I just modded this light. I did not expect to be so awesome after the modding.
It is my first zoomie and I simply love how it turned out, what a crazy little flashlight !
The flashlight is from wallbuys. It came with a XML emitter, and the tailcap current was 2A.
The pill is brass, the lens is glass and the overall quality of the flashlight is good !
I remove the original XML emitter and installed a Dedomed CREE XP-E2 R4 1C LED on Noctigon 20mm star.
The 20 mm star has to be trimmed a little for it to fit in the brass pill.
For it to properly focus with the new emitter I had to machine the raised 16mm pad from the brass pill, so the new emitter could sit lower.
To get out most out of the XP-E2 emitter it needs to be driven at ~2,5A. By only changing the emitter, the tailcap current decreased form 2A to ~1,5A, so I also installed a new 17mm driver and now I get a 2,3A talicap current with a fully charged 18650.
The throw of the modded light is just amazing !!
I do not have a lux-meter, but on a dark night, I could clearly see being lit a building situated at 700 meters ! ! It looked like it could throw even more.
I decided to improve this little throw monster even further and added to my UF T20 a recycling light aluminium collar.
I ordered it at a local CNC machine shop. The dimensions to perfectly fit the T20 brass pill are : exterior diameter 26mm, interior diameter of the hemisphere : 20mm.
Polished the interior hemisphere to mirror finish.
When focused , the collar projects a perfect square image back to the emitter.
Focusing is very demanding, a difference in height of 1/10 mm can badly defocus the reflection!!
The tint also becomes warmer.
Playing with it on my test setup, when fully focused, i observed a increase in brightness of at least 60 percent of the projected emitter image!
First i decided to go with the collar aperture of 10mm (50% of the hemisphere diameter) but in the T20 setup, the focal length is very small and the expanding cone of light that escapes the collar does not hit the entire surface of the aspheric lens.
So i decided to sand down the collar until the escaping light cone became large enough to illuminate the entire surface of the lens.
The question is what is better? The collar with the smaller aperture( more light reflected back on the emitter) Or larger aperture ( escaping light cone fully use the lens surface ) ?
After the mod, the flood mode becomes narrower,
I do not have a luxmeter, but now it clearly throws better.
got any pictures for us to see Borg? I dedome XP-E2… sure it seems like it’s bright… but shoot it more than 100M… what can you see with it? the beam are so small it barely able to lit up a whole person.
for me dedome XP-G2 on noctigon copper with 3.5A it’s more than enough in the zoomie.
because you also want the flood too to make it all around light
That is a very nice mod, with a very good gain, thanks for showing it. I know the dilemma: go for the best throw and sacrifice the flood, or go for the best output, even in flood. I think the last is better, you only re-use the light that also would be lost in flood modus and get it back as extra illuminance.
DayLighter, for me, the spot size could be even smaller .With XP-E2, at 100m, the side of the square spot is ~4 meters i believe.
I will try some beamshots, but for now i can only use a 3mp phone camera. It should be enough for comparing it side by side with a 350+ Klux thrower, a fully modded Trustfire TR-J19. I will try to post the beamshots tomorrow.
The 3 flaslights used are :
modded Trustfire TR-J19, dedomed noctigons XM-L2 U2 1A, 4,5A tailcap current(3 x 32650 trustfires series), build report here : link
modded Uniquefire UF-T20, dedomed XP-E2 R4 1C Noctigon, 2.3A tailcap current + recycling light collar , build report in this thread.
Sky Ray King, 6 x XM-L2, domes ON, driver mod from 5A to 9A tailcap current.
The shots were taken with a 3Mp phone camera, the exposure was locked to minimum(–2) and the white balance locked to daylight.
The daylight white balance mode makes the image more warmer than reality and probably makes the warmer Uniquefire spot to seem a little brighter.
Distance : 100m
Forgot to take a control shot, but there was pitch black.
In the first picture the beams are X crossed, it is hard to hold both lights and take a picture with the phone at the same time
first picture : Uniquefire uf t20 spot left, Trustfire tr-j19 spot right
second picture : sky ray king 6 x XM-L2
third picture is digitally enhanced, for fun : Uniquefire uf t20 distance 180m
Ok guys, I finished my first mod. With some tips from Djozz, the shopping list has been as follows:
- Wallbuys UF T20
- C8 brass pill from FT (and some silicone lube & thermal paste)
- Intl-outdoor: Noctigon XP20 MCPCB & CREE XP-G2 R5 3C LED and Qlite Rev.A 7135*8 3.04A driver
This week finally the FT package arrived, so I spend the evening modding this T20. Last month I've read many posts so I was well prepared :)
First step: chemical dedoming! I decided not to use gazoline but cellulose based thinner, learned from BLF member Toppel in this great post.
