One of the things about many zoomies is that in stock form they tend not to have very wide flood beams. Sometimes only 45 degrees or less. With such narrow flood the lights have limited utility for up-close work. You can see what’s right in front of you, but nothing to the sides.
Too narrow flood is usually a design issue. For maximum possible flood the lens must retract as close as possible to the top of the emitter. By filing down part of the bezel flood in a typical pocket zoomie can usually be increased to 75 or 80 degrees. With a dedomed emitter the bezel can retract even further and floodbeam with a 90 degree width can be obtained with long focal length lens or a fresnel lens.
But this got me thinking… could I make a pocket zoomie with even wider flood. Just how wide could I make it?
I’ve moved away from dedomed emitters. They work, but the tints suck. Even XPLs that don’t turn completely green still end up with tint that’s vastly inferior to a domed emitter. So I wanted to use a domed emitter. I mostly use my lights up close anyways so close-range flood is more important. Being able to zoom to see something further away is nice, but I don’t need ridiculous flow.
I chose my modded Aleto N8, 1x18650 zoomie to be the host for this mod. Here’s the result:
The beam on the left is an unmodded Sipik 68 (XPE version). The beam on the right is my modded Aleto N8 “zoomable mule”. It now has a 136 degree beam angle!!! Unlike other zoomies this is now a TRUE mule. In flood mode there’ nothing in front of and around the emitter dome except a thin flat glass lens.
Here’s what’s inside:
The emitter is a CREE XPL 3C mounted on a pillar on a 16mm copper Noctigon. The pillar is made out of 4 pieces of sheet copper mounted sideways. The center 2 pieces are soldered together. The outer two are glued on with arctic alumina (which also provides a gap). The entire pillar was then soldered to the the Noctigon and the emitter soldered on top.
The emitter passes through a hole in the center of a plastic fresnel lens. Above the fresnel lens is a gap for the LED dome and then a flat glass outer lens. Both lenses are attached to the same lens retaining ring.
When the lens is extended into spot mode, the fresnel lens extends past the LED and places the LED at the focal point. I measured about 12.5k lux at turn-on with a fresh cell. Definitely no throw-monster, but not bad for a mule.
Here’s the light standing next to a Sipik 68:
I like the Aleto N8 zoomie for its small size relative to battery capacity. The entire modded light is 93mm long. Though about the same size as a Sipik 68, the modded Aleto runs on an 18650 cell. The current driver is a 4.5 amp Nanjg 105c with DrJones Mokkdrv electronic switch firmware.