I had not touched a solder iron for two weeks until tonight so I had to do something quick to prevent withdrawal symptoms.
I got my Jetbeam E40R in today. I just adore the design, the modes are good, but the user interface is not well thought out (a bit of a disaster really with the loooooooong press for on and off). And at Jetbeam they probably thought they were pretty modern to put a SST-40 in it, but that emitter is too for me.
Nevertheless I like the E40R, for the design, and it has onboard charging which is very nice. So I found it worthwhile swapping the emitter for a XM-L2 3000K 90CRI, sunny and warm , but the output is down to 725 lumen now.
Note for others modders: the bezel is glued tight with blue stuff that only gave way after extensive heating with a small blowtorch and brute force.
I gave my little Thorfire TG06 a complete make over a few weeks ago but never got around to posting it. This one has the smooth reflector in it.
I put a Fet driver in it with dedomed XP-L emitter on Noctigon and spring bypasses at both ends. Then I decided it needed to look different than the other TG06 I have so I sanded off some of the Anodizing and polished out those areas to get this……….
Then a few days ago I got a NEW Convoy L2 host , 20mm MTN FET 7135 + 1 driver , 20mm Noctigon and a XP-L HI V3 3C to put in the L2. I got that all done and of course did spring bypasses at both ends with 20awg Turnigy wire.
The L2 has a great beam and making 1491 lumens now and I was very happy with it , UNTIL I noticed that the Bezel and the tailcap both had the Anodizing just flaking off of them on the very ends , even though the light had hardly been messed with other than the mods and about 10 mins of testing and a couple of beamshots.
The very end of the tailcap was the worst even though it had only been sitting on a wooden shelf and had my thumb over the end clicking the switch.
The rest of the Anodizing seems to be fine , other than the Bezel and tailcap sections.
I decided instead of making a big deal of it or trying to get a replacement or what have you, I would just make the L2 Unique.
I used some aluminum cleaning acid I have and took the Anodizing off the Bezel , Tailcap and the flat ring where the “Convoy” logo is etched in down to the bare aluminum. I then polished those areas just enough to give the bare aluminum a Satin looking finish , instead of the highly polished look. Also I put the Black switch boot back in to match the light better in the end.
Overall I am pleased with the way this project came out.
Here is what the light looks like now and also a beamshot at 175 yards……………….
I putted in an Osram oslon square 4000K 96 CRI led to a friend’s Utorch UT01.
And reflowed four same led on to a quad noctigon which is going in to my Thorfire VG10S with carlco 10622 and TA fet driver. Now I’m waiting for the spacer to be done.
I’ve been working on this the last few days and it has finally ended up an XHP50 light with GITD rotary switch markers and a momentary side switch.
There is a thread with a fairly thorough teardown for anyone interested in how these are built.
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10250/ 10440 configs
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2 x 10250 XHP50 1260lm max with momentary side switch
Built my first driver from parts. Tiny85 and D4 v2 Ramping_IOS was ordered programmed from MtnE. Did the assembly with an iron and a quick re-melt on the stove. 30mm driver, 20AWG and bronze spring
Yeah its fun when its done and works. If it didn’t work I would be SOL with no clue why.
30mm is going into SD26, if all goes well it will also charge.
Have a 17 & 20mm to build next. 17mm is for the C8F.
Any clue if anything needs to be changed in the D4 UI code for 2S like the L6?
Nitecore HC30 with cool white emitter got a spare XM-L2 3B tint I had from from my S2+ triple
Nitecore TIP 2017 also cool white got the 2nd 219C high CRI 5000k from the late D4
Notes:
Broke the lens on the TIP, and have no idea how to replace it… I hope my local glass shop will have the tools do cut a circle this tiny. Scratched the reflector a little too, but it doesn’t appear to be affecting the beam
I never quite got the snapping effect people show and tell about reflowing emitters, I had to manually center the emitters and by consequence the MCPCBs spent more time on the pan than I’d like, the TIP MCPCB even started to peel of the positive pad and started smelling a little funny. Is this because there is less solder than needed? I never added any extra solder, I just used what was left over on the MCPCB and back of the emitter
So far these are 3 (2 from this post and the Tool AAA previously) cool white flashlights that I made into my preferred 5000k tint, 2 of them are now also high CRI. The 3 of them have neutral/warm white versions that where either unavailable, not included in a flash sale, or unknown to me at the time of purchase, so now I have flashlights that I like a lot more than I did before and washed away any semblance of regret I had from buying the cool white versions. I don’t think I would have ever tried such feats if not for everything I see and read shared here, so thanks BLF for that
Me too! I have other stuff “in the way”. I need to complete the big bookcase project first. Getting close to being done; stained the last pieces this morning.
Some pics of the earlier mentioned Osram Oslon square 4000K 96 CRI led replacements:
Smaller than XP but not really difficult to fit because the thermal pad has almost the same width.
Beautiful colors with 96 CRI
One in the Utorch UT01:
On the left: UT01 Osram, On the right: Nitecore TIP CRI
Left: UT01 XP-L CW, right: UT01 Osram
From the pictures the tint looks really good…
What’s the output on them? Around 300 lumens? Might still give some nice output in a triple or quad like that.
Today I completed my hardest build yet, an E2L with an LD-B4 and three sw57 219Bs.
Why the hardest? Well it’s harder to build with the LD-B4 compared to other drivers and also many things didn’t fit together and needed sanding.
The first snag I met was ILC-1 not fitting in the tailcap because it touched the retaining ring outer lip, quickly solved with some sanding.
Then the led pcb didn’t fit the head of the light so I had to sand that too paying attention not to get too close and causing shorts.
On the positive side, the fit after I was done was perfectly snug.
Then I needed to cut to size and solder the many wires, I guess it wasn’t all that difficult but certainly time consuming.
And when I was done and tried to do a runtime test in a jar of water, I found out the light wasn’t waterproof :person_facepalming: , I think it was because the glass is a little bit too small and didn’t make good contact with the front o-ring; after rebuilding the head paying attention to keep the glass centered it had no problem emptying a Sanyo GA while underwater. And here’s the runtime on 7.5A as proof .
I’m going to see if I can find a glass that fits better but overall I’m pretty happy with the build, I like led4power’s stuff a lot and the E2L host too. The light looks good and the beam with the Carclo 10508 is beautifully floody too.
I had similar results even when using slightly lower current (7.5A), with stock thermal regulation it stepped down in about 10-15 seconds and I was unable to set the custom treshold high enough to make the regulation useful so I just disabled it too, but at least I haven’t had any driver shutdown because the fet is on the mcpcb.
Funny how the X6 can just chug 6A without problem for so long but this can’t go 15 seconds without throttling, didn’t expect to find this much of a difference but I guess there really is a big delta in thermal mass and heatsink surface between the two.
If you use old solder of different kind it gets not a good compound, adding flux is a must to get better chance for a good reflow
BUT it is way better to clean off old solder completely and add new solder, it makes no difference if paste or wire used, additional flux can help
for me.
, but the output is down to 725 lumen now.
