November is national modding month... it's that time again

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
36

Made this adapter for a 200mW green laser to fit inside an old Brinkmann Legend LX out of Nylatron GS, a 32mm bar of molybdenum disulphide impregnated nylon. This stuff is some tough plastic! Even shaving a coil off in the turning process (no lathe, drill press and vice with high speed steel planer blade) the thin strip of plastic was difficult to break, stronger than a similar shaving of 6061.

The cell phone tower is 2.09 miles away. Open the pic in a new window, click it to view larger, tell me if you think it's hitting the tower...

37

Nice!
I had tried to slice a XML dome in former time and it ended ugly…

I have searched the forum but can’t find any dedicated thread for the mtg2 slicing…my stlv6 has a kind of yellow donut hole too, I thought it is because of the ugly dirty reflector…anyway only visible on a white wall.
Mtg on 4A is nice that’s how mine is driven too. I used the two cell driver with the slomotion mode changing. I have fujiked everything together so I won’t dissassemble the light anymore anyway to play with the dome.
I have another one of these 2 cell driver on order this time the one from fastech with the super low sensing resistors…
I am not sure what the best option might be as I have the I impression that the narrow XML beam is very impressive, if you consider that it is only driven with half the power even more.
I need a reason for spending 20$ on a single emitter :wink:

38

That sliced and diced mtg2 is really cool! I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of picking bits of dome off around those tiny little phosphor crystals but this looks much more doable. Nicely done.

Did you notice any change to the die pattern yellow splotches that some have reported in the beam profile? Better or worse after the slice?
Cheers

39

I was noticing a yellow spot in the middle of the hot spot before. That's gone now. When I first sliced it, the spill was noticeably warmer than the hot spot, the hot spot had a well defined circle. Now , after the "diced" part, the spill is a nice soft white again and the hot spot is less defined, merges more into the spill which is an effect I like.

Slice to get a tight hot spot, defined edges. Slice and dice to soften the edges of the hot spot and bring tint back into normal range for the MT-G2. ;)

Edit: compared to the S2200 that's been bumped in a resistor mod this one is warmer. But it's not being driven hard at all, so that's part of it no doubt.

40

Cool thanks for the description, sounds interesting for sure. Sounds like the phosphor at the edges of the emitter has quite some effect on the emission tint.
I still haven’t fired up an mt-g2 inside a reflector yet so I’m not too sure what I can expect from the stock emitter. In any case multi emitter mt-g2s in the BTU shocker reflector array will be pretty damn floody and also fairly forgiving in terms of blotchiness I would imagine.
But I will definitely be trying this on my next mt-g2 build especially if it’s going to be more of a thrower.

41

November mods..

-Ive done some mods to the Lustefire 3x U2, and various high current testing... I have not mentioned much about it in the thread yet..

-Just did the Convoy L4..

-Did some minor stuff to the cheapo WB zoomie.. Not too impressed by the XB-D in that light... I swapped back to stock. Ill give the little XB-D a chance in a reflector light..

-I fried 2 high XM-L2s in my ZY-T08. Mentioned some about it here. First i used the light with stock driver, then modified stock driver, then modified TR3T6 driver (that was when the killing started). Now I have a modified Lustefire 3XU2 driver set up to do about 6,4-6,5amps.... And a XM-L2 U2 1A which is taking a bath..

-Did some more experimenting with the Archon M20XL driver.. No success..

-Swapped emitter in my Archon M30XL. Now its got an XP-G2. I wont bother with the stock driver in that...

-Swapped emitter in my T10 and did some resistance mods..

-Swapped one emitter in my SRK, now mixed emitters. :)

-Swapped emitter in ZY-T619. I did not like XP-E2 which I earlier "upgraded" too, so I changed to XM-L2. But due to vf, and me wanting to use the modified stock driver I ended up using an XM-L on Noctigon instead.. Ill sell the light.. It became quite decent after I had machined the body a little and put in some copper in that hollow body..

-Swapped emitter in STL-V6, used to have XP-G2 in it.. Now domed XM-L2 U2 1A (sitting on copper "pill").

-Swapped emitter in my ZY-T13 (de-domed XM-L2 U2 1A), I used to have a de-domed XM-L2 that was overly green-ish, which I swapped into my C8, which ill get rid of now..

