I’m looking for a 14mm copper pad for an XM-L2, a few days of goggle searches returned nothing easy, is there any off the shelf options and if not can either a Noctigon of sinkpad be filed down to 14mm?
Yes, a 16mm can be ground down to 14mm
They do have 10mm sinkpads but the solder points are pretty small
Might we inquire what you are putting this into?
Goggle might help, but did you try Google? 
From this master modders thread
Perfect, I have some Noctigon’s on hand, does filing them down leave a full pad? The only stars I’ve filed down before left sucha small amount of pad it was almost impossible to solder too.
I’m using it in an old 47’s quark I have, its toast so I’m putting a custom qlite in it from RMM (single mode @ 3A with a 2 minute step down) with the head loose, with the head tightened it grounds out and is in direct drive.
Quark pills aren’t very good thermally
Yes, if you take a 16mm and turn it down evenly all the way around it will leave the pad in the center and still have enough meat to soak up the heat
Notice the center ring, that is the marking for a 10mm sinkpad with solder positions, at 14mm the grind will stop between the 16mm and 10mm…you should be good to go
With the noctigon, the electrical trace you can see…you might have to scratch off the solder mask to be able to solder the wires as grinding might remove the outer wire solder locations
You may also have to make wire notches too
oh and don’t grind it with the emitter on there…just in case
I can tell you now…those little lights at 3A get hot FAST!
I have a Convoy S2 and S5, not alot of meat (sure that copper sinkpad or noctigon will help…but where is all that LED heat going to go?)…this is why I got it in 2100mA, once I got STAR V1.1 with the “turbo” timeout and fallback to approx 50% pwm (effectively a 1400~mA drive), I added the 7135’s to get it up to 2800mA…3A is just 380mA chips vs the 350 chips…I like soldering stars 2,3,4 down
Gives moon mode, Hi->Lo mode, and no memory so every time I turn it on it starts wide open but still has 4 more levels to step thru
Not sure what the Qlite options are though
Those are some teeny tiny lights! Pretty cool!
Thanks for the details, so for clarification even if I grind all the pad off a Noctigon I can just scratch away the red and expose more pad to solder to?
I’m doing this in a 2xCR123 quark, I could remove a chip or two if you think I’m pushing it to far…
Yeah you can do that, just make sure you don't shot the trace with the the copper core when soldering the leads.
I bought some from here - http://www.ebay.com/itm/221334378574?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
They're perfect for what you want, although you would have to wait to get them, like everything out of China...
Perfect, ordered, thanks.
In the mean time I’m going to go ahead and grind down the Noctigon since I have the parts I need and want to get it finished up but those will be nice to have on hand.
Hmm, I hesitate to say this as Im not certain, but I have a sneaking suspicion someones going to tell you about the dielectic dielectric die an insulation layer between the copper pad and the contact side that acts as as an insulating layer preventing good heat transfer. A layer the Noctigon and Sinkpad do not have. Or something like that.
Those are just regular boards made of copper not like Noctigon or Sinkpad.
Ah I see, oh well, it was four bucks…
Can someone exain the difference?
The cheapie copper boards perform slightly better than aluminum.
The noctigon/sinkpad boards perform much better in comparison.
sinkpad/noctigon remove the dielectric layer under the LED, direct heat path to the copper star, conventional, the heat has to soak thru a “heat insulator” to get to the copper star…result…LED runs about 10-15 degrees hotter…that heat = lower light and/or higher current and less life of the emitter
If you are really good…you can cut that center dielectric out, then solder the emitter…not as good but better than having that insulator between the emitter and the heatsink
I explain it better here
From IOS website, you can see the difference.
I've done filing/sanding work with a 16 mm SinkPAD to get down to fit a AAA Tank007 E10 light here: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/22831. Worked out great, not that difficult to do.
Wow thanks war hawk, that explains it perfectly. I don’t think I can cut the center out myself so I guess the 5 from china eBay will go into the parts bin and I’ll continue buying Noctigon’s. Oh well what’s $4 for happiness.
If I did cut the dielectric layer off is there just air under the emitter or do I fill it with something? What makes contact?
I have not seen any comparison to one of these copper bases with a dielectric layer vs an ordinary aluminum vs a noctigon... I would think the copper base would certainly be much better than aluminum, but not as good as noctigon. But I think we're probably talking really minor differences in the big picture of thermal conductivity.
I like using copper simply because it is typically thicker and I find it easy to work with (outside of it's thermal properties). Can't say I would go to the trouble of etching/drilling out the dielectric to insert copper into that void, but I have been known to spend ridiculous amounts of time doing minor things like that, in the past... 
There is a post with a thermal image of both, one with dielectric layer between LED and star, one with no dielectric layer between LED and star, and there is a significant difference in temp according to the thermal readings. It happens to be a few a posts up from here. Maybe not this particular star, but a dielectric layer nonetheless.
There is suggestion that ally or copper without dielectric layer are not so different as to warrant the fervour re: copper.