6

Changing the emitter isn’t too hard, but is a bit tougher than a standard star.

The bezel is unglued and the star is screwed on. There is just one leadwire to desolder when removing the star.

The star itself contains:

  • The emitter (XP footprint)
  • Two resistors
  • A post on the back of the star that serves as positive contact to the battery.

You can’t just put the star on a hotplate and heat it up. Doing so would cause the post on the back to fall off.

  • I used a small table vise rotated so the jaws were parallel to the table. I used the vice to grip the post, not the star. The star itself sat on the upper edges of the vise’s jaws.
  • I heated up the LED with a hot air reflow station. A soldering iron touched to the edge of the copper star would also work, but would be more difficult as the star would be more likely to move around when the solder melts.
  • Once the solder melted, I used tweezers to remove the old LED and insert a new one.
  • The entire star was loose at this point since the solder holding the post to the LED had also melted. I gently pushed the star back into the correct position using toothpicks and tweezers.
  • Let it cool enough for the solder to solidify and you’re done.
  • SST-40 uses an XML footprint I think. As such, it wouldn’t fit on the stock star. Since the star has resistors on it, modifying an XML star to work in this light would be quite difficult and probably not worth the effort.