Sofirn Q8 458 HAM'R, DBC say's It's Hammer Time! :)

When Sofirn decided to make new battery tubes utilizing carriers for their Q8, I started thinking Hmmmm… and y’all know what that usually means! I went and made a list of available emitters that I had on hand, then ordered 4 D4S Quad boards with Optics from Intl-Outdoor and then got to work…

I had Chris from flashlightlens.com make me a custom 95mm UCLp lens. As you can tell from the pictures of the final assembly, it disappears!

I carved the massive 4” dia bar of 6061 to fit into the head of the Q8, replacing it’s quad reflector and threading into the bezel threads. In the end I also used the 2 screws that kept the reflector from rotating to lock in the big head, so it’s secure…

This pic shows the solid bar of Al mated to the Q8…

Proceeded then to inset the head for the optics/reflector/mcpcbs and then carved the bezel off the top, threading it and then the head to match…used a very fine 0.5mm thread pitch to keep profiles as small and narrow as possible for the bezel…

I located a reflector to use over the de-domed Luminus SST-40 in the center in the kit I bought from Old-Lumens, it’s taller than the optics so I had to inset it into the head, used a 25mm MaxToch DTP MCPCB to clear the contacts from the reflector…

I then test fitted a glass lens, installed here, and cut the fins as deep as I dared. My lathe can get grabby on these plunge cuts and the result of that is a ruining of your project, so I quit shallower than I intended to go.

Time to work on the driver system while waiting for the MCPCB’s and Optics to arrive, I essentially cut 4 driver boards in half, removing the side that has un-needed controls and only using the FET + 1 side, the essentials for controlling the 4 Quad boards. Flashed Anduril onto the original driver MCU and then used small Teflon coated wires to take the signal to the Slave FET’s and 7135 chips so all emitters would be controlled by the Master. The original driver has big pads for contacts, extra ones even, so I ran 14 ga Turnigy leads, 2 of them, up to the top for sharing between 2 Quad’s each on the positive side, ran 4 18ga Teflon coated wires up to the Quads for the negative control side to each MCPCB. I used a pair of 18ga Teflon leads up from the original driver to the SST-40 in the center. Makes for a big mess of wires and it was a bit tedious feeding these up through a central drilled hole (only part way up into the head, with side intersecting angled holes to either side for the Quads). I am stubborn, so I made it work. lol


All worked out in the end, had some snafu’s but while it was somewhat frustrating and required considerable extra work evaluating and solving, in the end it was all worth it…

The layout of the emitters, in an animated GIF style… this was taken with the light on in the lowest mode and then I labeled the emitters as to placement. I had all these on hand, and then some, so it was a matter of figuring out what I wanted to use and where to put it to maximize output and tint blending…

The beam profile is mostly floody, but there is a hot spot that extends the central range and it works great in my typical usage scenario. You can see the white barn in the middle of this shot at 610 yds distance even though the first 150-200 yds is lit up almost like daylight. In use, the amount of coverage is really great, on lower modes it’s easy to walk with and see what’s in the main interest zone and in the higher modes, virtually everything in a football field sized area is lit up like stadium lights. With a start value of 25,427 lumens from 4 Samsung 25S cells and a 30 second value of 22,700 lumens, it’s by far the brightest light I’ve ever assembled. :slight_smile:

I may do some shaping of the head, thinking about making the fins deeper, but the wiring is such a chore I may just leave it be. :slight_smile: I need to wait for the Sofirn tubes/carriers to come and do some testing to see how it performs with a longer lasting power supply before removing any possibly needed mass. I want to use it with 8 cells, will test it with 16 and see how it goes.