-Modified 4pcs FL-2 3A style drivers for higher output...

I might have done more.... Every month is a mod month. Some months are more active than others though.. :)

42

Hold your breath...... December might be considered part of November this year ....

43

wow .....sliced and diced

Love the pic.

Looks like an old Luxeon K2

except it's bright :)

44

I knew there was something familiar about it! (horrible memory) looks much like that, but on steroids! Wonder if the K2 ever dreamed of 4000 lumens….

Edit:
in playing the mod game, I put SinkPAD mounted XM-L2 U2 1C emitters in my Terminator, created a spike to go between the 4 heads…planned on it protruding about 3/4” for the Terminator style, then chickened out as I like to stand my lights on their face to keep dust off the lens. :slight_smile:

45

Argh don’t extend mod month…I’ll never get anything finished without a deadline! :stuck_out_tongue:

46

I'll never get anything accomplished if I don't..:P

47

Flashlights are a hobby to be, once there is a a deadline on things it becomes work/ a chore, something that needs to be done. Which often makes me not want to do it. :p

48

i have swapped some black orings for blue, black boots for blue... does that count???

waiting on an IOS order for some emitter swaps, and more blue boot swaps

need to make a digikey order to get the desired resistors for my m6., and components for a custom DD driver with a twist (from tivo)...

49

Here is what I hope to get done in December:

- replace existing emitter in my OEM Big Head K8 to a Noctigon XP-G2 neutral white.

- do a tear down of that new light with big head . Depending on how mod friendly it is, as I have two of these lights incoming, one light will have a de-domed XP-G2 and the other, a de-domed XM-L2 both on Noctigon MCPCBs. Hopefully the drivers are easy to mod.

  • build a thrower based on a Convoy L2 host. LED will be a de-domed XM-L2 on Noctigon MCPCB and driven to at least 4.8A using a resistor modded lightmalls “5A” driver.

After that, on a plane again back to Philippines for another six months of volunteer work. Only spending a couple of weeks in Oz to see family and friends.

50

Happens every year :P

mod on

51

Debuting this month from Killer Lumens is my DX21 based tint mixing light (one WW and one CW emitter and a very advanced custom UI)

Also for my personal mod’s I’m doing a control ring driver for my BlackShadow PadMe, a pair of TK35 MT-G2 clones (with custom buck driver), A RGB TN30 (using single color LEDEngine emitters) and a few other thing’s I’ll be keeping quite.

52

I like how you tell people you're being quiet about things ..

makes you seem more mysterious

53

Lol yea, the sad thing is I finish most of my project’s I’m “keeping quiet” but then never get around to posting them. In the last 3 months I’ve built myself several personal projects that I know people would love but I never find the time to make a post / build thread then even tho I build them for myself I end up selling them off and never share…

The thing’s I’m most excited about are the dual head tint shifter and the RGB TN30 with the LEDEngine emitters, I just hope I can get the emitters well balanced being in series.

54

So should I save my J12, new emitters, and KD blinky-free driver for then? :party:

55

OK kids guess what time it is again ......

de-domed 6 lights

(NEVER de-dome a 4c tint )< ugly dark green

put a bunch of nw emitters in lights

Fixed two old Blf lights I had in the drawer (tank007 E07BLF edition & Mr Lite BLF AA-Y4E)

reflowed a nichia ,and finished a N-light L2 w ith it ///219A

I'm on a roll and have only screwed up one dumb ugly xpe emitter because i was having too much luck popping xre domes off or cutting domes ..

18650's suggested 3.49 cent ebay zoomies ARE pretty lame like B42 was bemoaning ... modding them is an exercise in futility . De-doming their ugly ugly tint makes them just a tad less ugly .

De-domed two sk68's with fairly nice tints ...,and an edi-t t-11 ,.2 p-14 edit's and a few 3.49$ ebay zoomies all with pretty lame outcomes . The edit's were fairly decent tinted xre's and now they are foul green tints . Doesn't matter since i have lots of xre's in the toy box if I want to go back to stock . i think I'm going to get some xpg-2 1a's to de -dome and see if I like the tint on those . it's hard to be a tint snob and see all this bizzare tint changing ...It's tint gambling .

Happy modding month