Modding the Wurkkos TS10

Replaced the optic, Star and all LEDs in my TS10:

Background:
I have a first run Wurkkos TS10 that suffered a malfunction. One of the emitters was only running at half brightness. I speculate that this was caused by running the light on Vapcell H10 batteries. These are low-resistance cells, from which the TS10 can draw 7 amps, which is more than the emitters are rated for.

I subsequently attempted to reflow the emitters, but that didn’t help. My star looked messy after the reflow, but the dim emitter didn’t brighten. I later went back to using Vapcell H10s in it after the reflow, but then another emitter mostly died… with just one corner lit and the rest dark.

Note that the problems I had with my TS10 appear to be unique. Nobody else has reported any such problems on an unmodded H10, so the initial malfunction I had might have just been a fluke. And we shouldn’t generalize from the second led failing as that only happened after I opened it up and reflowed it a few times. In my opinion, a sample size of 1 broken light is too little to conclude that the TS10 has any design defects.

Regardless, since the stock emitters weren’t working, I decided to swap in a new star and different emitters.
Initially, I thought about swapping in a star and optic from an FWAA. Doing so would give a lot more lumens than a stock TS10. However, I wasn’t entirely happy with this option. First it would have meant scrapping a perfectly good FWAA. Second, XP sized emitters in an FWAA optic produce a beam that is a bit too floody to me.

Instead, I decided to swap in a standard 20mm triple star with Carclo 10507 narrow spot optic. There appeared to be room inside the light if I filed both the star and the optic down.

A couple hours with a handfile and here is the result:

Note that the 10507 optic is a bit taller than the original optic. This meant the bezel could not screw down all the way which is why there is now an o-ring visible between the bottom of the bezel and the pill. Fortunately, the bezel is threaded all the way down so there’s no chance it will come off and the light is still waterproof.

Here are some shots of the filed-down optic and the star.

Initially, I swapped in LH351D emitters which are visible in the above picture. I’ve since swapped them out and replaced them with some of my few remaining good-tint (non-greenish) 4000K 95CRI SST-20. When my shipment of 519a arrives I might swap the leds again, but I’ll experiment with the 519a on other lights first.

The hardest part of this mod was the aux leds. The new star lacked traces or bondpads for the aux leds. Instead, I bent the 2 wires over a bare part of the star and soldered a colored led between them. It worked, but trying to solder a 2.5mm SMD led between 2 floating wires is a royal pain. I wasted a ton of these little LEDs trying to get it done before I made a tool to flatten the wires against the bottom of the star to make the soldering easier.

Excuse the mess on the star. It’s mostly thermal grease from the install. Some will get wiped off before I close up the light, and the rest isn’t visible when it is assembled.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with this mod.

  • The light is only a little longer than an unmodded TS10 and still shorter than an FWAA.
  • It’s considerably brighter than an unmodded TS10.
  • The beam pattern is quite focused with decent throw. Anyone who is familiar with triples and the fairly standard Carclo 10507 optic should be familiar with the beam pattern. It’s using the same size leds and optic that fits in an FW3A. It is much more focused than an FWAA.
  • It now works on Vapcell H10 without risk of damaging the LEDs.

I would be interested in seeing how this modded light compares to an unmodded TS10, especially the upcoming 4000K version. I will have to compare when my next TS10 arrives.

1 Thank

Nice mod , it doesn’t look like this optic should fit inside there :smiley:

There must be some non negligible light loss from where it’s truncated though ?

Some light is lost at the edges of the bezel. At a guess 10-15%. But overall it is still very bright. And it makes up for bezel loss with a stronger emitter and more focused beam.

I love seeing the creativity and hard work of the people that hang out here. Thank you for showing off your project. It’s impressive that you found a way to retain the aux led functionality.

Dedomed 519A isn’t exactly what you would call throwy behind the FWAA optic, but it is definitely less floody than domed behind the same optic. 10507 is definitely more throwy however.


Dedomed 519A 4500k vs stock TS10 6000k


Domed 519A 4500k vs stock TS10 6000k


Here is my mod with FWAA MCPCB and optic. Have you considered putting the aux in the middle like I did?

BTW you can order the FWAA optic and MCPCB a la carte.

Since the TS10 optic appears to be more focusing than the FWAA one, personnaly what I’d rather do is make a new 3535 MCPCB for it.
I’m waiting for my TS10 (red 4000K from ali) to arrive then I’ll trace a PCB.

That’s great, I can’t wait!

congrats on your mod…

can you share a photo of the beam of your carclo 10507, side by side with one from a FWAA?

I am starting to consider doing one myself to order from jlcPCB (despite having no prior PCB tracing experience…). Did you happen to follow through with tracing a new 3535 MCPCB for the TS10?