When the drive fried in this one, I was really sad… now I see it has a nice second life so it’s cool ! (literally, with this cold white SST’s 
)
Also, I got 2 more SR Mini that I swapped with 3000K 90CRI XM-L2 so I’m not so sad about the first.
Anyway, 24 Amps is a nice current and the wall f light must be impressive ! Does it get hot fast ?
The beam was actually a little tighter than I expected, I was pleasantly surprised. I think it will be very suitable for underground exploration. I have only had it on for short bursts so far, maybe 5 seconds, and it’s not as hot as a S3 on 9 amps after the same time. Then I took it apart again and added some epoxy to the wires on the driver because the driver is loose, it twists when screwing the head on. I let it dry overnight, so I’ll be taking beam shots and doing a better heat test later. I’ll post that stuff in the build thread once I’ve done it.
By the way, I’m making a custom driver for it. OSH Park board order is minimum three, and I only have one SR Mini. As you have a couple maybe you’d be interested in a fully built driver for a similar mod? I could build one for you for parts cost only.
^must be hard to say no to that! 
Gosh, how an I refuse that… PM is coming
Cool stuff, that’s what I love about BLF is how people from all over the world can relate to a similar hobby and help each other out! 
I have a 2D MagLite that JayRob chopped, it has a 3 XM-L drop-in pill from Elektrolumens and the head is a finned product of ChicagoX. I’ve dabbled in it a bit myself to reduce resistance through the Mag positive contact and switch. I need to put a TK Bistro driver in it, a copper Noctigon triple with some XP-L HI’s and bring it up to date.
I was hurt so much of this past year I feel like I was asleep and missed a lot, don’t remember a lot from 2017, probably a good thing as a lot of the year was consumed by pain. Feels good to be getting back in the swing.
The 5th scratch built I had completed before my surgery also got bumped to 70.2’s, it pulls 32.2A through a pair of iJoy 21700’s for 18,940 lumens. THAT made me feel pretty good.
Texas Ace’s recent testing of the XHP70.2 (and other users’ performance reports) started me designing a new super-high output thrower. It will have 4 sliced XHP70.2 in ~55mm reflectors. I estimate it will do ~30,000 lumens and 550Kcd. Powered by 8x26650 cells. Here is a sketch of it. It is drawn actual size on standard notebook paper.
It will be a handle-at-the-top style lantern. The 4 reflectors will be in a ~5” square housing. The emitter MCPCBs will be on 1/4” copper for good heat spreading. There will be a large heatsink with fan on the back of the copper plate. This website suggests a heatsink of this size (12cmx12cmx5cm) with forced convection should be able to dissipate 300W with a temperature difference of 60C.
I estimate it should have about 2x the beam width (4x the beam area) of my 7xC8 high output thrower.
Either should work fine.
I modded this light again tonight, it was my first plunger light and has been modded a few times. It's now got 6x SST-40 de-domed emitters on noctigons, with a horn switch on the side and a ramping FET low resistance driver. bi-passed springs and four 18 gauge wires kept as short as possible by trimming them after installing the driver and pulling them up all the way. I had it set up the same way before but was only using 2x26650's. It was a bit of a battery hog with the SST-40's in it and battery sag was holding it back a bit, so now it's 3x26650. It's got a slightly larger head than most of these plunger lights and with only six emitters I get some decent throw out of it too. I wish they still sold this one but I haven't seen it for sale in years.
I love these SST-40's, I've gone through close to a hundred of them already. Not that many lights of course because I'm using them a lot in multi-emitter lights. But I've done a few C8's both domed and de-domed and a few 502b lights as well as a couple zoomies and my ZY-T08 has a de-domed one in it now.
Just guessing but I'd say it's at a minimum 10,000 lumens otf.
They both work fine but I hate the way the copper wick looks after a year or two, it gets pretty grungy and although I can’t say for sure, I’m thinking it might become less conductive as it turns green and corrodes. If I use wick at all anymore it’s the silver coated stuff but most of the time I stick to wire, it seems to bend better, especially if you get too much solder on the wick.
