I'm glad I got to see this thread. Thanks for the detailed photos. I won't have to buy one now. I thought it would be great for an MT-G2 direct drive with the two 18650s in series, but now that I see the lack of any proper heat sink and the lack of room to improve or fix it, I can move on to some other idea. Looked like it might have had possibilities. Hope you all work something out with yours.
Transistor - one of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-x-TIP41C-TIP41-Power-Transistor-6A-100V-NPN-Free-Shipping-/180856117370
Basically an electronic switch that turns on when it gets a signal. So instead of driving emitter direct from controller chip, you use this output as the turn-on signal instead, so there’s no heavy burden on controller itself. No worries about the FET, it’s designed to carry current (the linked one can do 6A). But there’s two types - NPN and PNP, I think you need NPN for gating between emitter and ground but I can be wrong.
Can someone with FET know-how please chip in?
So when some knowledgeable person gets this light, please take a blow-up picture of where to put the FET, Ok. I took a lot of electronics before going to Nam, but that was before my head took combat a little to seriously. So, i can still do monkey see, monkey do — pictures help …
Yes, this would be very helpful! If I can get 3 amps out of this light for a dollar I would be very happy.
If it helps, later today after I get home I will remove the wires from the driver and put up a, hopefully, decent pic.
Now that I am going to be working on this light, I wanted to show some more detail of components. Here's the tail cap assembly. Simple a spring, a brass plunger and a plastic retainer that screws out of the tail cap. The spring could have the copper braid mod, to reduce resistance and help it to take more amps.
When I looked the plastic battery holder over, I noticed these clips and I knew taking the contacts out would be a snap.
Simply press back on one clip till it pops out and the other one will come out easy, leaving the contacts exposed. These are real simple and can be replaced with copper sheet and gold plated springs.
There's a total of four screws in the handle, one is hidden and you won't see it till you take off the two 4mm screws holding it to the head. Removing these screws gives access to the SMD switch.
I measured the lens at 62mm and the reflector at 58mm diameter, by 40mm deep. Too bad they are both plastic. Kinda ruins the modding without an AR lens, or at least a coated lens. I can live with the plastic reflector.
4mm screws holding the handle assembly on.
Now the SMD switch is exposed, along with the wires.
I think I will be replacing all the wiring on this, as well as the SMD switch and the driver.
It's a really simple driver. I'm not going to mess with it, except to use it as a contact plate. A DRJones driver is destined to go in this light.
Ones I got the led off and the driver, I got to thinking that the aluminum plate might come out.
Well, it sure does. It's been glued in place with some thread locker, so out it comes. It will unscrew right out after cleaning the gunk off.
Now I am thinking the best way is to just cut out the whole center and replace it with some Copper.
I measure 35+mm here, where the inner section comes out to the outer edge, so if I mill it out, I should be able to use a copper round larger than 35mm and about 4mm thick, to make a press fit in the space and give the raised platform that the original gave. If I use a copper star, I would go about 3.5mm or 3mm thick instead of 4mm, due to the extra thickness of a copper star.
I really could see an MT-G2 in here with two ten or twenty amp 18650s in it and a DrJones driver with the comfychair voltage mod, but I imagine the real owner will probably go with an XM-L or even an XP-Gs in it.
Anyhow, I just thought y'all might want to see the detail of the tear down here. Hope I didn't talk out of place in this thread.
Great detail!
Do you think the stock aluminum insert would do fine at 3 amps? probably an xpg2 or xml2, 2-3 cell in parallel
I don't, because of the gaping hole right in the center where the led sits. I believe that would be bad long term. It could be filled in, but if I have to fill that in, I would just make a new piece and fill the whole thing in, to be sure of heat transfer.
WHat kind of numbers is this sporting stock?
How tightly is the 62mm lens fit into the head? Any chance a 64mm AR lens from cnqualitygoods would fit?
As an update, I have found that there really is no room in between the contact plate and the heat sink for any driver except some type of one layer flat one. The area is big enough in diameter, but there's only about 4mm total effective depth there. Certainly not enough for a NANJG driver, unless you don't wire it up, or most any drivers I know of. It would have to be less than 4mm thick to work. The one I have repaired got a NANJG with extra chips, but I had to open up one of the four slots in the stock heat sink and push it thru so it sits in the cavity between the reflector and the head. Not a great way to go with a plastic reflector, but it was that or nothing.
So I was wise in cancelling my order then?
Yes, You explain my #21 post (My English is bad That’s why I can’t explain more )
if there is someone who is able to explain the decision behind lights with gaping holes under the emitter i sure would like to meet them… 
I was wondering about potting the hole up with some sort of TIM?
has anyone ever tried copper solder used in jewelry making?
will it stick to aluminum?
The rest of the story?
Throw - 74.9klux with XPG2 dome intact in front of er, make that alongside 4A chipped lumodrv
Pics below - those familiar with OL’s standard beamshots can roughly compare to other lights
An often seen garage door
~90 yards
~150 yards
Hot spot is quite a bit brighter compared side by side with HD2010 using same driver - I think the HD was 50-something klux?
Took it out tonight (thick cloud cover) and at 300-350 yards the hot spot seems slightly brighter than a DST with a similarly chipped driver and T6 XML. Spill for the first maybe ~100’ almost hangs with the XML (I was also surprised it’s wider than the DST XML) but the spill is of course less bright at very long distance.
I was disappointed with the reflector setup in this light because it will be hard to situate the reflector with a de-domed led without big risk to exposed bond wires. It can be done, but will be hard due to the loose reflector that sits well inside the head and has to be dropped in place (unless it is completely built up vertically from behind). If I had a cool tint XPG2 to start with, it still might be worth a try - would like to see if it gets up to 135k to 150k neighborhood as others have reported in narrower reflectors.
For now this one stays as is, though I will try to build a triple cell carrier for it.
It is great to use under trees and across water.
PS - Went out for a late night walk to practice with the UI and try for some longer distance - using a couple of my usual landmarks from different locations trees, people etc were easily distinguished at about 390 yards. Though I think the lux translates to about another 100+ yards of throw, much of the earlier cloud cover had passed and moonlight made it harder to see the light’s true reach without glasses.
I’ve got a bunch of XP-G2 1A on their way, will definitely give a dedome a shot when they get here.
Alright so my XP-G2’s arrived, waiting on the drivers still so I started looking into a 3x parallel carrier… like $6 for some plastic and a bit of metal?
Bah!
I’ve got some free time, but not much in the way of creativity… any ideas on some normal materials someone might have around their house that could be used to make a carrier? (iirc OL used bakelite pcb in one of his mods, but unfortunately I have none) I’ve got the contacts and springs taken care of.
Have a Hobby Shop in the area? Nip down there and get some Styrene Sheet and brass tube. Cut out disks and glue them together for strength, cut three lengths of tube and use screws to assemble a carrier. The styrene will fall like butter before a dremel, so after that you just need to super glue traces to the plastic. Could be as simple as copper-braid you’ve saturated with solder.
1.18A at tailcap, ~40kcd, ~250lm (OTF, after 30s)
I finally received mine… well, i can’t recommend this. better go for a jacobs a60, the build construction is way better for similar results
I’m quite impressed with mine actually. Especially for $12.99 I paid. The anodizing is pretty good, as well as overall build quality. Nice clicky button, IMO better than the original SRK. Battery compartment is also not bad. The head is bigger than Jacob A60, even bigger than T08/T13, giving this big potential as thrower.
The only exception is the driver+compartment, and the plastic lens (well this one is a big downer). Otherwise it’s an exceptional budget host for modding.