If only someone could machine or 3D print a few sizes of spacers (though 1mm seems to work, but maybe ideally 1mm and 0.5mm which would allow you to stack or easily sand to any size) that are the same footprint as this collar the Jaxman Z1 would be pretty close to a drop in collar light. It basically centers itself because the pill is exactly the same size as this collar.
The biggest problem i’m running in to is hot glue simply does not stick to the small portion of the anodized light that is adjacent to the collar.
Hm, maybe put a layer of epoxy or other strong glue on that anodized part and then the hot glue will stick better to that?
Or use UV curing adhesive like marinebeam recommended.
I started with a Cometa-collar-KW CSLNM1.TG build today. I use brass rings soldered on top of the brass pill to mount the collar on, sanded down to the right height multiple checking the focus of the collar until correct, pics later if I manage to finish it.
While playing, I did two tint measurements straight above the led (led @ 50mA) to see what the collar does, the first with the die projection produced by the collar right next to the die (collar does not do its job), the second with the die projection exactly on top of the die (collar in function).
projection next to the die:
With die projection on top of the die:
These measurements are not telling how much the luminance is increased btw, just what happened to the tint.
Can anyone tell me if this amount of tint shift is close to what you can maximally achieve with a collar like this, or should I aim for better?
Will be waiting to see how you end up securing it.
Also you will probably have to glue the MCPCB down once you have it all set right to insure the mcpcb is pressed down on the pill since the aluminum cover is not used?
The MCPCB will be soldered on the brass pill, not sure how to secure the collar yet. I may glue it on the edge with a bit of superglue, then scew in the pill then fix everything with a hot glue gun on the outside. But I also want to be able to recover the collar in case of a failing led.
Thanks for the information and link to sma’s work, it gives me much more context to what I see. One reason that I find more tint shift may be that I measured at 50 mA and sma at 1A. He may already have encountered a bit of saturation of the phosfor (I’m completely speculating here). Edit: just read his post on TLF a bit better, he went up to 6A without seeing much less performance so 1A must be far from saturation still. He used a different led of course.
(I just sanded the brass ring just a bit more to see if I got better focus even, and went too far, will have to solder a new ring and start sanding again :person_facepalming: )
I unsoldered the too thin brass ring and soldered a new one, then started sanding again until almost all of it was gone again, regularly going back from sander to workbench to checking the collar for focus. Finally, I'm back in business
The focus appears a very precise trick, a 10th of a mm wrong makes a huge difference (as was already warned for). For who is planning a Cometa build as well (@contactcr), I'm now between 1.7 and 1.8mm above the rim of the pill, that is two 1.5mm thick brass rings soldered on top of the pill with the second one almost sanded away.
I wonder if that rim is the same as my Z1. Looks about the same. I only question it because 1.8 seems pretty high compared to what I had (closer to 1mm) but I hadn’t tried to focus it with this new LED and mcpcb yet.
Finished my Cometa/KW CSLNM1 TG/wavien collar build today. Because the information got a bit scattered over 2 threads, here’s quotes of the various pieces, and the final results.
So the last bit was attaching the collar to the top of the pill. The z-focus was already tuned by the height of the rim of the pill, but the collar had to be fixed in the exact x and y position now.
I first clipped my led-tester at 5mA to the driver spring and body for a very low output so I could follow where the projection of the collar went. Initially I wanted to fix the collar with hot glue on the outside against the threads of the body (I even bought a cheap 180 degC glue gun for the purpose), but finally decided on UV-curing glue between pill and collar, Norland 61 to be precise. It is supposed to stick excellent both to metal and glass. Let’s hope it holds over time.
Here I applied the glue without the collar on top of it yet:
After positioning of the collar and sliding it so that the projection of the die was exactly on top of the die, I applied a bucket load of 365nm light to cure the Norland 61. It felt firm enough after that Here it is just after curing of the glue:
The finished light now needed a hard stop halfway the slider to prevent the lens crashing against the collar. As a make-shift solution I worked a green o-ring in and around the fins under the head, and it works so well to stop the head in the right position that I may just leave it like that.
And now the light even has a somewhat narrow flood option which is always useful Here’s the flood and spot at 5 meters from the wall:
Stupid me forgot the save the colour data of the hotspot before adding the collar, but luckily the hotspot of my small Cofly zoomie with the same led has almost exactly the same tint and CCT (so I noticed) so that data will have to do as “before adding collar” data:
And here’s the colour information of the Cometa hotspot after adding the collar:
So it warmed up a lot and we lost CRI but the tint is not bad at all, and also in reality the tint looks pretty good, i.e. much better than the dedomed tints of Cree leds.
So the collar seems to do its job, but how does that translate in throw? As I posted before, this flashlight build without collar I measured at 299 kcd, with collar now I measure 561 kcd. So not “more than doubled” as is one of the claims possible with a wavien collar, but not that far off double either. I’m happy with a 561 kcd Cometa :party:
The only negative about this build is that I would not dare dropping it, even not a few dm. The way the lens is mounted in the Cometa is not good and I fear cracking it upon impact. Also I have grown up with the believe that glass is very difficult to glue. Now glues have improved drastically over my lifetime but I still do not trust glass bonds very much, even from a quality glue as Norland 61. Well, time will tell, this light is way too much fun to leave it on the shelf.
(lighted roof at 60 meter, my little square ain’t big enough for this Cometa )
I hope that I did not wake up folks with this, but it became a pretty cool pic. Same location, left spot=BLF GT with 4000K 80CRI XHP35 (exactly 1Mcd measured), right spot=today's Cometa build (561 kcd). You can see the difference but the Cometa does not compare too bad for a flashlight that much smaller.
I have no idea if I can ever remove the collar again, this light must not fail
I can probably screw the pill out if I want and try messing with acetone to get the glue off, but I’m not looking forward to that. If this light does not fail over time I do think it is a worthy destination for my Wavien collar. Thanks again Enderman for making these possible
Here it is just after curing of the glue:
)
