I am wanting to replace the led in this light. I am having a problem with getting the black disc off the top. It will not pill up, scratch off, pry off, pull up, nothing. Very frustrating. Tried small tip, real small tip and even smaller tip screw driver. Trying not to destroy anything that I am removing but as you can see I have scratched the surface of the disc. Here is pic to of the problem pill. Hopefully someone will have a easy solution to my first attempt at a mod.
Thanks :~
edited - added pic of the pil thanks
NEW INFORMATION
Thanks for the help guys. The original emitter was an XR-E Q5. Really liked the throw of the light but the flood was not very wide. I installed another XR-E emitter that is Green. When installing the new one I mixed Fujik thermal paste and Fujik thermal adhesive.
The original Q5 was showing a tailcap reading of 1.2a but with the new Green led it is only pulling 770ma. Dont really understand why but I have some new drivers laying around and they will hopefully take care of that issue!
I like the new color and it throws good still. Just need to put more current to her!
These are the before pics
Finished pics below
This is with the cover semi destroyed and orgional emitter
Pic of the new emitter installed and put back in the host.
beam shots of a generic cree green drop-in on left and the small sun on the right. pics were taken with an iphone 4s not the best but better then none.
First of all: It wont work without partially damaging the ring. Well, except maybe you glue something on with something very strong like JB weld, tho I didnt test it. I used a needle, peeked through and pulled it up. My disc looks like shit now but it doesnt influence the beam.
I just used an awl with a 90 angle on the end….pushed it through and pried it off. I didn’t even put it back in…I generally JB weld (with some black epoxy dye in it) over my solder connections anyway
but, you could heat up the end of a hot glue stick and it will bond very well to that plastic, then once it cools, yank it out.
never thought it would be difficult to get the disc off. i figured the hardest part would be with soldering the wires on to the new emmiter and getting it centered. will work some more with it. Wonder what they used to hold that dang thing down with? I was pumped about putting a new emmiter in and thought that it would be a little more simple then this.
No left the factory driver since I was getting 1.2a from it with the white led, so I figured I would have similar results with the green led. But after the swap found out that was not true, only got 770ma. That will be next swap I have a 1.4a single mode that I was thinking about putting there. Also have a multi mode KD 1500 also.
your welcome, that is the same reason I installed the green led is for some distance shooting. Hopefully it will be alot brighter after the driver change. Going to try and swap that driver this week or hopefully by this weekend.
Will post those results when the swap is complete.
How would you do that? Would it be something like attaching the red(+) to a point on the positive battery terminal, and the blue (-) to the outer ring of the driver?
I dont remember if the driver was +, - or both regulated. I could check that tomorrow as I have it still lying around somewhere. I did a driver swap because I wanted modes.
I guess you have a DMM, so you might want to check the max. current the LED can handle and then decide if a driver swap would give you a real benefit. Just use some thinner wires somewhere in the connection to prevent the LED from being fried (I killed an XML with thick leads directly attached to a cell, lesson learned).
If you cant wait until tomorrow, you could also try to find out if the driver is - regulated on your own, if it is, then theres not much to do to make it DD. Just remove the tailcap and lens and use some croco clamps. Connect negative pole of the cell to DMM and then touch the negative contact of the LED star with the other test lead. I guess you know how to use the ampere setting on your DMM. :)
/edit: Guess I was wrong, it seems I threw away the original driver. :/
Ok that is a good to know I really didnt think of by-passing the driver like that. I learn everything from reading and/or doing it wrong. Little slow sometimes as picture by my name shows…… lol
Thanks
Tonight had time to swap out the driver to try and raise the current going to the led. It is currently pulling 700ma off the small sun origional driver. I had purchased a couple of these singe mode drivers that are reviewed here . Installation went smooth and it pressed into the pill perfectly, then soldered the positive spring. Installed back into the host and installed battery, it turned on! Measured the current at the tailcap, it was 730ma. Gained 30ma that is the story of my life. Oh well back to the drawing board. Also I received the 1 mode version that I ordered, have heard numerous stories that it was a crap shoot on which one you get (1 mode or 5 mode).
I wonder why green leds dont pull the same amount of current the white ones do? Surely one of you smart guys will be able to answer that. maybe forward voltage or something like that?
Thats weird. My blue one from MF can pull up to 2A, Erik got a green one from MF and it pulls 1.6A. Have you tried measuring with thicker leads? Or directly at the LED?
