I want a 500lm+ keychain light but couldn’t find any, the fenix E15 looks like a possible candidate for XP-L + 12mm fet driver mod, I wonder if anyone has done it before?
I already modded a Fenix e05 SS with a direct drive XP-L, very bright for the size but battery only lasts a minute and I wish there was more throw.
Here’s a picture found on amazon showing the guts:
The board seem to be easily removable but not sure about the stock XP-E?
Id like to do the same with the Fenix LD02. I’m just not sure how to go about extracting the pill without doing to much damage.
I modded my Fenix LD02 tonight.
Removing the pill was a royal pain. They’d used quite a bit of threadlocker on it. First I tried inserting tweezers in the 2 little holes in the bottom of the driver and turning… no luck. Then I drilled the holes slightly wider with a pin vise drill and tried inserting needle nose pliers. Still no luck…. but that did kill the driver. Oops!
I tried lifting the driver with a small pick and was able to pull it most of the way out of the light. It’s a 2-board sandwich. I finally tore it off the light to take a look at it. With the driver off I had a clear view of the pill. I tried heating it with my soldering iron, but that didn’t produce enough heat.
Finally I reinserted the bottom layer of the driver and then turned REALLY hard with my needle-nosed pliers. It seemed to be really bending my pliers. I thought they’d break before it turned. Fortunately, that did it, enabling me to unscrew and remove the pill.
With the pill out I filed down a 12mm driver from Mountain Electronics so it would slot into the pill. I drilled 2 divots partially through the bottom of the new driver to allow me to screw or unscrew it with tweezers. Then I replaced the stock XPE with a 5000K neutral white high-intensity XPL. I used a small pick to trace all the threads on the pill and head to completely remove all the threadlocker.
Screwed it back together and it seems to work. Much brighter than before. For its size, it’s quite bright, but still won’t win any contests against lights using larger batteries.
I don’t have a way to measure the output, but on a fresh cell it’s brighter than my 500 lumen Zebralight SC5w. At a guess, I’d say it puts out maybe 600 lumens. One thing that holds it back is the tiny aluminum star. This light would work better on direct copper. I don’t think I have any direct copper stars in this small size though.