A Day of Fails and Other Fun with Osram Oslon SSL 4000K 92CRI Emitters. Day Two: Fail becomes a Win. New emitters and a new tint

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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Ahh, a day off work. Time to get busy on the triple I’ve been wanting to build, with the 92CRI 4000K Osram emitters I got from Mouser, and the aluminum DTP triple Osram boards courtesy of ReManG.
Osram SSL @ Mouser

Okay, you already know that there is a fail involved, but the technique was solid so I like to post so other members can draw from the good, and the bad.

Start with the reflow. It took me a little googling to figure out how to tell the pos. from the neg. on these Osrams. My first time with these emitters, and they’re a bit of a different animal.
It went well. I used CR123s and 16340s to test at each step.

The next obstacle is that the boards are designed for series. In order to run parallel a little extra wiring is in order. This can get tricky and messy, but I’ve done it before and will pass on my no-headache technique.
First, use Teflon wire. It’s thinner and isn’t flexible. You bend a wire to where you want, and it stays in that position.
Second, don’t keep jumping from pad to pad with a bunch of separate little wires. They’ll keep shifting off of one another.
Instead, measure and pre-solder all the pieces together before attaching to the board.




The board goes on top of the aluminum spacer from MTN with a Carlco optic up front.

I put a little blue loctite on the optics legs to hold it in place, and lightly clamped it down.
(It didn’t end up holding)

Next I wired up a MTN DD FET driver and proceeded to put the pill in the head. This is where things started to go wrong. It wasn’t threading well, and I could feel wires twisting around. It got jammed up.
Oh oh. My first miscalculation. I didn’t measure the SinkPad! I’m used to those nice round Noctigons. All those little corners on the SinkPad made it a little too big and got hung up in the threads.
I got the pill out and used a sanding drum to round off the corners. Something you’d rather not be doing at this stage. It should have been the first thing I checked.
Put the pill back in and find the battery I want to use. I didn’t want the DD to go over 2.5A per emitter so I started testing with NCR18650A and moving up into higher drain cells watching my DMM as I went through the modes.
I settled on the 18650 PF.
Great, screw the tail in for a test spin.
What’s this! An emitter is out. Rats!
Don’t know what happened. Bumped, banged or shocked out from too much current?
What to do now. All that wiring!
I used my hot air and gently heated around the emitter. Some of the wires came off, but because I had pre-soldered them, they didn’t fall apart, I’ll just be able to reattach them to the pad. The emitter came off, and I replaced it using the same technique. I also reflowed the one I removed onto a single board to test it. Yup. Dead.
The new emitter lit up, but now another one wasn’t working and the third didn’t seem quite as bright as the new one. Two down and only one spare left of that model Osram.
I’m tired and hungry and know when I’ve been beaten. A whole afternoon wasted.
FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL!!!

I’ve been working all day and I want a ##% light!!! I’m tire and cranky and I want a #%# light.
Okay, I’ve got one emitter, an 18350 S2 host and a 2.1A driver. How hard can that be. Got it wired up and realized the two chips on the front of the board block the retaining ring from threading down. Grrrrr! I hate soldering drivers onto pills.
Driver is soldered down but the pill jams half way in. Grrrrr! Some solder got on the treads. Grrrrrr!
Finally…done.

After all that, I’m not sure if I like it. Mind you, my head is not in a good place, so I will have to take another look tomorrow to get a fresh uncranky perspective, but right now, it seems kind of green to me. The colour rendering is good, but the tint seems kind of greenish.

From left to right.
White Cree - Nichia 219B - Osram SSL 4000K

I still have some more Osrams of various colour temps to try when I get around to it. That triple fail really ticked me off!

EDIT: Since this was posted I have become aware that the emitters used in the OP are not 4000K Oslon SSLs, but 4000K Oslon Squares.

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Bugger. I feel for you Of. Been there plenty of times myself and can offer no solution but can thank you for what was riveting reading until it all went down the tube. Chin up and good luck on the next move.

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Nothing that can’t be fixed. I think I need djozz to help me make a mouser shopping list though. I’m over my head when it comes to choosing non Cree emitters.

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Yup, sounds all too familiar to me too, some mod sessions just seem to involve no luck and no fun, all that is leftover to do is stubbornly struggling on to at arrive at a less than perfect but working light :-(

I have not evaluated the tint of these 4000K 92CRI SSL80 leds yet, but that looks like the same tint as the 92 CRI Oslon Square leds that I tested last year, I noticed (and posted about) the greenish hue to the tint as well back then, it is a matter of taste, the colour rendering is still really good. ( https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/32526 )

I'm doing a mod at the moment with the very same SSL80 led as you are using. I will post how I like the tint :-)


Btw, I'm still waiting for the newest gen.3 4000K 96 CRI Oslon Square to become available, I have high hopes for the tint of that one.

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I’m familiar with that feeling of frustration too. It can range from not working out the led/driver/battery setup properly to just plain fiddly stuff that my ten thumbs can’t grasp. Thanks for posting.

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Maybe I’ll rebuild the triple today using these Osram SSL 150 emitters
Still 4000K so there’s a good chance the tint is the same. We can’t just leave djozz on his own to do all the legwork.

