I’m sitting on the fence about dedicating one of my lights from the group buy to a dedome.
…Should I dedome a neutral white or a cool white?
…Should I order an extra just in case it doesn’t work?
…What should I expect if I do it correctly?
When you want to dedome it, take CW.
Cause of coulor after dedoming and loose of Lumens.
Im not sure which tint is which on dedome tint shifting, but Id probably just buy another MCPCB from maxtorch (thats what is supposedly in these) and an LED of your choice to allow for tint shift. I think theres a thread (or two probably) which talks about which tints are nicest after dedome.
You could try these threads, I only skimmed the first posts.
I have ordered two. The U2 1A I will be de-doming definitely, the 3C I will be pulling out and replacing with a triple XP-L.
All of the lights I have de-domed I have changed to U2 1A before hand. I find it the best after de-doming.
If you want more throw and a tighter beam I would definitely de-dome and I would be starting with the 1A tint. Don’t buy a whole extra light as a backup, you can just buy another emitter if you kill this one. If you do it correctly, you should expect a warmer tint, increased throw, with a more intense hotspot and less spill…
These are coming in 1A and 3C. I guess I should plan a sacrifice of the 1A.
I’m sure dedoming has a place and when using a light meter can make a huge difference to lux numbers. But I’m not yet convinced in person.
I dedomed my CW Small Sun ZY-T13. The tint shifted from a perfectly acceptable CW to a sort of muddy greenish hue. The spill beam is now way dimmer than before and the hot spot smaller (although doesn’t really look anymore intense.
Outside I “think” it throws slightly further, but it certainly isn’t a night and day difference in throw. But the massive drop in spill beam output certainly makes it appear to now be a worse performing light than before. Overall I’m slightly disappointed and wish I’d left it be.
On this note, instead of dedoming an XM-L2 to the X6, I think I’d probably try an XP-G2 instead.
Something has gone wrong then Chicken. It is a well known fact which has been proved many times with lux meters etc that de-doming can almost double the beam intensity.
You need to choose the right tint to start with though as the colour can turn absolutely terrible, de-doming just any cool white LED isn’t the way to do it. As I said, whenever I de-dome an LED I make sure it is a 1A tint to start with as I have had the best results with that tint.
The spill beam will be less, de-doming is designed to increase the intensity of the hotspot and will lose lumens. I can easily notice the throw difference on every light I have de-domed and I don’t have any proper measuring equipment.
This is my de-domed TN31 with a U2 1A emitter. It is almost pure white…
A lot is personal preference. I’ve gotten to where I dedome every XM-L/XM-L2/XP-L I use almost immediately. There’s a great thread somewhere documenting various tint-shifts that result from dedoming in XM-L2’s. In the most general of terms, removing the dome will make the color warmer. Using a cool white LED shift towards neutral white when dedomed, and a neutral will shift closer to warm white when dedomed — again… generally. Dedoming is always a lottery in terms of how large of a shift there is, and some LEDs’ tints will turn kinda green after dedoming, and some won’t at all. In my (limited compared to some of the other folks on BLF) experience, I have had good success with XM-L2 1A’s and XP-L 2A in terms of the tint ending up fairly neutral without an annoying level of green hue most of the time. I started focusing on those after reading through the tint-shift thread. It seems tint bins ending in higher letters (A, B) generally end up with less non-white color shifts (ie: less green) and the shift is more horizontal on the color spectrum, while some lower letter bins (C, D) can end up with more of a green hue after dedoming. It’s always a lottery, but like I said, 1A’s and 2A’s have turned out well for me almost every time. I use either the gas-soak method or the hot+blade method depending on how ballsy and/or impatient I’m feeling at the time. The gas method has been darn near foolproof for me, while occasionally you can pull off a bond wire (generally killing the LED) prying the dome off when hot with a sharp, thin blade - particularly if the dome isn’t quite hot enough (hotter = softer, less likely to grab a bond wire on its way off the substrate).
Apart from the tint shift, you can expect the hotspot to be significantly smaller and the light to throw noticeably further. XM-L2’s have been shown (by others here on BLF) to lose some lumens output after dedoming - though many would argue, myself included, the gain in throw/intensity is worth it. XP-L’s don’t seem to lose much when dedoming for some reason. I’ve also found them to be easier to dedome (some have speculated that there’s a pocket of air under the dome above the phosphor).
All in all, I say go for it. I’ll be dedoming mine when it arrives - probably before I even turn it on for the first time. I picked cool white specifically for that reason so it’ll end up more neutral after dedoming.
Best of luck.
Yeah, all U2 1A I de-domed turned out nice in colour.
I EDC an X6 for a while now and de-domed the emitter the day after I got it. I use it mostly for my 2 mile shortcut to work, on old defunct unlit streets and forest trails.
Fits in that role nicely between my beloved C8 and L2m, which are just to throwie or floody for the task.
I’d give it a try, it’s not like the light is ruined if you don’t like it afterwards. 
Don’t forget that when you dedome you need to refocus the emitter in the reflector. This usually means raising it up further into the reflector. Leaving it at stock height you won’t get the full benefit.
FYI I just dedomed my new nitecore EA8, went from the factory 60k (actually measured at 57kcd) to 152kcd, nearly tripled.
I ordered also the cw because I want to dedome it…
How did you get the refocus??
If i were going to de-dome it i would save the original emitter, and dedome a 1A or even cooler tint to mod in the X6, as the tint will get much warmer after the dedome. then if you don’t like it you can always put the original back in.
The original emitter is a U2-1A…
Oops, typo. i should have mentioned a 0D, as i dedomed one of those and even that almost went to a neutral white.
Dedoming is not exactly predictable though… I think the colour/tint compensation by the dome is a variable by itself. Maybe the variance in dome thickness.
When binned, it took both variables - the output from phospor and the compensation by the dome - and adds up to the final result.
What I’m saying, let’s say tint = 9 can be both phosphor + dome = (4 + 5) or (5 + 4). You take out the latter and left with either 4 or 5. The actual math is more complex than this of course…
So yes, I agree with some other members here, if you like the original tint, don’t dedome it. You’ll have nothing to fall back to. Good idea to grab an extra emitter for the job.