I have not much time for hands-on hobbying lately, but apparently despite that I keep talking. So this afternoon all of a sudden I reached 3000 posts.
As said, I do not have many hours spare to do that brilliant and labor-intensive mod for a giveaway, what I am going to make is relatively straightforward but it should become a pretty nice EDC. These are the ingredients:
A small, cheap, but nice 16340 light (this one, luckily it is sold out now, makes it a even a bit exclusive ;-) ), 219B 92CRI on a Noctigon, 'NANJG92 comfy-style' based on a Qlite revA and one of those Vishay super-FETS (overkill in this light ), bit of solder braid for the tail spring. I will add an Efest 16340 IMR battery to the giveaway if the winner does not have a 16340 battery.
Rules:
-you must have at leasts 15 posts at Budget Light Forum outside giveaway threads to enter this giveaway
-one entry/person, the number of your first post in this thread counts as your entry number, that number is fixed at the moment of the winner draw, any number changes caused by deleting posts after the draw are not valid.
-(at the moment of the draw) your entry post must contain a (selfmade) picture of your worklight. That can be the light you use to light the hobby workspace (if you have a hobby), or else the lamp that lights your job workspace (if you have a job), or else any other lamp that is significant to you (nightstand?). (i.e. this is my worklight for close-up hobbying, a Convoy S5 with triple Nichia 219A 92CRI and beefed-up Qlite driver in a home-made adjustable stand, it is my most-used flashlight: )
-the giveaway ends and the winner will be drawn whenever the mod is finished (mod progress will be briefly reported below in this post) . I will use random.org to pick the winner.
Good luck! djozz
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-19th august. Soldered the star for 4-mode with moonlight, soldered a thin piece of brass on the plus-pad and added a layer of Kapton tape on the bare solder pads on the battery side of the driver. this was to clear any battery from other than the +-pad.
Cleared the pill from old driver and ledboard, sanded the top of the driver nice and flat, soldered the ledwires to the ledboard trying to make the solder blob flat as possible because the reflector will be close. Put Kapton tape on the underside of the reflector to prevent possible shorts later.
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-August 20. I soldered a small copper wire through the via in the outer ring of the driver to the FET-minus to make an extra electrical connection between the two sides of the board. I may need some extra resistance in the end, but I do not want it here.
some arctic silver5 was put under the led board and the board was fit onto the pill. the (very stiff and thick) wires were bended in a curve such that the solder connections were at the right spot for soldering to the driver, but they would also easily fold inside the pill when the driver was pushed in. The plus led-wire was soldered onto the driver:
Next the minus led-wire was soldered on top of the FET, and the driver pushed in. Two solder bridges opposite of each other were made between the driver outer ring and the brass driver retaining ring.
An extra Kapton tape cover was added on top of the led board (a square bit was cut out for the led) so that the solder joints on the led board would not easily scrape away the tape and short via the reflector, when the pill was screwed into the flashlight head.
The finished head:
And it works, 4 modes, the two lowest modes are very close, so I may swith the light to three modes. A quick tail measurement on high (no switch), with Efest IMR 16340 not fully charged: 3,43 A. A quick lumen test on high (with switch): 500 lumen after 30 seconds. That sounds like I will not do the tail spring copper braid mod: the current seems nicely limited to a bit under 3A and the poor Nichia led is already at over 80% of its maximum output. The light gets hot quickly and it has a nice manual overheat protection: when it is too hot to hold: switch to a lower mode ;-)
Next will be a less hasty test of the performance of this modded light. And some glam-pics of course :-)
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-August 21st, I ended with a few cosmetic touches, I had a spare AR-coated lens, and I like this mod so much that it has earned the blue tailcap (yet another exclusive: sold out at intl-outdoor ;-) ) . I also unsoldered the low low star because it was no different from low in this set-up, the UI is now L-M-H with memory.
I measured the output on a charged Efest IMR 16340, measurements were done 30seconds after switch-on: high-520lm , med-210lm , low-40lm, throw on high: 5.2 klux at 1m.
Glam pics:
I really like how this mod turned out, I think it is a really nice EDC-flashlight, the low and med settings are useful and can be run continuously, and it has an impressive blast on high (the runtimes should be 10minutes on high -but with manual thermal step-down after 1 minute-, 40 minutes on med, 8 hours on low). The tint is great as expected, the beam is very smooth but still with a distinct hotspot. And it tailstands. Perhaps this mod deserved a host that was a tiny bit more quality, but I must say this one works fine and is fantastic lightweight.
I will probably draw the winner of this giveaway tomorrow :-)