I cant believe you hid all that amazing work CRX. If Dales mate does’t turn up let me know. 
CRX builds are really awesome… He is crafting master
Inspired by having seen this today, I decided to give my jaxman m8 a kind of retro/old look by baking it and weathering.
This is how it looked right after baking, I like how the bezel is slightly darker than the rest.
This is after shaking it together with some rocks for a few minutes. Seeing as it wasn’t getting worn fast enough, I added some smashed glass to the mix and worked it some more, and this is the final result:
I’m very happy with this, it reminds me of a worn miner light or something like that, the 4000k xp-l hi fits the older aesthetic too 
Wow, I’m flattered! :+1:
I’m usually pretty easy on my stuff, so some forced weathering was fun on my Convoy.
Your M8 looks nice! I like the burgundy color and the wear on the high spots.
FYI, loaning lights to (supervised) toddlers tends to make for some nice dings. They add character!
Nothing fancy just an old school Solarforce L2M : 7135*8 driver from Convoy with Biscotti, de-domed XM-L2 3D
It’s just wanted to make a rock solid flashlight that could take some abuse.
I need some advice. I’ve mostly moved on to a different hobby (at least temporarily) but there is one project I still want to complete. It’s the project that frustrated me enough to leave this hobby in the first place.
I have a TM16GT that I was converting to XHP35’s. I’ve done all of the battery carrier work and had a working driver, but accidentally killed two of the LEDs. They are on 20mm Noctigons and glued to the shelf with arctic ceramique alumina.
I need to either unsolder the two dead emitters and solder on the replacements from above (which would be nice to not have to re-center my MCPCB’s) but I think that would be almost impossible with the big host sucking the heat away from the thermal pad of the emitter.
Option two is to detach it and then sand down the remaining glue off the shelf. I don’t know how to get the glue to detach without damaging the host. It’s down inside the head so I have to work on it almost vertically.
After I get them off I might forget the XHP35’s and just switch to the new SST emitters.
Sorry I don’t have any tricks for unsticking glue. How tough is the glue? Maybe use a combination of heat and force. Get the whole head hot then use a prying tool to force the MCPCB. Will probably scratch something in the process though.
I agree I think it would be hard to get to soldering temp attached to the head.
Just curious, did you kill the XHP35 with over current or something else?
The reflector slipped and basically cut them in half.
I had spent so much time getting those emitters perfectly centered, I essentially “rage quit” when they died.
Heat and long nose pliers to twist?
Highly likely to damage mcpcb and shelf though. AA is tuff.
I’ve had to do that in a couple of lights that I used Arctic Ceraamique in and the best way is to use a pair of pliers and twist the mcpcb off. I’ve also been able to use a screw driver from below a mcpcb before because I could see a portion of it from the driver cavity underneath and I was able to just pop it off.
PD, the Ceramique comes off with heat. I just swapped an MCPCB I had epoxied the other day. Get it too hot to touch but not hot enough to change the anodize color. The boards will pop right off. Use a wide tip on the iron to scrape off the remaining glue. I then sanded with a red scuffy pad dipped in mineral spirits. Didn’t try any other solvents to see if it would dissolve.
You are one contributor to this forum that I missed when you weren’t posting. You made good threads that lapsed into many pages in length.
Like vw said, heating the mcpcb with a broad tip on the iron will cause the epoxy to release with some applied pressure. This is why I use Arctic Alumina Thermal Epoxy instead of Arctic Silver or JB Weld, the AA releases if you have to change something.
I got my TM16 in and simply swapped the XP-L’s for XHP-35’s, it’s making a bit over 7000 lumens. Pretty sure I didn’t mess with the cell configuration or the driver.
Thanks for the tips guys, I’ll work on it this weekend.
I didn’t like Nitecore’s UI and wanted to push it harder, so I am using the body of the light which was previously isolated to bring 4.2v to the driver while the LEDs see 16.8v. It wasn’t hard to convert and works pretty well.
Modded my life and my paycheck, now that I delivered the final uni essay JK, JK.
Nothing so far, light-wise, although I’ve been vaguely considering buying a pair of Biscotti drivers to put on the S2 and C8 that I have now. Both old models have the “meh” 3/5 firmware, and while the C8 doesn’t bother me - thrower and all -, the S2 certainly does, as I use it as an utility EDC and that means times when it’s on for at most two seconds, something the 3/5’s ON-time memory doesn’t agree with.
I’m slightly less unsure now that I’m practically out of my undergrad and will soon be able to dedicate the time to learn how to solder and flash well (right now I’m afraid of busting up what is by all means still a decent torch), but I’ve been also considering just buying a new S2 with Biscotti, and the new model J-Dub said is the up and coming C9.
Jack, the ability to reverse direction in TK’s firmware is priceless, especially in a smaller tube light that’s EDC. This means that you can turn it on it low, move forward to med say, then reverse to the 2nd level without having to run all the way up through Turbo to get back to low. It both preserves night vision and protects cell run time. Bistro brings thermal regulation to the table and has more options on setting modes as you wish, from 1 to 9 or anywhere in between.
When building triples or quads that just flat need reliability, I like to use the A6 firmware. For single cell lights that can use some broader mode controls, Bistro is my go-to choice.
What firmware, Dale? Never heard of it.
Also, I’m not familiar at all with the A6 or Bistro firmwares like I am with Biscotti (or like to think that I am ). Can you point me to a thread that covers them?
P.S.: Not interested in building any multi-LED emitters - a single one in a good reflector works well for me ATM - but I’ll keep that info in mind. lol
’preciate it, CRX!
ToyKeeper wrote the A6 firmware for a group buy on the Eagle Eye A6 initially, then it went into the Eagle Eye X6 group buy that sold some 1400 units. For the Kronological group buy on the X6/X5 lights (the X6 in solid Stainless with a copper finned head section and the X6 in pure solid copper) she wrote the Bistro firmware. These were the first mechanical clicky lights with the ability to reverse direction, avoiding having to go up through high and Turbo to get back to moon. Very popular firmware!
She then developed Bistro Mini (afterwards named Biscotti) for Convoy lights through Jdub and Simon to help Simon step up to his A game. The reversing feature, sadly, is not in Biscotti.
Edit: We shouldn’t forget all the early work done by Comfychair, MattAus, Wight, Richard, WarHawkAVG and others in taking the Qlite driver and modifying it to use a large MOSFET. These folks changed our game and ToyKeeper has been instrumental in refining the UI. Some serious time and hard work went into all this early on to get us to the FET+1 driver we know today. With so many new people coming in for the big group buys, a lot of this is lost on the large new population here at BLF.