NiteCore TM36 Lite Superthrower

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

Hy,

here is my mod of the NiteCore TM36 Lite for a friend from the netherlands :wink: The light is powered by a Luminus SBT-70 and is stock one of the strongest flashlights on the market. But that is not enough! So plans had to be made. Finally the only prerequisites were max. throw and a minimum of one mode :slight_smile:

First the light had to be disassembled. This was pain in the ass because the driver consists of several PCB, LCD, charging port. I was lucky to push the contact board of the light with a screw driver. But even after that i was sometimes stuck. So with a little help of Vinh i got the light disassembled.

The LED is soldered to the copper pill

Driver is still working :wink:

After 6 hours it finally looked like this

So the mod could start. We decided to use a LD2-M2 6A driver with dedomed XP-G2 S2 1D - pretty simple mod i think. First the pill was modified by a friend of mine with a lathe to exactly fit the Noctigon MCPCB in size and height.

Pill before mod

Pill after mod

Extreme flat contacts

The complete pill

LD2-M2 6A is glued with Artic silver to the pill. The driver is running UI2. The eSwitch from the original driver was used and works like a charm.

Reflector about 3,5m away

The centering of the LED was a pain, too. This took almost 2 hours. Do you recognize the man watching the mod? :wink:

Complete light

The TM36 has a slightly bigger reflector (1mm) compared to the EagTac M25C2 Turbo. But the reflector is not as smooth as the EagTac one.

The OLED display does not work any more.

After some final beamtuning i got 13170 Lux at 8m, which is ~842 KLux@1m/Kcd or 1836m range :crown:

Finally beamshots :slight_smile:

Distance to the bowl is 529m. Nikon P100, 1 Sek, f=3,2, ISO800

Controlshot

And 26x Zoom - Nikon P100, 1/1,6 Sek, f=5, ISO800

And an animated GIF. You can see here that the TM36 is a bit stronger than the EagTac M25C2 Turbo (~790 Klux@1m).

This light is a real beast. It is the strongest reflector based light i modded so far. Sadly the owner in the netherlands is waiting for it. It was a really tricky and time consuming mod but the results are great!

Regards

Kenjii

The OptoFire Searchlight | BEAMSHOTS on page 3 | record-breaking aspheric LED thrower
2

Awesome mod! Thanks for sharing.

3

Wow! 1836 meters throw, that’s over a mile!

Great work!

4

sorry for a noob question, but how did you center the led? By a lux meter or a beam pattern or something else?

5

Nice Mod!!

So the cells in the TM36 are in parallel?

6

That thing is an absolute beast!

Curious though, why not use an XPL HI?

7

much less throw than a dedomed XP-G2, even less throw than a dedomed XP-L

8

Really? That's a huge bummer. I was under the impression that XPL HI was able to sustain higher amps and put out more light with the same footprint as an xpg2... Guess I need to go read some more!

9

Same footprint yes, same die size no.

Ps. Awesome mod!

10

Nice work!

11

More light - yes, more throw - no

12

Real bummer is I can’t find a XP-G2 that pulls more then 4-4.2 amps even direct drive? I have a TM 36 on its way to me, just can’t justify tearing it apart, for a mediocre XP-G2 ?? I read all this about them pulling 5-6 amps just haven’t found one yet? Where are these super G2’s ?

13

Hhmm, I got one that did close to 5A, but got 4-5 that do 3.5 to 4.2A or so.... I bought a bunch of XP-G2 S2 2B's from FT - Mitko has had great results with those: 5.2A - 5.5A or even better, but my results so-so so far, but got a lot more to test. Haven't done hot dedomes yet successfully on them, so hoping I can now - need time.

Think the S4's do best on a high amp buck driver, but apparently this light did well with a LD2-M2.

14

Hi,

with just one cell (or multiple parallel cells) and linear or FET driver ~4Amps are possible. With a Buck driver (modded LCK 9A driver) i did 5,7A to a XP-G2 in my Trustfire T90-2 with 3x 26650 in Series (~800 Klux) :wink: See here: TrustFire T90-2 Luminus SST-90 @FASTTECH

It would have been possible to do that with the Tm36. There is much room inside the light for any driver, but we did not want to change the battery setup from 4x18650 to 8x 18350 because of the low capacity of the 18350s. Runtime would have been really short with 4x700mAh instead of 4x2600mAh capacity.

Regards

Kenjii

15

Hey Tom, about the XPG2, I bought several from FT after reading Mitko comments about them (S2B2). Hot de-domed one and put it in a C-8 I was building. FET driver, Sony VTC5 @ around 4.2v, 1.25” 20ga wires to emitter. 4.2-4.3a was the max I could achieve at the tail. I use a Fluke clamp meter to measure (after Dale’s advice). Worth noting- all of my amp measurements have gone up since I started using this method. Previously I was using 12” custom made leads of 12ga stranded wire. Now I use a 3” piece of solid 12ga. wire bent into a horseshoe shape to jump the tail of the light. FWIW saw 6.7a with my A6.
Scot

16

Thanks Scot - seems to confirm my results. I found little things would bump my amp readings. Last night I added light coatings of NO-OX-ID on the banana plugs of my 14 AWG DMM leads, and readings bumped 0.1-0.2A. Also light coatings added to the cell ends on press fits bumped it another 0.1A.

Yea, I'm in that group buy sign-up goin on by freeme for the UNI-T 210E clamp meter with 200A max rating - hope that happens real soon. I got two UNI-T DMM's, both with unfused high amp connections, one with 20A max rating - these are great economical meters, and so far, the clamp meter sounds very good from reviews.

17

:open_mouth: :open_mouth: excellent mod!! congratulation to you H) amazing kcds :smiley:

Thanks for the pictures and share your work :wink:

18

Guess who is receiving this beauty somewhere next week? :wink:

I’ll be taking it to Djozz for some further testing, along with a few others.

Grtz
Nico

19

Nice mod Kenjii.

Nicolaas, can I tag along?

20

Course you can, everybody is welcome!

The sheer distance might cause a problem though…….I mean, this light has some reach but not that much :wink: :bigsmile:

I’ll see if Djozz and I can make some kind of report on this light, with beamshot pics. Should be doable.

Grtz
Nico