WIRE GLUE and one of it's possible applications for flashlight modders
The star of the show is wire glue purchased from ebay for a few usd. Ebay seller good-helper. Apparently it is a glue which when it hardens has aproximately the same effect as soldering. No special equipment needed (toothpick), not messy and no heat involved. Does it work? Read on...
The quinea pig for the test is a rather badly constructed but otherwise likeable single 18650 Q5 zoomie.
The 7W big sipik wannabe clone disassembled.
The head business. Notice the poor pill which is the big negative of this flashlight.
The bad quality stock pill. Note the bare negative wire that was pressed with the driver for achieving negative contact
to the driver. I do not like this kind of shortcuts, so off they go.
Emitter, foam padded and stock press fitted cheesy blinky driver:
Now onto reworking it. The emitter wires were unsoldered and wire glue was applied to improve the heat transfer from the
emitter to the aluminium pill. I applied some amount with a toothpick. Don't do it with other tools you still want to use one
day. On the right the replacement driver of choice the famous single mode 1050mA AMC7135 based linear regulator. I like
multimode drivers but for this one i opted for 1 mode only.
The glue dries pretty quick. Thermal conductivity is still to be determined but i expect it to be better than fujik themal
glue for this kind of application. In the meantime i soldered the driver wires and smoothened the edges of the driver with
some heavy grit sandpaper.
The wire glue has achieved some easy hardiness. Time to carefully solder the wires to the emitter. I use lead based solder
0,5mm thick with flux. Works a treat. Remember to always clean the tip of the soldering iron.
The pill almost finished with the driver pressfitted with help from heavy duty pliers. Used some clips to securely keep the
emitter in place for the wire glue to harden properly.
It is time for the final touch with wire glue. One of the most irritating "features" of aluminium pills is lack of soldering
possibilities since solder do not like to stick on aluminium. It is possible but it is really hard to do. Wire glue? No problem!
The application is strightfoward and really easy to do. It is really a pleasure to work with.
Some final assembly.
It is done. But will it work? Looks like it does.
It really does. (poor excuse to add another picture)
We can't really finish this without a beamshot... can't we?
Conclusion:
The zoomed in beamshot i was unable to take. Due to the lack of more subtle camera adjustments i was unable to make one that would look
nearly decent. Actually i was unable to get anything looking remotely as square emiter die projection. On the beamshot the center portion is
lit pretty exaggerately. In real life it is not seen at all and appear rather uniform as with most other zoomies. Must be a camera thing or something.
All in all it worked out as i hoped for. The flashlight gets warmer faster even with less current fed to the emitter from the stock driver. This
translates directly to better heatsinking. I wish i had some matte black paint to coat the pill. I will do it at a later time.
The wire glue stuff clearly has some good potential in countless applications where soldering is not up to the job.
I needed approx. 1h to do it with picture taking included. Some of you would probably do it in much less time. But you probably do not have one
fluffy assistant that couldn't care less for flashlights and wanted some tender time just when i was in the middle of the project.
She has the power to turn me around her nail. Always. I had to do that right in the middle of the project only to end up cleaning
the flashlight even more than usually needed to remove all the tiny hairs she left behind everywhere. But she's so nice anyway
so i don't mind.
That's all folks!
Wire glue - highly reccomended!
When it dreis does not become an elastomer like the fujik glue. It's hard but not very much. Can be scrapped somehow easily (at least from a toothpick).
Didn't bother to draw a 10cm line and measure the resistance but it is probably minimal. If someone finds it highly resistive, thicker you go the less resistance
there will be. At least that i was being told in school.