My first mod thread! WooHoo!

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

Well, I’ve been around here a while, but I still consider myself to be a noob! Maybe not any more, though. After all, I’ve been giving my opinion on various threads for quite a while now as if I know something (HA!). I also completed my first BLF / Old Lumens Scratch Made Light Contest light this past go-round. I’ve secretly been doing simple mods along the way, but never posted a thread on one. ImA4Wheelr’s (currently running) Giveaway, in which he requires the entrants to post a link to one of their mod threads, finally convinced me that I needed to do this thing! So, here we go…

I modded a tiny zoomie light that I picked up at Lowe’s a while back. I had bought the light just for the purpose of modding. In fact, I even designed a driver board to go in it. But, when I looked at it again, I realized my design had a flaw that made it unsuitable for this light. So, I decided to proceed without a driver. I took pictures along the way, so I’ll let them do most of the talking from here on.


Here’s the light. It’s a zoomie. It has a clicky switch. And it came with four button cells in series directly powering the cheap 1/2-watt LED in the head.


Pieces-parts all over the place! You can see it’s actually not too shabby for a cheapie little light. It has a screw-in pill, orings around the head, the pill, and the tailcap, and a decent-looking clicky switch.


Here’s the LED. The PCB has vias around the rim where it grounds to the shell. The spring is soldered directly to the other leg of the LED.


Here’s the PCB I’m going to use for the LED. The original PCB was mounted to the underside of the pill, so I’ll use it as a contact board. I just had to remove the LED from this board, file it down to size, and solder a Nichia 119B where the cheapie LED was.


I drilled through the PCB (yeah, after the LED was soldered on), so I’d have a way to get the wires to the top. I soldered the wires to the original PCB where the LED had been.


Then, I put the two PCB’s in the pill, pulled the wires through the holes and soldered them down. Finally, I put it all back together. I tested it with the four button cells, then took them out and stuck a 10180 inside.

Beamshots are up next. First with the button cells, then with the 10180. I forgot to take a picture of the beam before the modification for comparison. Sorry about that. Oh yeah, sorry about the junk in the pictures as well. These pics were taken in my basement.

Well, I hope you liked it. I had fun. I did some things I hadn’t done before, and it worked anyway, so yeah, good stuff! I may one day fix my driver design and use that to do one of these again, with a brighter LED - and modes! I’m kinda bummed I didn’t get to use a driver in this one. I think for it’s size, it could really impress even normal, non-flashaholic people if it had a little more output and some fancy mode switching. But, I’m still happy with how it turned out. Thanks for watching!

2

What a cool wee zoomie, love it! (searching for one now) :laughing: Nice mod :+1:

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Thanks, CRX. The only thing I don’t like (other than not having modes) is that the zoom never brings the LED into perfect focus. It was that way before the mod, probably because the fully-focused image of the cheap LED would be hideous! My driver board has the LED footprint on the back, so by putting it under the shelf, it would move the LED further away from the lens, and bring the die into focus when fully zoomed. I just really need to do this mod again when I get my boards made (after fixing the error).

4

Congrats on your first mod thread, David. Oh and on that cute little zoomie of course! :beer:

I mentioned a couple of my mods here and there, but I have yet to post my own first mod thread.

5

Love the mod David. Well done. The million dollar question, whats next on the hit list? :slight_smile:

6

Very nice, Like CRX, I’d love that zoomie too for modding, it looks good and has many options!

Where did you source the 119B ? Last year I was looking for one to test a 119 board and it was impossible to find. Luckily I found some old stock 119A on Ebay, and even he had only 5 left.

7

Nice, so small and cute
Thanks for posting and to ima4wheelr!

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Sorry, I was remembering wrong. I don’t have any 119B, only the 119A that I got from texaspyro a while back. I’ll edit the OP to prevent confusion. Edit: done.

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That's a sharp looking mini light. Nice mod DavidEF. I think you may have started a new trend. This thread should be named Micro Zoomie Mods. I want one now.

I need to check out the wording in the GAW OP. I didn't mean for folks to have to create their own mod threads, but I'm glad this one was created.

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Well, TBH, I don’t remember how it was worded either. I probably just assumed that you meant for it to be in it’s own thread. I myself prefer that people post a build thread rather than just post a pic of the finished product into someone else’s thread. To me, it’s more fun to see how it’s made. So, even if you didn’t/don’t require it, I would have done it anyway. :wink:

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^

Totally agree. Much easier to find down the road. Now, I'm off to find rechargable 10180's.

12

A very nice little modded light indeed. Good stuff!

13

Nice mod! I like that zoom!

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The light was found at Lowe’s Home Improvement and it is a LUX-PRO LP-130. They have a few colors to choose from. I bought the gray one, but there is also black, blue, and pink. I can’t remember the exact price I paid, but it was a few bux. I’m thinking around five-ish.

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I manage to order 2 of them (red ones) from the Lux-Pro website, they appear to ship abroad without altered shipping costs. Or else I will get an email today or tomorrow that it was a mistake. :partying_face:

Let’s see if they hit Amsterdam! Thanks for the detailed information about this little thing, David!

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Oh, the stack of button cells is a bit longer (and a bit wider) than the 10180, so if using the stock springs, they won’t get compressed all the way. Since the springs are so small and thin, it might be better to replace them anyway. I didn’t because I wasn’t too worried about it at the time. The cell doesn’t rattle, so it’s fine for me. But I’m sure it would get more power to the emitter if it had complete compression, and even more if it had better springs. Alternatively, a spacer could be stuck between the battery and the tail spring to make it compress better.

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10250, fet driver and some copper I’m thinking :laughing:
Will need to check the website, only place I could find them was amazon for over £50 :frowning:

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I payed $16.50, for two plus the shipping.
https://luxproflashlights.com/index.php/luxpro-retail-flashlight-key-chain-focussing-light-w-grip.html

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If anyone could shoe-horn a 10250 in there, it’ll be you! If you remove the springs, I’d bet it’s already really close. And I’m certain that tail cap switch pocket could be modded to be more compact and give up another millimeter or two. That would probably do it! If you do a FET driver, I hope you put a XP-L HI in there. In my previous testing (with a set of parallel emitters) I was able to see about 1 1/2 amps from one Veleno Designs 10180 cell! Perhaps you could eek out a bit more from the 10250 cell? If you could get 2 amps to a XP-L HI, then you’d have over 800 emitter lumens in that tiny zoomie! :smiling_imp:

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wow, just got a shipped notice, they are fast :slight_smile: