Courui D01 Fitted with 86mm kaidomain reflector. (No lathe required, mostly off the shelf parts)

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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I was posting some of this over in the general Courui D01 thread but thought I’d put up a new thread here with more of the details.

The idea was to pair up the Courui D01 with the very large and deep 86mm reflector from kaidomain.
Obviously there aren’t many cheap hosts out there that will house a reflector this large so something needed to be built/modded.

Option A: Own a lathe or have a talented machinist make something custom.
Option B: Try to extend an existing host using (preferably 100%) off the shelf parts and lego together the whole thing. Minimal manual work would be a bonus.

So this is my attempt at Option B. For a very successful build involving Option A have a look at Pinkpanda3310s TK61 mod thread .

Current Parts List: (may change as I work on the light)

  • Kaidomain 86mm x 84mm Reflector SMO Buy Here
  • Custom Copper pill courtesy of NikolaS (not essential, stock pill shelf will work but not ideal for high wattage emitters, sbt-70, mt-g2 etc)
  • 77mm Fotga wide angle lens hood (77mm male to 82mm female filter threads, 25mm height) Ebay various / Dealextreme
  • 82mm Fotga wide angle lens hood (82mm male to 86mm female filter threads, 25mm height) Ebay various
  • 86mm Fotga UV filter (any 86mm lens filter will do) Ebay
  • Custom Led centering ring made by Hoop Here

Reflector size comparisons. Kd 86mm vs Stock Courui D01

All the lens parts screw together with the 77mm hood snuggly sliding onto (but not threading into) the threaded lip on the head of the courui.
The stock bezel can be cut down and repurposed as a retaining ring to firmly mount this first hood from the inside or it can simply be epoxied into place.

Unfortunately the lip on the reflector is a little bit too wide (about 0.5-1mm all around) to fit into the 82-86mm lens hood. Basically you need to reduce the max OD of the reflector down to below 85mm.

This is the main part of the mod that will require some machining/filing/sanding.
I used a portable belt sander to bring this down to size but an hour or so with a hand file should also do the trick, I wish this wasn’t needed but for this particular plan it’s unavoidable. Just make sure to protect the reflector from dust by covering the openings during this step and it shouldn’t be too bad. I stuck a piece of plastic/acrylic over the opening of the reflector with double sided sticky tape to keep out the dust during sanding.

I’ll update this post with more details as I work on the light. Below is some random progress stuff from the Courui thread.

Update: 27/4/15

Did some work on the light today removing some material from the reflector to make it fit into the compact configuration (2x hoods + uv filter lens)

Here’s after the first assembly.

The reflector is a beast, though it doesn’t have the most perfectly smooth mirror finish. A very slight OP surface can be seen here.
I have yet to see how it performs in this config but this feature/flaw may make it a good option for an mt-g2 or similar just to help smooth over the honeycomb artefacts slightly. Just a thought, I’m sure it will also produce a very respectable beam with a normal die.

The UV filter and lens on the front: This is a really cheap UV filter but has what it claims is a multiband AR coating. Multiband? Hmm, probably not. But it definitely knocks down the reflections and the unusual green bias has the added benefit of counteracting the green tint shift seen from a dedomed cree led. So this may not be a bad option at all.

Still waiting on some parts to do a working assembly of the full light (led will be an sbt-70), but so far everything is lining up nicely. I like! :slight_smile:

Next to my original BigHead with UCLp lens.

Update: 01/5/15

A few more photos of the parts and assembly.

This is the diameter you’ll have to reduce the rim of the reflector down to in order for it to fit inside. It requires removing about 0.5mm all around so it’s not too bad. Again, some kind of a power sander is going to help a lot here.

50mm OD ~3mm Oring to allow the head of the light to be unscrewed a couple of millimeters and give enough clearance inside to fit a mcpcb and led in between pill and reflector. Not sure how much extra gap is required here until I get the led centering gasket and have a go at focusing up the reflector, the oring may not be needed or a thinner one could be used in it’s place. But in any case this is an decent approach to give extra clearance if needed.

This is how the bezel screws back onto the original thread, clamping the first hood into place. Depending on your particular courui and the machining tolerances, you may need to apply some electrical tape to make the hood/head interface a tight fit.

You’ll also see why the crenelations need to be removed from the bezel ring to allow the reflector to fit in the full assembly.

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Interesting !!

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It looks like it came that way! I’ll be very interested in your progress.

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That looks so much better than what I could come up with and would weigh a lot less as well. I love these types of builds. Looking forward to the beam shots. The problem I believe with Pp reflector was the lack of shine on the reflector itself, like a slight smokey finish to it instead of a highly polished finish.

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Ah sure, but you’d be able to do a proper job with orings and everything. This type of build will only ever be splash proof at best without glueing everything permanently.
It is very nicely balanced with this setup, in stock form the courui was always a bit tail heavy, with the extension and heavy reflector it’s great!

Yes I remember you mentioning that about the reflector finish.

I’ve only see one of these and my particular sample is perfectly polished, but it does have a very slight OP patterning overall. It’s very slight but compared to the average D01 reflector it’s not quite producing as clear and crisp a reflection.
I’ve seen similar surfaces on other high end lights so I’m sure it won’t really affect the performance as much as strange matte look of the one you’re talking about.
Hopefully it’s a rare exception, cause I really like this beast and will surely make use of it in other lights going forward if this works out well.

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Love your ingenuity! :beer: I have been wanting to do that to another light, do you have a pic of the parts disassembled? Do you have a direct link to the ebay sellers you used for each of your parts?

Thanks! Can’t wait to see those beam shots!

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Thanks.
I’ll take a pic of all the dissasembled parts when I’m working on the light next. Apart from the reflector OD alteration they really do lego together perfectly.
I’ve included ebay and sources for the parts that I can verify are going to be correct. I ordered the lens hoods a while ago so those listing are no longer there.
There’s loads of sources usually for these parts and they are standardized in terms of filter sizes and threads. I won’t guarantee that they will match 100% to what I have but I don’t think you can go too far wrong with something like these.

77mm Hood

82mm Hood

I can tell you that both of mine say “Fotga” on the inside and share the same matt anodizing finish on the outside. Those aren’t details things usually listed on ebay though.
I suspect all the cheapest hoods on ebay in these standard sizes are going to be from the same source but I could be wrong.

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This is what I was thinking to fit a bigger reflector to a smaller flashlight bezel, something similar to what you did

IIRC CPF member Download made a Stainless steel camera adaptor for the Mag a few years ago here is the link

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Sure, if you combine filter adapters with hoods and filters they’re almost endlessly flexible. There’s also various hoods of different depths and types of flare. The fact that you usually have a known thread at the end of each part is very useful. Biggest problem is the vague ebay descriptions and of course the damn white writing that’s on most of the parts! :wink:

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Great work, looks amazing. What would you say the total cost is without driver and led?

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I think parts cost for everything (no led or driver) is under $100 including the copper pill.

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how strong is this setup? I mean mechanical strength, durability, toughness, sturdiness, whatever you call it. It has a few new connections, a big reflector and the flashlight is quite heavy. How is the reflector secured and how is the 77mm hood attached to the flashlight? Can it survive a small fall or a hit?

BTW, what would be the throw with a dedomed xp-g2 running at 5 amps???

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The first hood is going to be anchored by threading on the cut down bezel of the original light back onto it’s original thread. Thereby clamping the first hood firmly into place. That’s pretty bullet proof.
The rest and how it deals with a fall I wouldn’t like to say. The hoods are certainly very rigid/hard aluminium but still fairly thin. The reflector is going to be tightly held inside and pressed between the uv filter ring and the pill. I actually planned to use an o-ring in between the lens and the reflector rim but I don’t think I have the clearance spare now that it’s together.

The weakest part is probably the front lens element, it’s pretty thin glass held in a thin rigid metal ring. Any major impact there I suspect the glass is going to shatter.

In general it feels very sturdy in the hand and I’m confident it’s going to handle a few decent knocks. But I’m not going to do any drop tests on it :wink:

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No idea on the throw, I may test a few different emitters before I stick the sbt-70 in there.

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Yes please test some cree emitters for max throw in it, before you finalise it with the sbt-70, like DD a dedomed xp-g2 or a xm-l2 class emitter so we can know what kcd performance we can get with cheaper led’s.

I really like the look of it, and it was funny you mentioned that ugly white text on the converter rings, i had been searching ebay for similar part a while ago & all i found was these kind of filter adapters.

I don’t know camera equipment so i didn’t know about these plain black nice cheap lens hoods.

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I was pleased as punch to see these lens hood adapters all listed out until I started searching for them on eBay. Dude, vague descriptions is a super understatement. You wouldn’t happen to remember from which venders you purchased would you, Linus?

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Looks great. Can't wait to see beam shots.

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Is these 86mm reflector the biggest out there for cheap or at all? Or is there something even larger hiding somewhere for reasonable money,
If we can find larger reflectors, this concept should be able to accommodate it with progressively larger lens hoods.

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My favorite flashlight modder strikes again, great as always.

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This looks very interesting….

I’ve modded several Courui’s for friends, & I’m sure some of them will want this treatment done to theirs when they see it.

I’m off to fleabay to get me some camera parts!

:beer: :beer:

- edit -

I managed to locate all of the camera parts, including a snap-on lens cover, from the same seller, for AU$22.75.

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2 more questions:

  1. The bezel has to be cut down- could you take a photo of what and how had to be cut?
  2. The lens- is it possible to use some non- glass lens that does not shatter so easily? An acrylic lens or so should not be so fragile as a glass one right?