18650 headlight mod

During a recent conversation with a co-worker regarding headlamps it occurred to me that my headlamp collection was made up entirely of junk. Odd considering I'm kind of fussy when it comes to hand-held lights. After doing some research I bought a Zebralight h52w and love it because...well it's a zebralight. But as with hand held lights, I've just gotta mod. Since I'm obviously not going to mod a brand new zebralight (yet) I did some research on cheap, relatively light weight 18650 headlights with modding potential. The market is slim,very slim.

I ended up buying the "sipik-style" headlamp reviewed by RaceR86 in this thread. It cost me about 15 bucks for the lamp, headband, three color filters, battery charger, and two ultrafire 450mah 18650 cells off Amazon. Garrybunk's thread where he modded this headlight into a high CRI mule lead me to believe that there was a fair number of modding options to explore. I first tried to retain the zooming feature and increase lumens by using an XP-G2 or XM-L2 emitter but I found that there was insufficient focal length to properly focus the emitter and that the aspherical lens was just too small and/or crappy for decent throw. I tried using an XM-L2 and the reflector out of an S3 which worked but would have required some file work to "cone up" the outer surface to fit into the deep shouldered pill. It would have worked fine and I still might do it but I think I found an easier way.

I started out by fixing the tint and increasing horsepower. An XM-L2 U2 3c does that very well.

The cheapo 15 degree TIR optic from Fasttech works great with XM emitters.

The crappy driver was replaced with a nanjg 105D I had laying around from a C8 build this spring. I removed two chips, flashed four mode STAR off time firmware and added an off time capacitor. Replaced the wires with 22 ga silicone.

Another kyfishguy screw up.

The optic isn't quite long enough for the head to tighten down on so I used the lens from an S3 as a spacer.

All done!

The TIR makes a pretty beam.

Just for kicks I thought I'd point out that thermally adhering a 3/16" thick chunk of 3/4" aluminum rod to the pill would make the following pic a reality. Jus sayin...

Happy modding,

Brian

Nice mod. I'll have to keep an eye out for one. The pill was solid in yours?

As my headlight is my most used light BY FAR, it’s shocking we don’t have a BLF special edition headlamp yet. I’d die for a 1,500 lumens, MT-G2, mule in 4200k.

Its mods like this that have me looking at my own headlamps.Inspirational! :slight_smile:

Yes, solid pill. Linky

I use the heck out of some headlamps. I have 4 or 5 of wildly varying quality.

You know how I love your mods.
(BTW: one of your MiniMag triples I have is still kicking, I have run 20 to 30 battery cycles through it with out a hick up) :wink:

Any plans on making a few of these to release in the wild in return for some small cash prizes???

I think I probably will, they're fun to work on and there's plenty of possible variations. Don't think I'd build one over 3 amps though.

So how did you immobilize the slide?

The idea here is to get a stack height that allows the bezel to screw down tightly with the slide in its fully extended position. This also exerts pressure through the TIR and onto the noctigon holding it down against the pill.

Ahh i see. That makes sense.

I have the same model headlamp, but I just did an emitter and driver swap. I like the even flood of the aspheric in a headlamp.

I have the same “SK-68-like” headlight, I replaced the emitter with a Nichia on a copper board — and that made it my first really pleasing headlight, out of more than a dozen I’ve fiddled with, going back to old incandescent types. Kept the original driver thus far.

(My eBay original was $9 and iffy — the spring broke off the little contact board inside almost immediately, got a partial refund.
Finally managed to improve on what broke, a “stuck on” (and probably cold-soldered) original, doing some bending and twisting to make a real physical connection between spring and board, then resolder that.)

Oboy! Oboy! someone, please, start that process.

I wish a few of the Chinese companies that make lights would actually bring a “designer” here to participate in such a conversation. LIkely they’d gather different ideas and end up producing different products, but maybe someone would stay with us long enough to work out a really good and practical spec.