New Project!

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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Fan's mounted!

I had a chance to finish the battery as well. I removed the 16 gauge wires that were competing the series connections and replaced them with nickle strips salvaged from other batteries. The balance board will eventuality be covered once I make the other electrical connections.

This nearly ended in disaster! It was 1AM and my tired eyes overlooked that I had shorted out 2S cells. The connecting strip immediately glowed bright orange and started burning through the first layer of protective wrap covering the batteries (they were covered in masking tape for assembly). I pulled it off with my small pliers before it could do any real damage though.

I realized I brushed the hot connector with my finger when it was glowing and burned it slightly. Burned skin sinks. High output batteries are no joke! Be careful with them.

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I accidentally shorted a cell once, trying to measure it with my calipers, which are stainless steel. :person_facepalming: :person_facepalming: :person_facepalming:

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I bought a cheap pair with plastic blades after almost doing that exact same thing without thinking

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I did that too luckily the cells were pretty much dead and only got a little spark action.

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Update: I was on vacation and hadn't had time to do any work, so here's some work I did before I left. I figured out how to mount the back of the reflector.

I found some aluminum coupler collars and ground them down to the right height. I JB welded them to the heat sink so I could screw it down.

The real hard part was figuring out how to stick the reflector on it to make it easy to remove. So added the plastic mounts to the sides of the reflector. They were originally the posts inside hollow enclosures that connect two halves. I cut them out and cut them to length. I ground and profiled the sides for a good fit and glued them to the reflector.

I decided to add screws through the bottom of the heat sink that went up through the reflector base to the mounts.

See the baking soda box in this picture? Pro tip: mixing baking soda with super glue makes a rock- hard concrete in seconds that bonds just about anything. I use it for difficult situations where I need an instant bond. The cheap super glue works better than the more expensive stuff for some reason

I needed to do some adjustment to the focus since it was hard to know exactly where to drill holes for the mounting screws.

Back to work on it. Stay tuned for more soon.

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Here's some progress! I've been really busy and hadn't had much time to work on it, but here's the latest. By the way, if they had an Olympic sport for the one who most anxiously watches paint drying, think I'd get the gold medal! I did some work on the reflector...fit everything together so it fits flush and snug. Then re focused everything.

Now the fun part, polishing and smoothing the part the reflector cup sits on. This took a couple hours, but I think it turned out okay.

More polishing...

Done!

Next is painting the top half of the reflector.

Next is bonding the reflector cup to the mount that will hold it inside the two halves of the host body.

The mount is the remnant of the original reflector I cut down to get the xhp70.2 to work, but that was a fail. I had to plan this out carefully since I had originally planned on using screws, but decided it would be too much hassle. It has to hold the whole weight of the reflector, heatsink driver and emitter so I needed it to fit right and be flush. That process was crazy difficult and tedious, but I think I got it close enough.

I'm impatient so I used the superglue and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) trick. For those who don't know, if you mix baking soda and cyanoacrylate (superglue), it makes a chemical reaction that generates heat, a bad smell, and turns your baking soda into a sort of concrete, almost like epoxy, in seconds. I got a strong bond so I know it's not going anywhere!

Here's the look from the top. I painted the reflective party since it was all scratched up. The reflector opening is taped off since I painted the reflector assembly after gluing.

Up next: mounting the finished heatsink assembly to the reflector, getting it inside the host, planning out the electrical connections, mounting the battery, and hopefully getting done light out of it!