A while back I picked up a S&O zoomie from Amazon just for the heck of it because I saved a friend from falling for the Shadowhawk scam and got him pointed in the right direction towards a nitecore P12 that he loves.
Anyway after my assumption turned out right and it was a purple crap light it sat around for a while. Now that I’m almost ready to actually build something cool I figured I should practice my soldering on something.
Nothing special…
Hmmm… Wait. Is that a 80+CRI XML2 on a noctigon from Mountain Electronics? Why yes it is!!!
The emitter is paired with mountains Qlite driver in standard form. A big trick to get it to actually work half decent was to remove the crappy anno from both ends of the tube as well as the end of the tail cap. I did it on the lathe but a small file and sandpaper would do the trick. Sorry I didn’t take more pictures doing the build but I hurried and kindof threw it together this afternoon before dinner.
Here are a couple “beamshots” if you will on my light tan wall taken with my iPhone. Best I can do…
Zoomed all the way in (the square washes out on my camera)
No more awful purple/blue tint!!!
Zoomed out just a little so it’s smooth.
Overall I’m happy with what I’ve done with my $20 total investment and the practice I got. By the way the hollow pill was filled with aluminum and the LED is potted to it with Arctic alumina just for the heck of it.
Paint the exposed aluminum of the pill a nice matte black and it should get rid of most of that light ring in the zoomed in picture. A sharpie can also be used, not quite as effective, but a lot faster/easier.
Edit: had a go at it with my super permanent sharpie, didn’t help much. I think the halo might be coming from the lip around the cheap plastic aspheric. I don’t really care enough to go much further with it, I’ll probably end up giving it to someone or leaving it at work anyway.
I will admit it looks kinda cool murdered out with the red noctigon showing through.
Excellent job. Before I knew what to buy I made many a cheap crap light into something not so bad by upgrading emitters, switches, etc. Honestly it can be worth doing if you or someone else just really likes the light.