Within an hour, the dome fell off in pieces, as you can see in the pictures:
So, in my humble opinion thinner/cellulose is the way to go for dedoming, as it is clean and easy to use.
After dedoming I carefully installed & soldered the Led board and driver on the pill, and bridged the 4th star of the driver to ground for moonlight/low/mid/high switching options. Then I assembled the flashlight and hit the switch for some test shots.
Full zoomed in/out (mouseover):
My first impressions are mixed, see images below:
it's a powerful light, though I can't really compare the original T6 with the XPG2 LED
it gets quite hot after a few minutes on highest power
no blinkies is nice. Don't know if moonlight setting is useful.
the 'zoomed in' spot is not very consistent, it looks like a moon with darker areas. It's not a perfect circle and certainly not a sharp image of the Led dye like I can see with the SK68 clones.
when zoomed in, there's a large 'ring' noticable. I don't like that.
The light is quite yellow, compared to a SK68 Q5. Don't know if this is 'normal' or a result of the dedoming.
The tint looks familiar, this what you get upon dedoming (warmer tint). It is just not fully focussed, mine does also not fully focus because of the thicker led-board and the dedome, but my spot is much tighter than that. Some people have reported issues with the focus of this light.
That is light gets hot is no problem, mine gets hot but hardly looses output, indicating that the led temperature is still fine.
The ring is the upper rim of the pill reflecting light, you get rid of that by blackening the side of the cavity the led board is in. Using a permanent marker already helps a lot.
Thanks Djozz, great feedback. I don’t expect thermal issues but noticed this compared to the default Led&driver of this flashlight. It may also prove that the thermal paste contributes in good heat dissipation
With the default T6 led, the tint was much cooler, so I understand this XPG2 is warmer white and due to dedoming even more?
What can I do about the focussing issue and getting a tighter spot?
The lens needs to be a bit further away from rge led when zoomed in, perhaps an extra spacer of some kind where the o-ring under the lens is? You can start with loosening the lens a bit, or with a piece of cardboard to test how thick it should be, and for a permanent solution there might be a rubber washer of the right size in a plumbing store?
Strange. When you get it focused better, I wonder if the darkened parts will still be there. It looks like the emitter might have been damaged on one side, perhaps, or maybe part of the dome is still there on one side.
You could also examine it by putting it on moon mode, pulling the lens most of the way out to focus, and aiming a camera down inside to get a close-up picture of the emitter. You may also need to shine another light down inside, depending on how the camera behaves. I don’t have any zoomies with moon mode, but here’s a pic I got from that method with the light off:
To me it looks like part of the dome is there, its effect could easily be causing those irregularities in the beam pattern (not the ring). Maybe you needed to soak for longer than one hour?
I have used an extra 'O-ring' of solid copper installation wire to adjust the lens a bit.
The projected picture of the die is not as sharp as my sk68 zoomy.
As you can see in the picture, the beam has a purple imperfection in one corner. Maybe the die is damaged, or its a little bit of the dome left on the die.
Well yes, maybe there’s a little part of the dome left. I don’t think soaking the PCB for a longer period would help, as the dome completely fell off and was kind of ‘crushed’, not dissolved. As the naked die is very vulnerable I didn’t brush the surface.
Well done! The blue in the corner is typical of a chip of phosfor broken off in the corner of the die during the dedome (you should be able to see it in a close up of the led), exposing the blue led underneath.
The image suggests that the led is not exactly centered under the lens.
Cheap glass lenses used in flashlights tend to do worse imaging than plastic ones. I still like them better because they do not scratch over time, and I do not want the ugly die imaged sharp anyway.
or maybe cellulose based thinner is a bit harsh, I mean, full dedome in just an hour or less, that’s pretty fast chemical reaction.
Anyways, all those discolorations and unwanted rings are reason I don’t buy zoom light.
.With XP-E2, at 100m, the side of the square spot is ~4 meters i believe.
