Got a small order of Oslon Blacks in, & binned them in my light-pipe over the weekend.
The best candidate went into my Courui D01 test mule, & managed 376kcd after focusing.
Not bad, but I was hoping for a little better - the “good old” XP-G2 de-domed could better 440kcd in the same setup.
How did you bin them? How much current is it getting? How did you mount it?
Used a 4*7135 regulated driver to bin them individually. Each one flowed on DTP Nocitgon, bolted to CPU heatsink.
I took the brightest of the bunch, & installed it in the D01, which is running a BLF Fet+1 driver.
I didn’t take a current reading - silly me…
Give me a few mins & I’ll get back to you on that….
Ok, 3* Samsung 25r’s @ 4.15v rest gave 5.38A @ 3.93v load.
Zozz, nice shot head on of that Boss1, easy to see you took your time and got it right!
Thanks Dale. I took some pics to get there. I hope I can finish the build today after work and go out with it.
Thats probably a bit too much current. Reducing it to 4.5A or even 4A might give you higher numbers.
My Black Flats turn noticeably bluer right after they reach maximum brightness (0.3A difference).
Yes, they might just be over the curve. I’ll have to give it another shot with weaker cells.
The boss is working. Sorry about crap phone pics. It has 1,1A to the led and 2,3A from batteries. I measured 1300 lumens. Not have time for throw measurement yet. I will bump the current soon.
The church tower is 300m away.
FWIW, Bistro expects the driver to have an offtime capacitor (OTC). It won’t be able to do medium-press reversing without that.
Click the Link in my signature to learn all sorts of things about flashlight firmware. Bistro is a popular option, and it’s called bistro because it has a whole menu of options to configure.
For Convoy drivers, my favorite interfaces are Crescendo or S7. But I usually put in somewhat fancier drivers with more ROM space and more hardware features, like the 17mm FET+1 from Mtn Electronics with tiny25 MCU. And for that driver, Bistro works pretty well… or Crescendo works too, with its full feature set instead of the more limited tiny13 version. It’s mostly a matter of whether you want mode groups (bistro) or ramping (crescendo).
Just don’t use a FET to power a single Nichia 219c. It’ll turn the emitter into smoke unless you use a particularly weak battery. 
I got a Lumintop SDmini from a GB deal and today I swapped the led with a XM-L2 7A4 90CRI. The bezel was glued but with a strip of inner tyre around it and great force by hand I got it open without problem. The stock ledboard was aluminium and likely non-DTP, the new board is a 16mm Noctigon that I filed some cut-outs on the side to make it fit around some stuff in the head. I had to use a different centerpiece because the XM-L2 is a different size from the stock XP-L.
The result is rewarding: the tint went from meh to great, the hotspot went from ’ uncertainly ’ shaped to beautiful round. The output on max is now 750 lumen so the led is well driven (not so far from direct drive for this led).
I swapped the emitter in my Sofirn SP31, the tint shift in the XP-L2 it came with bothered me, even thought it’s only visible when white wall hunting or close up outside.
The bezel was glued but some inner tube/vice/pliers took care of that, the MCPCB is DTP copper so I re flowed a new emitter :
I started with a de domed XP-G2 I tried different combinations of gaskets/reflector heights, no gasket but couldn’t get the halo to disappear.
I ended up with a XP-L HI the halo is still there but less visible.
Not completely happy with this mod, but it will do for now.
Hi Khan,
I have seen a halo like that on a few of my builds and even on standard lights , I have found it to be caused by the edge of the led hole in the reflector.
In your picture you can see the centring ring is lower than the reflector LED hole edge, so imho light hits this edge and makes a halo.
Cheap and effective fix is to run a sharpie black felt pen around that edge from the back so as not to draw on your reflector! Just the inner edge of the hole that the LED goes through.
Reassemble and halo gone.
Worked for me in the past, hope it works for you too.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I have tried the black marker trick, the image with the XP-L HI is taken after I blacked out the reflector edge. The centering ring is the original one , it’s just when very close to the wall the halo is visible. I think I will leave like this but my guess is if I re-flow a XP-L HD the halo will be gone
Some more mods to the D4, GITD material around the switch, o-rings in the body grooves and CF wrap on the magnetic tail to prevent scratches
CRX, you’re backlighting the D4 so it’s difficult to see what you’ve done, the subjective side of the D4 is too dark.
I’ve brightened it a bit. My pc screen is stuck to 100% brightness
There needs to be some light on the face of the flashlight, especially a black one, as it hides in it’s own shadows when the light source is behind it. A simple sheet of typing paper held in front of you to bounce some window light back at the flashlight can make a lot of difference and allow that carbon fiber to be seen. 
I opened it in Lightroom 5 and made some shadows adjustments, tweaked contrast a bit.
