US - Defiant "Super Thrower" 3C (New Model - +/-64mm Head XM-L) - Get To Home Depot Now!

LED Flashlights – General Info Other Battery Type Flashlights
594

You choose the diameter. Use a hack saw and slice through one thickness. Then pry it open with a screw driver or the like. If you have a band saw then you can slice through the length entirely. Now you’ll have two halves. Take a hammer and pound each half flat as possible. Wear safety goggles.

Now you have two strips of pliable copper. If the strips are too wide for your application get some tin snips. Use vise grips to hold the strip steady while you snip along your scribed cut line. Flatten again with hammer or squeeze the strip in a vise with flat jaw surfaces. If using a vise you may have to insert some flat stock between the jaws as most vises have “knurls” on their clamp faces that’ll mar your soft strips with dimples, diamonds, and such.

Finally file down or sand down the edges so they’re smooth/rounded and not flesh/battery wrap cutting sharp. Wear leather type gloves as much as possible as these pre-sanded strips can be nasty sharp.

595

As I typed the last post on my Ipad in a MacDonalds, I realized that I was around the corner from another HD. I went in and found the last of 13 pieces of the 5x7 copper step flashing. I bought them all, I use them to make repairs to out slate roof at home. In a previous post I sort of complained that the one sheet that I bought for the 2 parallel cell mod was over $4! Well these last 13 were on clearance for $1.33 each, hence my buying them all. The mystery for me is how they lasted so long at that price! If you look carefully at the yellow price label, you will see that they were on the floor for that price since August 2012. It seems I really do have good luck at these sort of things!

BTW, the SKU# is 693055

Actually I paid a little less than that, got an extra 5% off for using my Home Depot card! :slight_smile:
If anybody needs some let me know.

596

Excellent Idea! Thank you very much! I have soft copper tubing already and actually forgot I wanted to try something similar to your idea. I will do it.

dchomak, Great score. You got a heck of a deal there.

cat eyes, thank you for the humor and good memory jogger from childhood.

Garry, your thread just hit 600 (or is is 650, it keeps changing) posts. Can we get our free Defiants now?

597

cat eyes, did you see post 587?

Nottawhackjob may have been kidding and I’m just too thick to get it, but I wasn’t.

598

I just discovered this forum and I hope I’m not hijacking the thread, but I’m hoping to get some information about this flashlight.
I was helping my buddy do some work on his car and (over a couple beers) started talking about adding some super bright lights to his car. He doesn’t want to spend a lot of money and was hoping to DIY it using maglites or something. I told him about this $20 flashlight at home depot and we started trying to figure out a way to mount a few of them onto his roof rack and power them from the car’s battery.
The best idea we could come up with was to use a 2 or 4 port (depending on how many lights he installed) cigarette lighter adapter, each with a 2A tablet charger, which would power 1 light a piece. Assuming there isn’t a better way to do this (which would seriously surprise me), would running 5v to the LED driver pose any risk of ruining it? Would there be a way to run these lights off the 12-14V provided by the car without having to step the voltage down to 4.5-5V? I guess the real question is is this even possible?
Please forgive my ignorance. I don’t know much about LEDs, but I want to learn. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

599

I don't believe the current stock driver in the Defiant will regulate voltage, so if you go too high (how high is too high? I don't know.) you'll likely blow out the LED. How about just getting two of these? They have a decent review here.

-Garry

600

+1 to what Garry said. Also, the defiant has a bit of spilled light in the foreground, but it’s mostly a spotlight so might not be ideal for a fixed mount on a car.

Welcome to the forum. You probably win the ‘furthest north in North America’ prize for today.

601

Garry and Ruffles, many thanks for the information. $30 for a 10W light seems more than reasonable, especially cause we can just bolt it on, wire it in and go :slight_smile:
Does kind of take away the fun of DIYing it, though. Hypothetically, if we could find a 4.5V, 2-3A power source, do you think our drunken idea would work?

Is this a cash prize or do I get a trophy/medal?

602

It’s March now, how about some sandals? Or maybe a snow shovel would be more appropriate. :stuck_out_tongue:

603

It’s close to sandals weather, so I’ll take the sandals prize

604

I got myself one of these yesterday, the super thrower yesterday. I just ordered it online and picked it up in the store. Much easier than combing the isles for these dang things.
Overall, the flashlight is a beast, my wife said shes happy its in the car for self defense.
I tested it this morning before work and the throw it puts out is pretty nuts. Awesome light for 24 dollars and change.
Now my SkyRay 3T6 is being retired from the car to my backpack. and my C8 from my backpack to my work bag. and my mini mag to my side table.
WOOO, the collection is still growing.

605

Hi Everybody,

comfychair sent me over here from another thread because I just got one of these from my local HD (which was suggested by Moderator007), and I had some questions, but, gosh, there are like 600+ messages in this thread :(!!