I did find a new cartridge chambered in .458 HAM’R that is made for an exclusive custom built AR-15, Starline… a maker of the brass… has very nicely offered to send me 6 of these shells to use for the headstamp… 458 HAM’R is so fitting here, with 4 quads, 5 drivers, 8 cells and an “It’s HAMMER TIME!” attitude. ! I’ll cut the shells to fit between the shelf and lens, use two of them to cover the wires and the other two in the empty triangles between the optics. So now the light will be known as 458 HAM’R. :smiley:

Edit: Hammer Time pic, should be very near finalized here…

Edit II: Took a throw reading, at 5M, and with rested cells it does 128.25Kcd for 716.24M throw. Not bad, I’ll take it! :smiley:

Edit III: Did some more aesthetic work today, cut the fins deeper and extended the radius a bit more. I’m officially done messing with the Ham’r now. The only other thing is waiting on the extension tubes from Sofirn but I’m really happy with how this has turned out. When I was attempting to cut the fins deeper the other day I was using an RPM of 150, today I doubled it to 300 and used gear oil during the process. This went really well and I got the fins cut pretty deep, deep enough to call it good and finally stop working on it. lol

I was worried about the speed and the use of the oil, but everything appears to be fine. Whew! lol

Another look, in hand…

Short walk-about video using the 458 HAM’R Q8…

Awesome custom!!! :slight_smile: :beer:

Fantastic Creation Your Wizardry !! :student:

Lol DB this thing is ridiculous! Awesome work, machining, driver mods, wiring, fantastic!

Scientist, yeah, it’s like that? I do all this with that dumbfounded look on my face. :stuck_out_tongue:

ToyKeeper likes to call me Dr. Frankendale, this light validates her saying that. It’s a Sofirn host Q8, with Noctigon Quad boards and one MaxToch 25mm MCPCB, Ledil Angie Optics and a random 22mm reflector from Old-Lumens kit for good measure. A de-domed and sealed SST-40 from Richard along with 70 and 80 CRI Samsung LH351D emitters in U6 and W6 bins, paired up with XP-L HI and HD emitters in 1A, 1D, 3A, and 3D tints. Teflon and Silicon coated wires, all assembled in a 6061 4” bar bought on ebay. With a Master driver from Sofirn and 4 modified Alex Wells drivers, even the “driver” is an homage to the crazy tactics of the good (or notsogood) Dr.

In other words, an assemblage of parts from the community at large (being mine and Old-Lumens kits merged). And it’s a Monster!

Wow, great work!

I’m with the others Dale. :beer:
Thanks for making the thread your light deserves.
I can believe the car in the drive way in front of you was vaporised when you hit turbo. Hope no one was in it.
Keep up the extraordinary work mate, good one. :beer:

I've heard Texas had some blackouts recently because of 'power cable thieves'..... hmmm I wonder where that red cable is coming from? ;)

Wow dale.. awesome stuff!

That’s insane. I extremely liked how you added a sst40 in the center. Great work dale!

Great build and video. Thank you.
If that strobe isn’t a phaser set on the “stun” setting, I don’t know what is!

Trying to think of a way to measure the current draw, maybe I could create an open tail cap that would allow me to get a clamp meter between the copper negative plate and the tube, but it’d probably end up dropping current and not be accurate. It’s a LOT, gotta be! The math leads me to 86 Amps, I can believe it!

I was going to put 4 Nichia 219C’s in the triangular open spaces between the quads, but then the way I did the wiring took up two of those spaces. So now I’m still debating adding two in the open slots, then covering the “T” wiring connections with 2 of those .458 Ham’r cartridges. And I’m contemplating how I could put a color SMD emitter in the primer pocket of the casing and wire it to the switch LED’s. Might be difficult to run the wires from the switch up to the top but hey, beats digging ditches right? :smiley:

86 amps! That’s insane and I love it.
Where are you hiding the flux capacitor??

It was a bugger to pull off, but the flux capacitor is between the invisibility cloak and the gravity field generator. I know, I know, but I have diamond shielding and so far it’s working… :wink:

THAT , is coool !!!

That is some special build there wow. Any info on turbo run times yet?

UH-MAZE-ING!!

Very nice work :+1:

Wow! Tint looks very NW in the video :+1: