Hi,
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve modded any lights…, but I’ve had “the urge” for awhile now, and finally got a quiet weekend and started looking around to see what I had available. I’ve had a couple of TF-R2s (https://www.fasttech.com/product/1340200-1-18650-trustfire-tf-r2-cree-xr-e-q5-wc-230lm-5, but I bought mine direct from Trustfire) sitting around, still in boxes, so I figured I’d try to do something with one of them.
I also still have a bunch of Nichia 119s that I bought from Texaspro awhile ago (Nichia 119's for cheap (also Cree XLAMP-7090's)). I put these into several lights a long time ago, and I really like the warmish tint, and I also bought a bunch of the emitter boards that djozz made (Testing a custom made 16mm Nichia 119 copper core board (non-DTP), edit:sold out).
Ok, so got the host, emitter and emitter board. Next, driver… Driver?
Looking around, I didn’t have much in the way of drivers, some old original East-092, which I have been saving for a rainy day, and some Nanjg from FT, so I went with one of those (8x7135).
So I reflowed one of the 119s onto the emitter board, removed the original emitter board and driver and put the pill together.
But when I tried the light, nothing :(!
Then I noticed that when I shook the light, something was rattling, and opening it up, I realized that because the Nanjg driver has that tiny, short spring, the battery wasn’t able to make contact on both ends.
Just as a test, I put a small magnet on the 18650, and the light did light, so then I had to figure out what to do next.
I really didn’t want to put a different driver in (since I didn’t have anything else except for the East-092s, and I didn’t want to keep using the magnet.
So, I thought that I’d try to solder a solid post where the spring was.
But I didn’t really have a copper or brass (or any) post that would work, so then I decided to make a post.
I used 3 pieces of solid 14awg wire, and I soldered them together in a triangular “bundle”. As it turned out that bundled of soldered wires fit down the center of the driver spring, so I just shoved that impromptu post down the spring and put a bunch of solder on them.
Then, the post was still kind of too long, so I took my Dremel with a cutting wheel and chopped off part of the post and then flatted out the end of the post. I also found one of those small brass “tophat” covers that are used to cover tailcap springs and I soldered that to the end of the post.
Finally, I used one of those XML-to-XPG convertors (these, I think: https://www.fasttech.com/products/0/10007066/1576101-xm-l-reflector-to-xp-g-reflector-converter) which cleaned up the beam and also centered the reflector.
And, that was about it!
Lesson learned: Think through these builds better!
