I have 2 inch stock Dale, happy to send you a chunk…. Let me know what you need.
Thanks guys.
Dan, I went to the local machine shop and got a piece of 2 1/4 6061. Then almost ruined it by subtracting for the thread depth instead of adding on the side that the Courui D01 attaches to, the longest side. lol Had to cut off 14mm of threads and start over but it worked out pretty good anyway. Thanks for the offer though. Might have to drive up and clean out your shop of scraps and odds/ends. 
Had time to create a tail cap but an old childhood friend came by, recently lost his mom and is still kind of in shock over the loss so spent a few hours talking with him. Will get on the Cashlight later today. 
Trying to figure out what to call it, D01M8C8IL4SST40FET+1…. D0MCILS…. 188441… Frankenator?
Since it is a budget light cobbled together from parts lying around and inspired by Johnny Cash:-
The Light-on-Cash? LOC for short.
Perfect! 
:+1:
Very nice Dale. I love builds that mash together oddball stuff :laughing: :+1:
I’ve got this oddball no-named junker light with a hexagonal shape on the tail cap, the anodizing is sort of green and overall it seems pretty cheap but because of the hex shape it flares out and should make a nice grip/stop for the tail cap. Problem is the end of it, the male threads, are wider and finer threads than the male threaded end of the Convoy battery tube. So I am about to make a double threaded sleeve to adapt between them, may knurl it, and it will also serve as the retaining ring to press a standard switch assembly into the oddball tail cap.
I’ve tested the Illumination Machines reflector with a sliced/diced/shaved SST-40 and it works very nicely, so I have a driver and emitter that is in the Courui head even now.
Another “issue” is the stupid Solarforce M8 pill. I’d forgotten how Solarforce did that thing back in the ’12-’14 time frame…. they use a brass sleeve with a batter contact soldered onto it from the inside, then a double sided driver stacks on top and is soldred on… this “light engine” is then press fit into the finned pill. This makes removal almost impossible, you have to destroy their driver and break the boards into pieces to get it all clear of the pressed in brass sleeve. Mess. I’m going to mount the pill on the lathe and cut out the emitter shelf and just bore through the driver then clean it all up with a boring bar. Plan is to leave the brass sleeve to solder the FET+1 driver to.
Going in….
(Frankensteining sure is a lot of hassle!)
Life would be to easy if there wasn’t any Frankensteining hassles. 
Finished!
Most pics added in the original post, here’s the finished light… 1818 lumens from the SST-40 sliced diced and shaved….
Lookin’ for a beamshot! :sunglasses:
Best I can do before sundown David, shot in our bedroom… my Carolina Reaper is in the corner creating buds….
@DB Custom
Is it an easy fix? I had a flashlight with this driver get this behavior and I just gave up on trying to measure amps on it
You have to build a little pyramid… the 10 ohm capacitor at C1 and the diode get pyramid’ed up against a resistor that’s added, this smooths the readout in the circuit and makes it stable. Can’t remember at the moment what value of resistor is added and there are some other ways to do it but the little pyramid is the most interesting way.
A post from djozz along with a picture…
To quote Jos… “First I soldered C1 vertical on its ground pad, then I unsoldered D1 from its led+ pad and soldered it leaning against C1. Then the 10 Ohm resistor was soldered between led+ (the old and now vacant D1 pad) and the top of the pyramid. The top was then filed as low as possible without damaging the components.”
They usually only do it when you get high current from a triple or quad, but in this case the SST-40 is probably trying to pull 8-9 Amps.
Sweet light Dale.
Well done on the build. The hotspot looks very clean and intense. 
Looks nice probably end up with 900+ yards of throw or so is my guess
Making me doubly jealous in a single picture! Good thing there wasn’t coffee in there too. I don’t know if I could stand it! 
…but I would happily impatiently wait until sundown to get a good outside beam-shot, too.
David, that Carolina Raper sprouted last August and at one point, month or so ago, the dang thing was up against the ceiling! I cut it back to about 16” tall and it came out with a vengeance and seems determined to hit the ceiling again! I’m doing everything they say to do, watering every other with epsom salt for magnesium content, once a month I add in some diatemaceous earth, but the dang plant keeps dropping lower leaves and when it blooms the flowers fall off. It came back out blooming right off the top and then dropped everything and started growing like crazy, now all the forks have those little 3 at a time buds coming out, must be 100 of em on there! If I can just get it to keep the flowers and produce I’d be ecstatic!
Almost out of Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, gotta order some more….
With the ground issue addressed and the 20700A cell charged up, it tops off at 1907 lumens at start. I don’t know why it’s “so low”, I’ve got another of these emitters (dome on) making 2671 lumens. Could be the slice/dice/shave thing……
I’ve got 3 SST-40’s, (dome on) in my SP03 from Solarstorm and I used a Master/2 Slave set-up so each emitter has it’s own FET. That light is giving me 2656 from each emitter! 7969.5 lumens from 4 LG HE-4 cells.