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I finished the mod, small zoomie with AK-47-C1 driver with 6 chips for 2.1A (I measure 2.0A at the tail), it did not go smooth at all, but it works now and it let me evaluate the tint of this led.

On its own IMO the tint is quite brilliant, and the colour rendering looks convincingly very good. I compared the tint to the gen.2 Oslon Square 4000K 92CRI (in a LuckySun mini20), and the Nichia 219B V1 4000K 92CRI (in my copper Reylight Tool), and the differences are clear: the tint is clearly less green and much nicer than the Square, but it is nowhere as rosy as the Nichia. I think this tint could have as many fans as the Nichia has. Compared to the Nichia it is more real white and if I would designate a tint I would call it slightly yellow, even slightlier green. Compared to any neutral Cree however it pretty rosy again.

Despite that it is pretty worthless, here's a picture anyway comparing the Square on the left, the SSL80 in the middle and the 219B V1 on the right. Tint comparisons on pictures always fail: compared to reality, the Nichia is too rosy/brown, the Square looks quite accurate, and the SSL80 looks too yellow

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Lol, I have been covered up and not even ordered more Osrams… I had a similar first triple build with them. Mine were not as green, more straw colored… I really feel your pain on this… Trying it on a XP Noctigon saves the cross wiring, but i do not have enough hands to hold the three Osrams in place as they cool. So o jumped in the deep end and ordered the sinkpads, not realizing they were series…. Facepalm.

Keep us updated!

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Compared to the first gen 96CRI 4000K SSL80's that you are using this led is indeed very different, the old 96CRI SSL80 has even considerably more red than the Nichia, very cosy still !

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Hmmmm. How come the best place to take beamshots seems to be the wall at the end of the bed? Is it because we’re so exhausted from all that modding?

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Modding is indeed exhausting :-)

It was midday and the bedroom is on the north side of the house, with thick black curtains, the only place possible for doing beamshots.

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Lately I’ve been using my bedroom for beamshots because the very dark grey on the walls seems to give me a more realistic colour rendering than a white wall.

Please stay tuned as I have rebuilt my triple and think I have a win.

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Day two and things are looking up.
Ouchyfoot can’t have a fail and leave it at that. No no no, it eats at my craw, so I started my day rebuilding my triple using this Osram Oslon SSL 150 . It’s also a 4000K emitter.

When reflowing, I always add more solder paste to the factory pre tinned solder pads, but on yesterday’s fail I didn’t. I just fluxed the emitters and added heat. I didn’t see that “snap” when the emitter salutes and pops into place. I think the thermal pad might be slightly lower than the contact pads and I got poor, if any, heat transfer which caused my emitters to burn up.

The wire jumpers took me less than five minutes to reattach as they were still in perfect shape. I should mention, when I twist the bare ends together, I don’t use my fingers. Finger twisting will just fall apart. I use a needle nose pliers and twist them so they are solid.

This is like Deja vu all over again.

…and done. That took no time at all.

Let’s turn this thing on and see what the tint du jour is.
Not bad! Way better than yesterday’s ugly green. Much whiter. In fact, it’s starts out with a yellowish tint that becomes whiter and whiter as I go through the five modes. Hi with maximum juice is the whitest. It seems to make a big jump. It has a rosiness to it.
Bare in mind when looking at these beamshots, that I’m not seeing that extreme violet in real life. I can’t help it. For some reason my iPad is trying to compensate for the extreme hot spot from the narrow beam triple optic. It is intense, but all that violet isn’t real. Rosy…yes.

Left to right
Yesterday’s Oslon 4000K with today’s Oslon 4000k



Nichia 219B and 4000K Oslon

Yes I like today’s 4000K Oslon SSL 150. No it’s not really purple, it’s actually very nice. I hate yesterday’s Oslon 4000K. I think the green is ugly. I call this a win.
I may try a medium angle frosted triple optic on this light to see what happens.

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Another beamshot of both the 4000K Osrams.

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So today's ssl150's have the same tint/CRI specifications as yesterdays ssl80's ? From the looks I assume that these ssl150's are from one older generation than the ssl80 from yesterday (these ssl150 have no phosfor-poor outside the die-area), but I'm beginning to wonder how consistent Osram is in their tints, within one led-type and over different led-types and generations.

Congrats on getting the mod done btw!

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Nice recovery Of. Its good to see it all come together. As for taking white/grey wall shots I gave up along time ago. I just could not get any settings to do the light justice and stick to outdoor pictures.

What led is on the hit list next?

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I have one 4500K Osram to try out. I think I might have a 3000K one also.

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All I know djozz is that this SSL 150 emitter changes tint as you give it more juice. It starts off yellowish and gets whiter as you go up in the modes. There’s a huge difference when you jump from 50% to DD (about 2.5A). 50% gives an even straw tint, but when you step it up to 100%, it’s like you switched to a different emitter.

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Do the Osram emitters exhibit the same tendency to tint shift as the Crees ?

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I can’t answer that Jack. This is my first days experience with Osram emitters so I don’t really know what to expect from them.
Edit: all I know is that the first emitters I tried were as ugly as those green XPGs 4Sevens used to have in their Quarks.