I was asking some questions about this light on the other thread, but basically, I’m wondering if there’ve been any developments with respect to using batteries like 18650s, etc., without modding the electronics in the light (I’m still not there yet)?

I’ve already tried using some C-adapters with AA Eneloops, which seems to work ok, but I guess what I’m wondering what is the voltage spec for the out-of-box driver, because I’m wondering if it’d be possible to use something like 2 x 18650s in this, along with maybe a dummy C battery?

I’m assuming that 1 x 18650 (with 2 dummy C batteries) would work, but the light would be dimmer (because of 3.7V for the 18650 vs. 3.6V-4.5V (for Nimh/Eneloops/Alkalines)? Is that correct?

Sorry if these questions have all been answered in this thread previously, but it’d (it’ll) probably take me all night to read through all 600+ messages, so I hope that someone might know the above.

Also, FYI, as mentioned, I just picked this one up today, and the situation with finding it IN the HD store apparently is still not much better than at the start of this thread.

The light is still a “no home” light, and I was lucky to be able to find it (spent about 1.5 hours, actually) after persisting with 3 of the HD employees.

I was lucky that the last guy, Don, knew that it was “no home”, and he just walked right over to where this Defiant was (it was NOT in the same place as the other Defiants) and brought one back to me.

Anyway, hope that someone can help.

Later,
Jim

606

Hi Jim,
The easiest is a 1x18650 with a spacer to fill out the tube. Wrap the cell so it fits snug in the tube better too.
When you are ready to tinker with the electronics, this is a relatively easy mod.
HD Defiant 3C Mod

607

relic,

Thanks. I’ll look that mod thread over.

Re. 1 x 18650, how significant is the performance difference with the 18650 (3.7V), vs., Nimh or Alkaline (3.6V-4.5V)?

Also, a ‘C’ cell is 50mm long, and an 18650 is nominally 65mm long, so what size spacer would be needed for the 1x18650?

Actually, wouldn’t it need to be something like a “dummy” battery, rather than a “spacer”?

Also, I gather that the out-of-box driver won’t take the 7.4V from 2x18650?

Sorry for all of the “Also…” :)…

Jim

608

Jim, scroll the thread for pics until someone posts a link to a specific post. The dummy/spacer was really easy to make just by lining up the 3Cs with the 18650 to measure the difference - dowel 3/4”, t-nut #8-32x1/4” & bolt #8-32x3” all inside a 3/4” x 2’ IPS 100 PSI Poly Pipe from Garden EDIT, Plumbing Dept. #811000004758 ($6 receipt with lots of dowel and poly left). A few of us have also built a parallel holder to run 2*18650s with some discussion on this toward the end. This reminds me I need to finish the PlastiDip of the one I did and then start building version 2 that bends around the battery better. Search my nickname on the last several pages and you should find the discussions on both items fairly easily.

PS - I haven’t measured for brightness differences. Now, both of my DSTs have replacement drivers and LEDs but only one of them can still take 3Cs. I’m using IMRs in them instead of regular 18650s running 3.5+ to 4+A. So I’m guessing the 3Cs would sag and not deliver the watts of the IMRs. The Keeppower 3100 I have delivers close but slightly less than the IMRs. Some of my laptop pulls suck, so it depends a lot on what you’ll feed it.

609

Will do. Thanks!

Edit: The parallel one was post #552.

Edit: Spacer is post #216, page #5 :slight_smile:

610

That was fast! Gotta love pics. :slight_smile:

Note that I used #8 as mentioned above instead of #6 in post 216. Either should work, my HD didn’t have one of the #6 parts in the right size. Hardest part of making the dummy was drilling the center hole without a vise - shoulda used a clamp.

If you make a parallel holder, don’t forget to use the holder when testing for current - somehow one of my DSTs ended up needing a new LED - oem setup did not like 2*18650 serial.

611

Hi,

I think that what I’d really like to do is just cut the tube down to a length that I could just put 1x18650 in it. Problem is that I don’t have much in the way of metal machining tools, i.e., no lathe, no vise, etc. I think that would be really cool!

I found some videos by Old Lumens, who I think is on BLF, on what he calls “human lathe”, which was pretty cool (Old Lumens makes it look so easy :)!), and I do have a Dremel (actually a couple of them), so I could try it, but every time I watch his videos, I’m picturing wrecking the Defiant that I have :).

I have to think about that some more :(…

Jim

612

Has any one got a spare that they would like to ship to Australia? l will pay the freight as well as the cost of the light.

613

I have one - the driver and emitter have been removed and a ucl installed - if you are interested shoot me a pm (also have an XML2 u2 on copper i was going to put in it)

i broke the driver i was going to use - and havent had funds to replace it - so its sitting on my shelf

if any of this interests you shoot me a pm :slight_smile: