Hello,
I would like to experience modding a light…
I’ve got one of these which I would really like to improve, or a 3 mode sk68 clone to practice on…
Could someone guide a complete newbe in choosing led and whatever else is needed??
thank you
I don’t have experience with this light so can’t help directly. What sort of battery do you use in it? Lithium Ion or normal alkaline/ NiMH? What in particular would you like to change about the light? Did you do a google search about modding a 1AA angle head light? Have you opened the light already?
I have opened the light as in the end of this
I only use nimh, would love to increase the runtime and get rid of the strobe mode…
To increase runtime and remove strobe, you should swap the driver.
If you want to maintain AA use, driver selection is a bit limited. You will want something with modes to have runtime options.
If you only wany Li Ion support, the QLite drivers at Intl-Outdoor are quite nice. You might need to remove some 7135 chips to reduce the drive current though.
And which driver should I go for if I want to use nimh? And the emitter?
Can I use any emitter on a new driver?
Sk68 and sk98 don’t have standard 17mm boards so its a bit harder to switch the driver. I don’t know a good driver for nimh with high and low.
Also they often have a hollow pill…
But you can swap the emmitter easily in a sipik, just buy a emmitter you want, for example a xpg2 on 16mm board and swap it in.
I don’t say this with a too good feeling but I think a p60 is the way to go for an easy first mod. You can assemble a new pill and put it in.
I have tried a few AA drivers. Can you measure the driver diameter? I think it would be 17mm, but you need to know that before ordering one. Later when I’m at my PC, I’ll dig through my stash and see which one I liked that had modes. It may have disco modes though, but no mode memory so you would never need to see them.
The poor heat dissipation of the body is the problem and limit, so swap to a more efficient emitter if is compatible with optics and reflector, and take care to don’t short cut the new led with the reflector if it is of metal, like I did swapping an xpe to xpg2 1 week ago xD
btw looks even more fancy with the fly eye lens, good job
If it accomodates a 17mm board, I personally like this driver from intl-outdoor. It works well with a single AA cell and with the short cycle type memory, you don’t need to see the blinky modes.
That driver looks good. I will be trying that one when I place another IO order.
Relic, if you’re interested, the LD 30 driver IO sells is the best IMHO I’ve found so far for two rechargeables. It doesn’t work well with one cell.
If you’re doing an emitter swap and prefer a floodier light, maybe an XM-L LED would be better. Can anyone say weather an XML would fit?
Let me take a step back,
This is my situation:
Can I just swap the bare emitter with something like a xm-L?
Would this increase the runtime or only the amount of lumen?
XML would increase flood, and output but may decrease runtime since it has a lower forward voltage than that LED. The bigger problem I see (from pic) is HOW to mount the XML… You might have to go back to the optic.
You mean that I can’t just swap it with something like this ?
What is it that determines the runtime? Is it the part where the battery connects or the part visible in the photo where the switch is attached (I said I’m a real newbe)? Does that also determine Pwm?
Ok, going back and reading things over I think I’m starting to understand.
I would like a driver or circuit board (17mm it is) for Nimh’s and a new emitter.
Does the new driver have the switch on it or would I need to swap the existing one?
Which driver and which emitter?
The emitter you linked is a bare emitter. It needs to be reflowed onto a star. reflowing is not hard to do, but it’s not a simple task either. There are many methods of doing it, many are well documented on here.
Swapping the emitter will not inherently give more run time. Swapping to a more efficient emitter and reducing the drive current resulting in the same light output would give more run time.
I just noticed the unique driver design there. That’s going to complicate things, I’ve never seen a driver like that before. You might be better off leaving it alone and just swapping the emitter.
Edit: Also, that emitter star is square. Most emitters come on a round star, 12mm, 14mm, 16mm, or 20mm in diameter. Not sure you can just swap in a new star, might need to measure for fit first.