Thanks, but it’s still tricky to see what the hotspot itself is doing.
Definitely looks like you have kind of a double corona happening around the center. And maybe a donuty hotspot with a small tight center?
But it’s hard to say from the pictures, looks decently smooth other than that though.
Might well throw better than stock this way! 
The beam shots I posted are actually pretty close to what I’m seeing. I’m not sure what’s good or bad anymore. I guess I keep thinking about the C8 I just got. The hotspot looks like someone drew a small circle on the wall with a compass, and painted it white. Flawless.
Same thing with my DST. My hd 2010 looks sloppy/cheap compared side by side.
Well that may be the problem.
I don’t have a C8 like that, is it smooth or the convoy OP?
My best ones just look like scaled up HD2010 spots with a bigger softer corona and somewhat more sloppily defined hotspot. Nothing too special compared to a nicely focused HD2010 tbh but our samples and expectations may vary a lot. There also still hints of the petal/solarflare as I’ve seen on all smooth reflectors.
I have high hopes for the Bighead light, that reflector is a work of art so I’m sure with enough aligning and tweaking a really nice beam will come out, but I’m not going to expect it to absolutely flawless particularly in the corona. Some things just have tradeoffs.
My best beam is probably from the stock Ultrafire HD2010 I just got from willbuying, it’s very nicely focused with an even disk and an almost flawless corona that I have to work hard to pick apart for any pattern or unevenness.
But even the best coronas kinda look like the BP logo if you look hard enough at them on a white wall…especially if you spin the light slowly!
So for gods sake don’t try that with your C8, you may spot a flaw afterall and I’ll have ruined your whole evening! 
Some HD2010 reflectors ARE sloppy and cheap, I have a Fandyfire HD2010 that had a reflector I just couldn’t get a decent profile out of no matter how hard I tried.
It was garbage but looked fine visually, it really doesn’t take much to throw off the beam and make it a nightmare to get right.
Just depends on the manufacturer, the finish and of course the alignment of all the main parts. I just want to point out that it’s all subjective and to expect a flawless profile on a white wall from these emitter/reflector combinations is somewhat unrealistic.
I know exactly how it can feel to chase your tail on these things so I just want to offer a realistic perspective of what these projected images tend to look like on average.
You’ll probably be happier overall if you don’t obsess over it, know it’s hard especially when you have an example of near-perfection
Go check out an old halogen large reflectored spotlight and tell me that beam hotspot isn’t godawful by today’s standards.
It will put a whole new perspective on things!
PS: Out of interest where did you guys buy your HD2010s? 
My C8 and several other lights with flawless (painted on) hot spots are smooth reflectors. I think it’s the very wide flat bottom of the HD2010 reflector that skews, or fuzzes the hot spot. On a flat surface, any type of microscopic waver is going to is going to cause a distortion.
Well, It's a pretty cool mod. You used those copper pins in another mod somewhere. Where do you get them?
I have three Tangsfires from Tmart. The one I’m working on has a less defined hotspot than the other two. The “flower petal” effect around the hotspot you describe was almost dark on one side of the spot. I believe that’s from an invisible “waver” in the flat base. Anyway, that’s gone now. Maybe I read too much about the “mighty HD2010” and just had a perfect beam profile preconceived in my mind.
The flat bottom plays very little role in the projected image. Mostly because it isn’t in the emission angle of the led which is <180degs. Even with the emitter pushed forward into the reflector like it is on your pedestal it won’t see any major direct light from the emitter.
You might be able to blame it for the very faint ring you see around the corona of a hd2010 beam but it’s not causing the main issues. It only really “sees” light that’s bouncing off the inside of the glass lens anyway and that’s a very small % of the overall beam.
Get a piece of welding glass or a very low moon mode driver and have a look at the reflected emitter image directly. See what parts of the emitter are being reflected in which part of the reflector. Do this from close up and from far away and it will give you a very good idea of what’s going on inside one of these reflectors. I use this sometimes to track down weird anomalies that I can’t explain. For example dirt or damage on the led dome itself can cause weird issues in the beam.
Issues affecting the hotspot shape and definition are going to be mostly down to alignment and focus though since that mostly affects the light being emitted from the sides of the led and hitting the lower regions of the reflector.
haha yeah the HD2010 is definitely a bit overrated. Especially considering the very many versions and variants out there. It’s a real crapshoot!
I don’t have a Tangsfire so I can’t comment on their quality, but based on the light I got today I’m at least somewhat reassured that there are still good versions out there.
But again maybe I was just lucky for once! haha:P
If you describe the corona/flower petal as being dark on one side that is a clear definition that the emitter wasn’t centered well. Even with a centering ring that makes the led look well centered, if the emitter pcb isn’t actually glued down in the center of the light all the centering ring will do is force the reflector off angle when the light is assembled. That’s not good either! Everything needs to be lined up perfectly and as square as possible, tiny errors can cause big problems in the beam! The bigger the reflector and the smaller and tighter the intended hotspot the bigger the headache, try dedoming for some more focusing fun!
I use those pins all the time. They’re great for bridges or shims and helping body tubes make better contact with drivers…lots and lots of things. You can bend them into any shape you want. I got mine Here.
Edit: Mine are 20 gauge head pins. I just ordered some more 22 gauge, as I think they may be a better match for the copper sheet I was using. They come in various lengths and lot amounts.
That’s why I wanted to raise the emitter. I believe if its sitting too low, it does catch the flat bottom of the reflector.
You lower the reflector, I raise the emitter.
The age old question: Should you raise the ceiling, or lower the floor?
Indeed if the led is sitting too low inside the emitter hole the edge of the floor around the hole will block light that should be getting to the reflector, that’s terrible on two counts losing lumens unnecesarily and bad focus…the flat part of the base still doesn’t actually reflect any significant light however.
We’re probably just explaining the same thing in different ways, I was just a bit thrown off when you attributed the warped look of the flat base area to the issues in the hotspot.
My point that I made in the first post was that I didn’t really see the need to raise the emitter into the reflector any further than it could realistically go by minimizing the wire contact points and using a thin centering gasket/ring. The shelf on the base of the reflector and the design of the reflector should be ideal in that setup with some small variation each way.
I was thinking you could actually go too far and get out of focus again in the other direction so I was keen to see the result. I can totally see that this may have been the only way to get your light to work right though, as we established these reflectors can vary quite a bit from light to light.
Have you tried to measure the thickness of the flat base of the reflector around the hole, and compare it to your other HD2010s? Maybe it’s machined unusually thick and that’s what is throwing off the focus, wouldn’t surprise me tbh
My fandyfire reflector also had an unusually thick base along with a bunch of other problems, it really was garbage…and that’s where it lives now waiting to be replaced by an aspheric lens
Well my issue seems like it was pretty simple; it now looks better than stock did with the small centering ring.
I’m using heatshrink wrap between the reflector and the solder points, the wrap had twisted a slight bit and stuck up just a tiny, tiny bit above the emitter substrate (So little, 170 degrees of light probably wouldn’t hit it). Anyway, I removed it, and sliced the emitter hole a bit wider and reassembled.
Perfectly, cookie cutter defined circle hotspot. <3
Copper strips like this, where they basically lie flat on the star and they come out, to clear the underside of the reflector. Wires were soldered on the underside of the strips. You can also use solid copper wire and mash it flat, then solder it on, using very little solder.
Another way is to just bite the bullet and enlarge the reflector until it will fit over the star, but sometimes that does not work fantastic. It depends on the profile of the reflector.
Congrats, sometimes it doesn’t take much does it!
Heatshrink can actually be quite thick when compared with kapton tape so I’m not surprised that it could have thrown off the focus if twisted.
So how would you say it compares to your DST hotspot now, did you manage to smooth out the corona some with the same adjustment?
-
And yes what Oldlumens did with that mtg2 is what I was talking about. That will probably give you about the smallest clearance possible and if that still doesn’t get your an even disk hotspot, you’ll have to build a pedestal as Ouchy did.
I would say with 90% of hd2010 reflectors that is the most you’ll have to do and in fact going this close on one of my hd2010s resulted in slightly missing the focus in the other direction and I got a fant donut edge to my hotspot. Needed to shim it with a slightly thicker centering ring to get it back to being an even hotspot.
Focusing reflectors…fun?
I think I prefer multi emitter lights, much more forgiving in the beams they produce!
That works too Justin, but de-doming brings another problem…the emitter face does indeed need to be raised higher into the reflector and in my own experience the reflector can sit flat down on the Noctigon and it’s still not enough. I’ve filed away most of the flat area on the bottom of the reflector, probably dangerously close to breaking through and killing the reflector altogether!
My first and only attempt I did not place the connection pieces when re-flowing and it was a real challenge to solder anything under that emitter in such tight spaces. I finally got it working, but eventually it failed.
To address some of the argument, I raised the ceiling AND lowered the floor…I cut a recess into the head of the light so the pill could seat deeper. Also cut a bevel under the lip of the pill so that it would fit into the curve of the head when set further down. Between the 2 things the light was doing quite well. But it didn’t last, my solder connections weren’t solid and I ended up frying the de-domed XM-L2 somehow. 
My idea for trying to see if I could construct a pedestal started forming after my first de doming. I always wondered if it might sit too low without its dome.
I’m going to build another proper pedestal now that I know exactly how it should be done. The first one was trial and error guesswork. It’s actually not hard.
The LED I used was an XM-L2 T6 1C from FT, and I don’t like the tint at all. I’m going to go with an XM-L2 U2 1A. I’ve been finding lately that I don’t like the hotspots produced by T6. I’ll give it a go, just to prove myself right or wrong.
PS. DBCstm. What is going on with that picture? It looks like the emitter is floating in air.
It’s sitting on a 1/8” high “pedestal” of pure copper. I cut it out of a 1/4” x 1” wide bar that came from the Telephone company, was used back in the 50’s…some kind of bus bar. The emitter and pedestal are re-flowed onto the SinkPAD. Gnarly, huh? lol
Secondary view…
Lower angle…
In the HD2010