Agreed. I only use wire now days.
What’s your method for de-doming the SST-40’s?
There were a lot of different products tried recently, but I don’t recall reading a definitive method.
High quality solder wick like Chemtronics contains flux and doesn't corrode, cheap Chinese wick without flux is useless junk.
In the beginning I bought a lot of China solder wick and I hope it will help in desoldering stuff and picking up excess solder but lol none of them worked for me… Then I tried spring bypass and wow bro… What a mess! Than some smart person from BLF suggest that I use classic 22 or 18awg wire for bypasses and after that I use them… I need about 30 seconds to bypass switch or driver spring once when I have boards in vise.
So my vote goes to wires(silicone flexible wires).
The flux becomes a problem though as its presence can cause solder wicking up the braid and then the braid becomes hard and stiff.
I didn't read careful related posts, I was talking about wick for desoldering purpose;for bypassing silicone wire is more appropriate.
Did some more work today on a cheapie budget flashlight I had modded last week.
Here’s what it looks like now:
This light now sports the following new mods:
- Lens replacement - 22mm glass lens from Kaidomain replaced the stock standard 20mm plastic aspheric lens. The new lens is slightly wider and has a shorter focal length. Between the lens and the bezel I added an o-ring and an aluminum c-ring. These prevent the bezel from screwing down all the way and help protect the lens. Without these the new lens would protrude above the bezel. I added a second o-ring onto the exterior of the light in the gap between the knurling on the head and the bezel, mostly for aesthetics. The new lens has a nice beam pattern and due to its shorter focal length has a wider spot in throw mode. It is also very slightly throwier than the stock lens. The lens itself had just the right width for the bezel, except that the flat portion that sticks out from the edges of the lens was just slightly too big. I spent a half hour sanding the edges of the glass down with sandpaper to get it to fit.
- Copper plug added below the star - I made the plug using 4 pieces of sheet copper cut into circles and then soldered together. the top most circle is slightly wider as it rests on the shelf for the star. This also raises the star up slightly, which works well with the shorter focal length lens. The plug is glued in with Arctic Alumina.
- Screws added to hold star in place - previously, I was using a plastic insert to hold the star in place, but I was finding the insert was popping out. Now the star is screwed into the copper plug and can’t pop out of position. I also added AS5 thermal grease under the star.
- Driver wire replacement - with the now solid pill, having short driver wires wouldn’t work. Like most side switch zoom lights, the driver is not mounted on the pill. If it were the wires to the switch would probably break when the pill was screwed in. Instead the driver is mounted at the back of the head with a retaining ring. The star is mounted on a separate pill at the front of the head. I still wanted to be able to disassemble the light after gluing in the pill. To solve this problem I used very long driver wires between the star and driver. These driver wires are long enough with enough room to twist that the pill can be completely screwed down without damaging them. There is plenty of extra room in the very roomy head and this actually worked quite well.
These mods were added to the ones I did on this light last week:
- LED Replacement - stock LED replaced with slice-dedomed SST40 on copper Noctigon.
- Driver replaced with 15mm FET+1 driver from Mountain Electronics with Emisar D4 UI. I used brass 20mm adaptor ring so the driver would fit (the light is sized for a 19mm driver. A 20mm fits with a little filing).
- Switch replaced with a 2.5 mm Radio Shack tact switch.
- Switch boot replaced with one from Kaidomain. The new switch boot sits flush with the head of the light. It doesn’t protrude like the original one, making accidental pocket activation much less likely.
- spring bypassses at both head and tail
- Battery Tube and tailcap replaced with ones from an Astrolux S42. I run the light on an Aspire 18350.
- USB hatch on the underside of the light sealed and covered with a circle of black anodized aluminum.
