some nichia mods (SK98/bike light/tube lights)

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

Like many others I’ve been interested in nichias, for their supposed gorgeous tint and high CRI, and I’ve played a bit with the warm white 119 previously available at fasttech (my scratch build entry, the camera lux used one of those)

a while ago fasttech got Nichia NVSL219AT in stock (discussion about them here ), and I ordered a bunch.
Now I’ve used some of them for modding, and wanted to share some of the results!

Let’s start with the “SK98 clone”
this flashlight was quite boring, ugly tint, though resistor modded driver so it always started on high.
So I thought: “what if I try a dual nichia mod with this one?”
So i reflowed 2 nichias on a 20mm dual xp-* board and tried it. i liked it, but didn’t really want the “bug eyes” when focused, so i used a couple of 20mm boards as a spacer, and managed to get rid of the most annoying bug eyes, leaving only squares that would let you know that you’re using a dual led-flashlight. I also had to mod the ledboard retainer to accept the new led board.
https://imgur.com/a/ThRkS

flood:

fully zoomed:

now i like it much better! a nice feature of this flashlight is that if you zoom it halfway you get a rectangular hotspot!

XM-L bikelight
http://imgur.com/a/n4nOA
i bought a bikelight from one of wallbuys crazy sales, but i have always thought it is too throwy for my bikelight preferences. the reflector is very similar to a c8 reflector, so there haven’t been enough spill for me.

I don’t own any DC-fix, but i did buy some matte/”invisible” tape, that i have covered both sides of the glass lens with for a much more diffused beam profile.

And since i liked my SK98-mod, i also modded this light with a dual nichia setup! a reflector based flashlight usually gets a nasty donut hole in the middle of the hotspot, but since the light is so diffused it doesn’t matter here!

donut:

just diffused and smooooth beam:

Ultrafire tube lights
http://imgur.com/a/ZbTDr

i have bought some in the past when they’ve been very cheap. can’t say I’ve used them much neither, and they don’t make too good mod hosts neither since they’re feeling a bit too cheap. they used crappy tinted xp-e, and had a tailcap draw of ~1A on high.
I think I’ve modded one with a NW XT-E once, but the tint shifted across the beam very noticeable, so i changed reflector for a frosted TIR, and had an ok flashlight for indoor use.
Another one had its led bathing in acetone, and had a bit tighter hotspot.
But when i got the nichias i reflowed them on 16mm alu boards and put them in the tube lights, and put TIR optics in them as well, one clear and one frosted:

both

frosted

clear

My wife makes some silver rings and was going to sell some of them on a christmas market/fair, and needed some portable light. just using the flashlights would work, but i thought i could make them look better.
So i got some tree (probably some alder) that i bored out and made the flashlights fit into.
warm white light from a hanging piece of wood where the bark was left looked really nice! since the flashlights had low max amps and we used them outside and on medium i wasn’t worried of the insulating wood.

Thanks for reading! feel free to ask anything or to comment…

2

Nice mods on the flashlight logs… That hides the lights very well. What do you think of their warm tint? I really like it, and was not a fan of warm tints prior to buying some of these. So they have opened my horizon on the warmer end fo the spectrum.

Good review, but where do you find dual LED boards?

3

Nice, I like the zoomie mod, halfway focused and you have yourself a ‘widescreen’ hotspot.
Fully focused and you have yourself a pair of headlights.

The frosted optics look nice and smooth. I thought the clear optic was using double LED but now I see it’s just a single.
Btw, are these the same ones tested to be under 3000K? Yours look very neutral like 4500K.

4

Nice work. I need to make a dual zoomie like that. The light logs are pretty cool too.

5

Very creative. Love the log lights.

6

Nice, they do not look too warm in your pictures. I am excited to see them in my triple setup.

7

I like the warm tint. Since I’ve modded flashlights that i didn’t use or like very much, the warm tint makes them special in a good way :smiley:

The boards are from fasttech: https://www.fasttech.com/products/1611/10006929/1554905-20mm-aluminum-base-plates-for-cree-xp-g-xp-e-c

8

I’m not sure if the ‘widescreen’ hotspot is extra useful, or just on the fun side. I have used it as a bike light though, and that seemed to work well.

The optics are from fasttech as well i think, and the frosted one is really smooth, so outdoors you kind of miss some throw…

These are really warm white, they’re even warmer than the warm white nichia 119 I’ve tried earlier. I have only used automatic settings on my phone camera, so tintwise these pics can’t be trusted :bigsmile:

9

That is actually pretty cool. I liked the concealed flashlight in a log. Very well thought of! Thanks for sharing.

10

I have ordered another sk98 from gearbest, that i probably will mod the same way. If you’re not in a hurry I’ll let you know how it is when i receive it www.gearbest.com/led-flashlights/pp_149048.html

The logs turned out really well, yes! Wouldn’t have been half as good without the warm light though!

11

Love how you put it in wood! I have some 3W leds that might look nice as home lamps in wood.