I have this Garrity flashlight I picked up a long time ago and I’m wanting to toss in my 17mm driver and XPG led into it since I don’t think i’ll be getting to my 2D Mag mod any time soon. Anyway I found that the “Pill’ that retained the original driver fits a 17mm driver inside it’s opening, but I have no way to keep the driver itself from moving around(if not for the little ears on the PCB it would fall through the opening).
The two things that come to mine are gluing it in place somehow or cutting a grove on the wall to put a wire retaining ring of some sort….except i’m not sure how to approach that route.
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Ok, editing the thread to turn it into a full build thread…new pics below.
The victim…
Luxeon LED, no idea which version but I just remembered that’s what the package said it was.
The “pill”
The pill and LED top mounted in the flashlight. Retaining thingie goes on top. This whole thing drops down into the flashlight and is secured by the top retaining thinige.
Seeing how to the XP-G R5 will look before figuring out how to secure it.
Battery thingie. Ground on the outside, positive on the center, ends up working perfect with the driver.
And as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I tested the driver and it does make proper contact with the battery module….which I should take a pic of now…brb.
The few things i have to make a sleeve are either too thick or not large enough diameter. Need some Old Lumens copper magic to resize some of the copper stuff I have laying around.
Some more details about the light might help. Like, what is the pill made of, how does the pill fit with the rest of the light, and how does the battery setup connect to the driver?
Pill is aluminium. The pill drops into the body of the light and is basically just sitting inside of the body being held in by a retainer(that goes on top of the led’s separate pill which rests atop the driver pill).
Probably just need to start the build thread on it since I already tested the driver to see if it made contact with the battery. Which is does…GREAT SUCCESS. Gluing the driver in place from the top side definitely would be the simplest solution to this. I just like to over complicate things…
If you don't need the driver to make electrical contact with the pill, just glue it from the top side with some high temp epoxy or Fujik. If you need the driver to make electrical contact with the pill, that would be trickier.
I would use epoxy and glue a copper ring (even paper clip or split ring) inside the tube to serve as a shelf for the driver to sit on. It doesn’t have to be a ring so long there is 3 contact points to help seat the driver from sliding down the tube.
Now with more pics! Soon as I secure the driver in place and the LED it’ll be done…then off to my aunt so I can take her Pelican M6 Lithium light and mod that for funsy!
Well I just blinded myself. Not sure what the original LED is but I did more testing and the setup wasn’t working at all…took it all apart, and since the old LED is easier to connect leads to without soldering I connected it to the new driver…and it worked fine, seems something is up with the switch, probably not making contact with the bottom of the battery holder….but damn the old LED was bright as hell with the new driver!
So I discovered that US pennies are a about the right size to fit in the original LED pedestal, since the Rebel LED was taller I decided to stack 2 pennies to give it the proper height again for the XP-G. The pennies are Pre-1980 pennies.
Then the thermal epoxy came in and I got to work. Drilled the holes and ran the wire through and soldered it to the star. Wasn’t perfect but there is play in…a few of the pieces so I can get the emitter more centered by adjusting somethings…but…
She works!
There is an issue with battery contact, I hit the tailcap last night and the light didn’t want to turn on. Apparently the legs on the battery holder got compressed and lost contact to the switch or the driver since I had to bend the legs up to make contact with the switch.
