Please excuse the terrible looking soldering, it was my first proper attempt at soldering and I spent quite a bit of time trying without flux and a non-tinned tip so it got a bit burnt up.
I started off with a nice looking purple FC11 but I didn’t like the UI so I grabbed the driver out of my SC31 Pro for that sweet sweet Anduril…
I decided if I was going to swap the drivers I may as well swap in a new emitter as well so I bought a few SST-20 4000k FD2 (quite a nice bin)
I tried dedoming the spares and they kinda worked but they ended up with a bunch of artifacts (really nice and rosy though)
Then lastly I bypassed the spring just for fun, and to practice soldering. I tested it with my phone light meter and it seemed to bump the lux by 10% but take that with a grain of salt…
I have some lens’ on the way so I’ll keep it updated.
I tend to not even think about modding anything with a sideswitch, as the footprint, mounting, dimensions, etc., are likely to be all over the place. Freaking nice that it all worked out!
Nice alteration.
I like this beautiful tint, same with my favourite TS10.
No person is born known solder, and the repeated practice will make you stronger
Fair warning…this can be a pandora’s box that will let out equal parts of addiction, joy, and frustration!
Flux is your friend…your best friend ever. Small observations: 1) looks like there is some black schmoo on the emitter dome. Not sure if that’s burned flux residue or perhaps a scorch from the iron tip, but try to gently scrub that away with some 91% or 99% isopropyl alcohol (or whatever that’s called over there). That light won’t run super hot but often schmoo on the polyester/silicone dome material can kind of burn in and create permanent damage and resulting degradation of the beam quality. And 2) You’re fine here but be careful with the insulation on the wires where they poke up through the mcpcb to the solder pads. The insulation has been burned back by too much heat. If the wire is exposed and can touch the core metal of the mcpcb or the flashlight shelf/pill somehow then you get a direct short - that can cause all kinds of woe. On that note, never forget to check for shorts and continuity with a multimeter before you power it up, and also try to check for contact/short between the wire soldering points and the metal reflector. These two metal-to-metal short conditions trip up a lot of folks.
Anyway, nice work…success! And rather ambitious for your first ever mod attempt!
I installed a SST-20 4000K from Convoy + 60 degree TIR in my FC11 which makes it a lot better for me, better colour, wider beam (though 45 degrees may be better as 60 is not needed in most cases), and I was thinking about using a SC31 pro driver, however, with the SC31 pro the LED is driven at higher current, on turbo more than 6A (depending on battery can be quite a bit more), so did you reprogram the driver to lower the output/remove turbo?
Yeah I’ve got a convoy 5° on the way because I want max throw. I left the driver as is and have had no problems with turbo. I asked around before I did it and people said it would be fine with the SST-20
