Received my Lumintop Ti Tool yesterday, even cuter than i thought it would be .
A very nice little light except it is designed for AAA use only so very underpowered for me.
The problem is the switch components, when a li-ion cell is installed the light is single mode only but the driver sequences through the three modes when not using the electronic switch so i decided to install a small forward clicky switch instead of the electronic switch to remedy this and also the excessive button presses to select high mode. It can also be locked out now.
I changed the switch button to a magnetic version and did the usual tar & feathering
I also eventually changed the driver to a MTN FET11 which required boring out the brass joint piece at the head so the cell could fit through.
here is a test of a similar light, with a similar high as the Tool w Nichia… reports 226 lumens on LiIon (maukka actually measures lumens, not just a guess like the first link) https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/37776
I would love to attempt this mod, do you have a list of the parts and maybe a howto?
It’s a lot to ask, but my tool ti just died on me. And this beats my modded thrunite ti in every way possible. Best 10440 build I found around :+1:
The lighted tailcap version? Is very tricky to do and I don’t think the capacitor likes the 4.2v of the 10440 cell too much, not 100% reliable on the modes.
That would be great, but it does look very challenging. And reliability is very important too, thanks for the info.
Since guppydrv still seems to be the most versatile firmware for this size as far as I know, a MTN 11 DD driver would still be the best current option I guess with a clicky tail.
But can it support the lighted tailcap? Or is the extra tailLED the reason of the flakiness?
What firmware did you use?
A clicky switch of the normal tool will do, but I have no clue how to cramp in a lighted clicky switch in that one, with the MTN driver.
I currently edc a MTN DD modded thrunite ti head with alu tool body and clicky. To have a lighted tailcap would be great. And I prefer the looks of the tool ti.
I have no clue yet why it stopped working. Didn’t drop it and used a NIMH cell…
But i didn’t use it much because of the low output and U.I.
The lighted tail version has the stock driver in it and only did single mode (high) on a 10440 but when I modded it with the tail LED it became 3 mode again, although a bit finicky so that obviously affected it.
The other one has a MTN 11 driver in the head with guppy, and the small forward clicky in the tail.
I think it could be possible to make a lighted version of this but would be very difficult to do with the limited space left by the switch.
I don’t know how the MTN driver would behave with a bleed resistor?
Never tried it.
I initially was was planning to use a MTN-11-DD in a brass Tool AAA with the eswitch. I hadn’t opened it up yet to look but now, seeing this thread….it looks as if the entire driver is in the tail. Is that true?
Ok so that’s good so the board in the back is specific to the eswitch… I have the light engine out but I didn’t want to disconnect the driver from the leds until I knew, therefore I can’t see what’s on the other side of the board. Ok so I’m going to guess that it will be fine using a mtn-11dd driver with regular firmware since the eswitch is in the back with its own specific board and obviously cannot be connected to the driver in the usual way with these drivers {Soldered to the otc pads}. I’ll give it a shot like that and see if it works… I find the eswitch/momentary stuff confusing when putting together these drivers.
Ok I understand now, I built the driver today so I will put it aside for now and see about finding a clicky that will work with the stainless switch cover. The link for the switch CRX used is no longer working but I will see what the options are at kaidomain. Thanks for all your help Jon.
Great work CRX! I tried using the 12mm version of this driver in a Ti3 v2 but the heat unsoldered the micro-controller from the driver! I wasn’t able to repair it, so will probably buy a new one. How do you go about regulating heat and turbo outputs in a light that small? Also what firmware?
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