… they are FRAGILE! I made up my mind that I hate working with them.
If you breathe on them wrong, you will dedome them. One triple dedomed by only taking off a Carclo optic, straight off and carefully. (optic not cemented in place) Two more just by handling, gently. I’ve ruined as many as I’ve installed successfully, and I’m good at working with small parts.
One I put down on the bench before putting it something, when I go to pick up the star within a minute, the dome has popped off and I never even touched or dropped it. Seems whatever Nichia uses to cement the dome on is lousy.
Crees can take it more… the only time I had an XP-G dedome is when the damned needle-nose slipped… took of all 3 domes slicker’n the scum off a Louisiana swamp! They are tough enough that when I’m doing the final assembly and pimping out, I can take a cotton swab with cleaner and very gently take off any dust or whatever. The Nichias? No way… won’t even touch the dome.
The upside is that they have the most beautiful tint you ever saw… I at one time had blowtorched my horribly green TK45 apart-don’t try this at home!-and just dropped in 3 Nichias. Now I can’t stop shining it all over, watching colors spring out all over!
Fair warning-they are worth the effort but a bitch to work with. |(
Just to clarify, I didn’t post this to bash these-just as a warning to be very careful with them. Wait’ll you see the colors!! Since I’m a night person, (I am like Nosferatu - my powers are weak in the daytime) I’m thinking on building a portable floodlight with these so I could do my weeding after dark, but I wouldn’t know what to use for a host.
you’ve gotta try to dedome an xm-l (if there isn’t heat involved). I’ve actually buffed nicks out of a couple xm-l domes w/ a q-tip in my drill (w/ plastic polish)!
I found an easier solution to that problem - a tiny a drop of clear urethane, just on the nick, then after it dries, a drop just big enough to coat the whole dome.
Oh, so you were talking about the Nichias again.. then they got bad glue and even worse phosphor. Cree glue is rock solid, phosphor is just slightly weaker..^^
Hm, any place to get the phosphor separately?
Might make an interesting “mule” by de-doming,
painting a phosphor layer on the inside surface of the flashlight lens itself?
I’ve done 2 HDS swaps a standard SWM V10R Ti swap and a V10R Ti “mule head” swap with the 219. On one of them, I know I dropped the emitter in the floor 3 times before I got it reflowed back on the new board. Maybe I’m lucky.
I think the glue just melts. Neither lost all its phosphor, but you can see in the spot a big chunk of electric blue where a bit of it tore off.
Yeah, you can look for “remote phosphor” and find the stuff at maybe Mouser or Digikey, I forget where.
But that really wants a pure blue or maybe royal blue emitter, not a “blue-white” — so you’d have to be able to remove the rest of the phosphor. I don’t see a good way.
I have a few remote phosphor panels, that make beautiful white light (I have them in 2900, 4000 and 5000k) but absolutely zero throw, even with a focused (“zoomed in”) aspheric, there is no throw at all. They work with both “regular” blue and Royal blue as well as with some xp-E’s I dedomed that removed the phosphors with the dome (dont bother trying to dedome gen 1 XP’s). Haven’t tried UV yet but I will tomorrow.
I’m curious if this is happening to others — mine dedomed after intermittent use, I’d put it into one of those $10 F13s, stock driver, run on high mostly.
So I”m wondering whether it’s just that I cooked the emitter and melted the glue, or nudged it off with the reflector hitting it, or if there’s an odd batch of them.
