Another one bites the dust

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

I reckon I’ve just crossed the threshold into being a flashaholic. I’ve been lurking for a good long while… I think is my second post. But through the awesome guidance and information posted on here, I’ve built something like five C8’s (with several being subsequently taken apart and put back together again to improve output) and several P60 dropins. Even dedomed and reflowed a few LEDs onto Noctigons. Before starting this new hobby a few months ago, I could barely operate a soldering iron.

So building flashlights from hosts and parts is one thing… but here’s the line I’ve crossed: last night I took apart a perfectly functional Streamlight Stinger DS LED, removed its LED and leads and replaced them. After some of the C8’s I’ve built (with added 7135’s, most are pulling around 4-4.2 amps at the tailcap on high), the Streamlight doesn’t get used hardly at all due to its comparatively weak, narrow beam. Here’s how it went.

For those unfamiliar with the light in question: http://www.streamlight.com/product/product.aspx?pid=135

Before surgery:

No idea what this LED is.

Here’s the battery pack - not sure how many cells, but they’re in parallel. Fully charged it reads something like 4.1V

Reflector off

After taking out the retaining ring, here’s the LED, with some AA slathered underneath. What for, I’m not sure. The pill is entirely made of plastic (wtf?)

Pill comes out when you unscrew the charger contacts

No turning back now!

Close up of the driver:

New LED leads attached… the tiny old ones were through-mounted and were a huge pain to get out.

The plastic piece that previously held and centered the old LED can be cut down to hold the new LED (a dedomed XM-L2 U2)

Added more arctic silver, got it centered as best I could and cranked the retainer ring down tight.

Miracle of miracles… it lives!

Driver put out some funky burning smells when I tested the current to the LED, so I haven’t stuck it back on the charger yet to verify that still works as normal, but I reckon it ought to. Current to the LED before the swap was right around 0.9 amps. Forgot to test it after the LED swap. Seems brighter. Output & throw is similar to one of my modded C8’s on medium. Beam shots to follow.

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Welcome to the dark bright side.

No driver mod? Maybe good to not over stress the plastic pill.

The old led was xre and the new is XML not xml2…
Battery is a 3 cell nicd.

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Thanks!

Yeah, no driver mod… all the light’s innards are plastic. Only metal inside is the retainer ring. Didn’t want to end up melting everything.

Whoops, yeah that is an XML, not an XML2. I just grabbed the first mounted LED I spotted on my workbench without looking closely. Figured it was an XML2 since I have a few sitting around waiting to be reflowed onto copper.

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What Werner said!

Nice job modding the Streamlight. Not many attempt modding them. I am a bit puzzled though...you say the old XRE was mounted on a plastic pill the show a picture of it on that pill but the you show a pic of the XRE mounted directly to the aluminum shelf. What is up with that pic?

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The old LED was on an aluminum pcb… but it was sitting on a shelf of black plastic with a big glob of what appears to be arctic silver underneath.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE

:)

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Great Job. I haven’t looked at my Stinger for years. Still not the guts to try anything with it. Maybe after i get a lathe though who knows. Looks at my stinger again, thinking… hmmm

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Quickest way to tell

XM-L and XP-G the chip color surrounding the emitter will be green

The L2’s and G2’s have silver color around them

Awesome mod by the way…chucking the light now and a MUCH better light…excellent build…great job!

I admit I am a bit confused as well, it looks like the emitter is sitting on an (shiny black) anodized shelf, the white thing looks like a spacer (that sits over the star), retaining ring was holding the spacer down thus keeping a press fit hold of the emitter/star on the head shelf…

At least that is how it looks to me

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Thanks everybody! Took a while to get up the courage to tear this light apart. Removing and replacing the LED leads was a fair amount trickier than I anticipated. Adding 7135 chips is easier, but that’s mainly due to my soldering iron — I use a butane iron, and there’s a hole in the tip that puts out a great deal of hot air, so it was tricky to get the tip down to the driver without melting all of the surrounding plastic/driver components/my fingers. Would be much easier with a decent regular iron. I’ve got a cheap(ish) okay electric iron, but the butane iron gets much hotter much faster, so it hardly ever gets touched.

Thanks for the tip on identifying emitters — I’d been looking at the number of wire bonds (3 for XML, 2 for XML2)… the green vs silver is an awful lot quicker at a glance. I had no idea.

Believe me, I’m as surprised as everyone else. The shelf matches the black anodizing color extremely well, but it’s definitely plastic. The lip on the outside rim still bears the marks from when it was molded. It also feels the same as the rest of the plastic pill that holds the driver, which it fits onto via two of the four holes in the shelf surface — 2 holes to locate the LED shelf on the driver pill, 1 hole for LED leads, and 1 hole for the white LED star cover. Originally, the white piece had holes specific to the XRE emitter that snapped it into place. Once snapped into place, it fits perfectly in the retaining ring and that’s how the original LED was centered. Obviously, switching the emitter to the XML meant one of the LED leads had to wrap around a little further than the other to get to both pads, and the original holes in the spacer don’t fit the XML like they fit the XRE, so it was useless for centering as-is (not to mention, no clearance for the new LED leads to get to the pads on the new star).

