pipe.
Results are okay though:

I can tell you how i did it though:
I pre-soldered the end of the threaded alu pipe, filed excess off to fit the ring over it.
Added some ‘normal’ flux (for bonding with the brass) and heated the lot.
Of course it was not right the first time, but i could correct it by heating it up again and adjusting position.

This makes me happy:

:bigsmile: 8)

Not sure yet how to retain the TIR in there yet.
Glue would be easiest…
But it starts to look like an actual flaslight now ! :smiley:

The plan is that the TIR will hold the LED base in place, pressing it against the flat bits of the pill and the head-part.

And then, when i found the drivers in my chaos, disaster reared its grotesque head on me…
Look:

That’s NEVER gonna fit in there :frowning:
Looks like i’ll have to bake my own electronics, so to get it in that mini pill…
I never know why or how, but assembling electronics i usually mess up…
Too many times it just didn’t work without known reason, so i’m a little allergic to soldering electronic parts together…

Anyway, that’s the latest on Jerommel’s handjob. :wink:

Look what i found, but had to repair first:

This one (on the right) is much smaller.
It’s been drenched in superglue after i had to bake a new leg on the IC and put the coil back, which just fell off… (it’s glued in place upside down now…)
It’s soooooo small….
But i managed to fix it. :slight_smile:

Yes:

It fits !
:slight_smile:
It’s approximately 10mm diameter now.
I had to grind it a wee bit smaller still though because…

The driver gets a copper wall.
I have to get the minus pole on top, but isolated from the pill.
The switch will be on top too, switching the minus pole to the driver.
So it will actually be a pill inside a pill…

Soldered it and leads also:

Could have been better on the bottom there, but it’s okay like this as a whole.
It still needs a ‘roof’ now, to make contact with the switch, but then i got my Nichia LEDs and Nocti’s in the mail today.
Made a mini Nocti of 5 x 11mm:

Yes,

it fits ! :slight_smile:

Camera has a hard time focussing all this tiny stuff:

Tried some sharpening afterward, but that doesn’t fool anyone…

.

Back to the driver encapsulation.
It has a roof, a sunroof…
Found a ring that just decided to fit perfectly, so:

I isolated the ‘wall’ with liquid enamel.
I could have used kapton tape, but I don’t know how long that will stick in place, so decided to do it this way.

And then a lot of things went wrong with the bezel and TIR…
I have no pics of it, but i tried glueing the TIR in the bezel, with super-glue.
This went okay, but the cyano-acrylate-vapor started to eat the PMMA surface, making it ‘frosty’.
I was too late with the WD-40 to stop / prevent that…
Had to take it out again, and come up with a way to make a groove inside the chromed bezel-ring for a retaining ring.
So it devised a contraption to spin it round and cut that groove with sharp pointy things…

I made a groove allright, but the solder joining between (chromed) brass ring and aluminium threaded piece failed on me in the process…
I tried re-soldering, of course.
Right picture shows the lot on my 80 Watts soldering iron.
And then i ended up with everything soldered to that brass thing i used to hold it… :Sp
I thought it would be just a tiny bonding, so i tried to screw the newly resoldered bezel out of that brass thingy…
Resulting in a very unhappy crooked ring… :_(

But i managed to bend it in shape again :slight_smile: as if it remembered it’s own original shape.
But i also decided to make a new threaded piece out of 12mm copper pipe.
This will of course solder easily to the chromed brass ring, and so it did.
It was difficult to get everything aligned properly again, so that the ring will end up sitting on the head without a gap, and that the TIR is also in line with the front.

The TIR is now retained by a ring (a coil of a spring), like it should be in this setup.
I might seal it up with ‘led-seal’ (just thinner based clear acrylic paint i have here in a spraycan :slight_smile: ) for water-resistance…
Also the retaining ring-spring is not stainless steel, so could be a good idea to coat / seal it.

But that chromed ring got a little damaged here and there… :frowning:
I must say though, the picture makes it look a lot worse than it is.

I also made a groove in the battery tube for an O-ring, and i’m fumbling with a switch boot.
I’ll probably skip the aluminium button i made earlier, because i can’t make that waterproof at all with the means i have.

Then there is the problem of the leads to the LED…
I have no way yet to get the leads out the front… :party:

To be continued…

So, another disaster has struck…
Driver died, unknown cause. :_(
Boy, was i disappointed…

I did make the pathways for the leads though.
I got a bit over enthusiastic perhaps, but the leads are more free to move this way, if that’s necessary…

Also a look at the bottom, where the magnet is.
Hadn’t shown that properly, but it’s perfectly ‘flush’ with the bottom end of the tube.

So, i had to come up with a driver…
Decided to use an MXDL driver (from 1 x AAA flashlight), because the parts are not the smallest of SMD components, the coil even has old-fashioned legs. :slight_smile:
I also decided to build it on the bottom of the switch.
I started with a new switch-bottom, as the previous one was too messed up eventually…

It took me hours…
It got later and later (this is normal of course :party: ), my eyes got so tired of macro vision.
It was rather difficult to be honest…
It’s all soooo small…. :Sp

But it’s all in there now, and it even works!! :stuck_out_tongue:

So now i have to come up with a bottom lid /disc for the driver, which will have the contact spot for the + pole of the AAA.
Solder the LED to the driver, and then it should work ! :smiley:

To be continued !
I might get it to work / finished (sort of) just in time!

So why bother wasting time updating this topic?
Because it actually helps me planning the next steps !
It gives me an overview that makes sense.

Of course the title is a pun !

Your votes please…
(someone mildly suggested I change it, so…)

Looking forward to what ever you build. Best of luck.

Been enjoying your sense of humor in your various posts. Great to have you around.

Allright, thanks.

And the joke’s on me, because it’s gonna be AAA.

O, right, fill up them posts!

Crop and downsize pictures first…

No problem with the title, just make sure it wont be a blow job in the end :stuck_out_tongue:

OMG that is funnyyyyyyyy!!!!

well, it’s only small, so I might finish prematurely… :stuck_out_tongue:

I would be happy to help in that dept. If you like, send me the images and I’ll prepare them and use my account on imageshack to post them or I can send you the direct links.

Nâh, I like to photoshop (Gimp actually) and stuff, but I have to get the camera cable, but not sure where it is…
I can use akamaihd.net :slight_smile:

You’ll want to enjoy the superb off-white tint that it’s famous for.

Why that Nichia?
I can imagine they have better colour, but not better performance.

I suggested it because it’s known for it’s tint. In a small light that is not trying to push boundaries, it might as well exceed in something and tint is strongly in a small lights favor. Why? Because with a small light you’re far more likely to be using it close to your self, colors mean far more a few feet away than a few hundred yards.

If it can’t be the best thrower, the most powerful, have the widest spill or just flat outperform every other light, why not be the best tint?

Don’t you figure watts by multiplying amps by volts? If so, then my AAA sized neck light is 12 watts. Of course, it’s IMR10440 Li-ion powered.

You’re right! :smiley:
But is the colour so much better than any CREE?

yes it is.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fanboy of Nichias. Just removed the 5000K variant from my personal EDC and put a de-domed XP-G2 1A in it. But still, for what it does, there’s not a Cree I’ve found to compare. I have a L2m shorty with a 219 High CRI and an MBI HF 2” copper light with same. They’re nice for impromptu macro shots. :wink:

And by the way, fabulous work you’re doing there! Those 2 pieces have joined together rather nicely! Well done!