Here are some very short-range beamshots at low power:
I’m still deciding whether I like this light with its current mods:
What I like:
- Excellent UI - gotta love that Emisar D4 UI
- Sideswitch - rare on a zoomie.
- Heatsink fins on the body of the light, not just the sliding bezel - rare on a zoomie. I can only think of a few others with heat sink fins on the body and none of them have side switches.
- Hand Feel - knurling at 3 points on the light. Grip feels quite good.
- Anti-roll - the head shape gives this light excellent anti-roll.
- Output - The SST40 is pretty much the king of emitters for small single-cell pocket zoomies. Takes a lot of current and runs hot, but has considerably more output than XPL HI. At a guess I figure about 2000 lumens out-the-front on flood mode on a fresh cell.
- Large glass lens - hopefully more resistant to wear than acrylic, and larger than the stock lens found on any tube-shaped zoomie.
- Legoable - the threads at the head are compatible with battery tubes from the BLF A6 and Astrolux S42. I can swap in a longer tube to make this a single-18650 light.
- Beam pattern - nice wide flood, coupled with adequate spot beam. The image of the LED is focused in spot mode (can’t see it in picture as the wall is too close to the light). However, some artifacts appear in the beam from the screws and the slice-dedoming of the LED. I could try covering them up with black paint but doing so would insulate the star and might cause heat issues.
What I don’t like:
- Large for its battery size - normally I prefer compact lights that make efficient use of their internal volume. The modded light is 101 mm long. That’s comparable to or slightly larger and heavier than many small 18650 lights like the Emisar D4. This in a light that runs off a cell with 1/3 the capacity of an 18650.
- Heavy - With its battery inside the light weighs 108.6 grams. That’s a lot of weight for a light that runs on such a small cell. The new glass lens, copper plug and extra driver wires jacked up the weight noticeably. they also affected the balance of the light. The head definitely feels heavy.
- Tint - I’m still waiting for SST40s to become available at our regular flashlight supply vendors in neutral tint. Mine are 6500K. Slice dedoming warmed them up some but I estimate the tint is still no warmer than 5500-6000K. The tint is adequate but warmer would be preferable. I’d prefer 4500K if I could get them.
I use 100% toluene. I first do a clean shave, cutting off most of the dome, this greatly reduced the time the emitter needs to sit in the toluene. The emitters go in a jar with a top. The jar goes into a bath of boiling water or near boiling water. I’m now getting a perfect de-dome every time. Keep in mind not to let them sit in the toluene for extended times. You can get away with this using gasoline but not toluene. Five minutes or so is usually enough and ten minutes is max for me. If you let them sit too long the emitter itself actually lifts off the pad and is destroyed.
It’s also very important to not use toluene indoors and don’t get it on your skin or to breath in the fumes. It’s very toxic and should be used with extreme caution. Use a jar with a top so that it doesn’t all evaporate into the air. Not only does this waste your money but it’s bad for the environment.
Ps. doing a clean shave before de-doming any of them will speed up the time as does a hot water soak and this includes using gasoline.
Thanks 18sixfifty 
Just modded my first ever Convoy! A S2+. Now with a DD fet driver. stunning light.
Nice job and great write up.
I agree, a de-domed SST-40 is a great replacement for the XPL-hi. However, in these small zoomies the XP-G2 de-domed still has it’s place, not better or worse than the SST-40 just a different application. If someone is looking for the maximum throw in a extra small zoomie but still wants a decent amount of lumens with good run time the XP-G2 is another good way to go. Even the XP-E2 has it’s place in these small zoomies. Stick one on a noctigon and use a 2.8amp driver with an attiny on it and you can still program it. You get great run times, less heat and lots of throw as well.
I just did a super cheapy SKYwolfeye TLY-6501 zoomie the other day for a friend and used the XP-G2 S4 2B de-domed for this exact reason. Since you like zoomies you might like them. It’s one of the smallest 18650 zoomies, the focal length on the lens is actually pretty darn good for being so small. There are cheap too, you can find them for under $4.