Just a follow up and a few thoughts about the new reflector: I now have done a few of these lights with the aluminum reflector and I am not happy at all with the change. The old plastic reflector was excellent and I have to spend much more time and effort trying to get a dedomed XM-L2 focused with this one. Even after tons of sanding and centering, the results are not as good as what I could get with the old plastic reflector. Sure, it is still an excellent thrower, but when you know what the results were before and the effort it took, it is silly to think that this is anything but a step backwards.
I wouldn't even feel right selling one of these lights stock. The reflector is too short and it lets the glass rattle, the spacer doesn't fit (it's the one from the plastic reflector,) and the beam is subpar.
Here's what I ended up doing, after trying a few different things:
1. I reamed out the stock hole slightly to allow a nice, tight centering spacer to fit (it will be discarded later, I'm only using it to get the emitter centered.)
2. Next, I reflowed a sanded down MCPCB onto the back of the MCPCB with the LED on it, which helped with the spacing issue.
3. Using Arctic Alumina, I use the reflector, glass, and bezel to center and apply pressure on the LED, then waited for it to dry.
4. After it dried, I removed the centering spacer, radiused the reflector around the edges so it could sit flush on the MCPCB, and sanded the emitter hole portion of the reflector so it was thinner.
After all of that, and trying on two lights, the beam just isn't as good to me as the original plastic was after being worked on.
The aluminum reflector just ruined one of my favorite lights for me. I'm not buying or building any more with this stupid thing, whoever wanted this change tried to fix something that wasn't broken and ended up ruining it in the process. Am I bitter? Yeah, just a little bit! Too many hours spent today trying to put lipstick on a pig I suppose. The sun will come out...tomorrow...