Thanks to Tido and NightCrawl for the inspiration in this thread and Dr. Jones for his driver here’s my modded UF-H3. I used this light as is came from the factory for a couple years. Then I began refining my led tastes and began moving over to warmer and higher CRI lights. I purchased a Zebralight H600FW, and liked the longer runtimes and the warmer color, but I missed the full flood beam with no hotspot what so ever I had from my old UF-H3. The frosted lense from the Zebralight didn’t cut it. I saw how nice the Nichia 219 running as a mule (no lens) looked and I thought it would make a perfect headlight. I was right. Here’s how I did it for anyone who wants a perfect 18650 headlight.
I reflowed a Nichia 219 onto a 16mm pcb both purchased at illumination supply. It would have been easier to just by a nichia on a 10mm board, but they were out of stock at the time. I watch an Old-Lumens video on how to reflow an emitter and he made it look easy enough for me to try. I had to dremel the board down to size and make some notches for the wires.
I also dremeled the light a bit, adding a arch to allow emitter to slide into place.
I cleaned off some spots to solder to
Nice fit
DrJones reprogrammed a NANJG101 1.4A driver for me. He put his “lumodrv”: TheKlone35 - modded on it, which I have to say is the perfect UI for a headlight. I like it way better then the ZL UI. I asked him to put 3 main modes 5%/35%/100. These modes are quickly accessible, plus there is the option to ramp up or down with 33 linear steps at any time. I love it. I mostly use the 35 mode and get about 7 hrs runtime at that level. Not as efficient as the ZL but good enough for me. DrJones was great to work with and without his help this headlight wouldn’t as nice as it is.
I had to dremel the driver down a bit to make it fit in the brass ring that gets press fit inside the flashlight. I opened up the inside diameter of the brass ring as much and I felt comfortable, then kept dremeling the driver down until it fit inside the ring. I was nervous about screwing up the driver but it survived the operation.
Here is the driver with all the wires soldered on
All wired up with Teflon coated wire.
I tried to shove as much aluminum as I could inside. I cut of a chunk of heatsink off of some motor controller and ground and filed it down enough to barely fit.
I used thermal epoxy to secure the led in place and pot the driver, then I mixed up some thermal epoxy with some thermal grease and filled in all the air voids inside.
The original plastic lens was cracked in half so I took a glass lens off an old AAA flashlight and used silicone and JB weld to protect the emitter. Its not pretty, but I care more about the function than the form.
Here it is with some of my other headlights. UF-H6 (my next mod), Zebralight H600FW, Modded UF-H3, UF-H2.
I opened up the UF-H6 and it looks like it will be a great candidate for a future build.
Here is a bowl of strawberries illuminated by the Zebralight H600FW
And here it is lite up with the nichia 219 headlight
Heres a crude beamshot of all four headlights from left to right, Zebralight H600FW, UF-H6 (with PWM lines), UF-H2, Modded UF-H3
Thanks for reading.