Tested it on the charger today… which was a little odd. After sitting on the charger for about 10 seconds, the light would flash briefly once every two seconds for a few times, and then begin cycling through the modes (high-med-low-med-high-med-low…… and on and on). Pulling it on and off the charger a few times had no effect. I ended up unscrewing the tailcap and letting the battery fall out, sticking it on the charger, then reinserting the battery and screwing the tailcap back on. That seemed to work. Let it charge for a while, and everything stayed cool.

After taking it off, the light wouldn’t operate correctly - just some random flashing and then nothing. Pulled the battery out and put it back in, and now the light works perfectly - modes all work as they should and double-clicking to access the strobe works as it should. Very weird.

I’m hoping to take some beamshots in a few days — my dad and brother both have identical lights, so it’ll be interesting to see an unmodified Stinger LED next to my modified one.

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And on the XM-L the 3 leads point to the - (negative) side, the XM-L2 the 2 leads point to the + (positive) side if you ever decide to reflow as well

Very good mod…well on your way to becoming a flashlight modding monster :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hm. That is pretty good to know too. I’ve actually reflowed a few LEDs… or rather ‘flowed’ — bought some of the first batch of XPLs that Mouser got in stock to throw into a C8 as a gift for my dad and brother. After melting two noctigons from having the heat far too high, the first LED I flowed turned out to be oriented correctly and is still kicking a few months later. On the 50/50 chance, apparently I chose correctly! That info definitely helps though, thanks.

I may be getting a little ambitious with my next two big mods. Should be posting up some interesting things in the near future, depending on which parts come in first…. here’s a brief intro/summary

—- 3 up dedomed XPL in a Warsun Mini 5… Not super, super ambitious, but it’ll be interesting to see if I can pull off flowing three leds on one noctigon without ruining either the board or emitters. I figure the three XPLs will put out a great deal more light than three XPG2s. Not planning on driving it very hard - might use a qlite and leave it as-is so the light can hopefully be EDC’d…

—- I’m also trying to figure out how to stick an MT-G2 into the Ultrafire F13 I got in the group buy a month ago. I’ve been looking for a sufficient battery tube/extension to stick onto the F13 to fit two 26650’s… but I’ve just about given up on that. I’ll likely end up with two 18500’s. Got the driver & driver mount pretty much figured out. Turns out the threads on a Convoy C8 pill are the same as the F13’s driver retainer ring, so with that I can use a 17mm driver. Planning to cut up an old pill and stuff it, along with some extra copper, into the F13’s driver cavity loaded up with a Zener’d qlite with some extra 7135’s. Mounting the driver that way ought to give some extra clearance to fit the two 18500’s. But yeah. I’ll take a bunch of pics when I get down to it and post it all up. Still in the planning/ordering parts stage. Also known as, I’m in my office supposed to be working, and I’m on here and scouring the internets for parts instead.

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Maybe it doesn’t like the low Vf of the XM-L instead of an XR-E? I’d say that you should go ahead and test current now. The side of the driver you pictured really doesn’t show much, I wonder what was on the other side? I’d assume that the driver was a DD/boost or buck/boost driver. It may be damaged now (I think it’s kind of likely). OTOH maybe the driver was always DD anyway, I really have no idea! Was the output constant during a discharge with the stock XR-E LED?

No matter what, good work. As JohnnyMac pointed out, not many people doing Streamlight mods. Worst case scenario this turns into a DD light.

Also, are you sure that the stock XR-E was on an aluminum PCB? It looks a lot like a normal FR4 PCB from the picture you posted.

Streamlight’s non-LED stingers definitely used plastic guts / pills. I guess they figured that those ran plenty hot and didn’t give them any problems :wink:

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I’ll have to admit — I have no idea what an FR4 PCB is. The underside of the PCB that the XRE was mounted on appears to be aluminum.

I am most likely going to take the light back apart anyway — not even close to satisfied with the centering of the XML. There’s also a significant gap between the led and the bottom of the reflector which has left it badly unfocused. I left a little extra on the led leads, so shouldn’t be too tricky to sand down one of the noctigons I’ve ruined in learning to flow leds and slide it under the xml’s pcb to raise it up a little. Still not sure how I’m going to get it centered. Trying to avoid cutting out my own centering ring - experimented with that trying to center XPL’s and it took forever to get that right. That’s all to say I will likely unsolder one of the leads and test the current when I have it apart. Kinda wary though — everything is working property at the moment and I don’t particularly want to break it.

If I ended up removing the driver (if it happens to die permanently on surgery round 2), and turn the light into DD — A. how would I wire it so both switches still work, and B. how would I charge the battery? currently it charges inside the light by sticking the light onto the charging base it came with.

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XP-L uses the XP-G die size right?

Perhaps this adapter will help

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It does… I was too impatient to order one and wait. I’ve got some now, though — thanks!