What did you mod today?

[jhalb]

@DB Custom

giorgo, for future reference, if you drill the center hole first you can then mount it on a bolt and spin it in a drill to file it down to fit, cleaner work, truer circle. Then with a file or a piece of sandpaper you can put a bevel on the top edge to separate the trace and masking from the ground underneath, doesn’t take much of a bevel for the angle to get separation and avoid a short. I use the scissors tip to cut this bevel on the edge of the center hole, for separation and to ensure the wire insulation isn’t cut. Nice work, great lights huh? I really love the triple X6, an all time favorite of mine.

This is great advise. I've learned the hard way also on trimming down stars. A simple bevel will fix it.

[Ouchyfoot]

An emery board does a nice job of cleaning up the edges and removing any “chads” that may cause a short.

[Firelight2]

@~~X3~~

@Firelight2

Bored out the battery tube on my Sunwayman V11R for 18350.

OOPS! Went through the side of the tube at one of the two inset grooves. My technique with a grinding bit and hand drill needs work. Fixed the error by gluing a piece of bare aluminum into each of the grooves.

Not quite what I intended, but it still looks ok and now works with an 18350.

Any pics ?

I see what I did wrong with boring out the tube. The grinding bit I used is a standard one from OSH and is much smaller than the tube diameter. No lathe or even drill press. I put the body tube in a wooden vise then manually used an electric drill with the grinding bit to bore out the tube.

This works well for the top of the tube, but for the bottom it’s sometimes hard to see what is going on and keep the hole aligned. I see now that I should have checked my grind against the anodizing at the bottom of the tube. That way I could have insured that all sides were ground roughly equally and I wouldn’t have gone through the side.

Grinding through the tube only occurred at one point at the bottom of one of the inset vertical grooves. You can see in the picture how I covered it up with the bare aluminum strip. The slightly rough area outside the strip is where I first tried covering the damage with painted super-glue. Most of the area under that part isn’t damaged.

This mod didn’t come out perfect, but it’s still quite usable. I modded the light as follows:

• Replaced stock emitter (3000K high-CRI XML) with XML2 5A2 tint on copper Noctigon. The stock emitter was getting rather long in the tooth and had a very orangish tint. the 5A2 tint looks a bit less orange and is much more pleasing to the eye, in my opinion. One of my favorite Cree tints.
• Lubed up control ring with very thick brake caliper grease (stock ring had no lube). This gives much more resistance and helps the ring stay in position.
• Replaced interior clicky switch mechansim with a Veleno Designs e-switch circuitboard from Steve Ku.
• Replaced rubber switch boot with titanium boot that came with the V11R’s optional metal clicky.
• Rebuilt interior structure between the switch circuitboard and the boot. I used a combination of hardened sugru, metal strips and plastic rings. I also added a separate spring. This took quite a bit of experimentation to get the right combo. The switch is stiffer than most e-switches helping to minimize risk of accidental activation. Travel distance on the switch button is longer than most e-switches but much shorter than a clicky, and the switch is quiet.
• Bored out interior of battery tube to fit 18350.
• Added aluminum strips on side of tube to hide grinding error.

[MtnDon (Don Miller)]

A very simple mod to one of my BLF D80’s. I like the light’s physical points; size, shape, reflector pattern, etc. But I have grown to not like lights with memory. Plus I prefer lights that start low and increment brighter with each additional button tap.

So, I replaced the driver with one of mtnelectronics FET/DD drivers in 20 mm. I got it with the guppydrvr V.1 firmware and am running option 18; ML, 1, 5, 15, 40, 100%, No Memory. I like it. Definitely brighter than stock when running on turbo / DD. The head gets rather hot after 5 minutes on high/turbo. I wish I had a light integrating sphere. (I already had done a tailcap spring bypass and the driver comes with a braided bypass.)

[TBone]

@Firelight2

This looks like a very cool new control unit for continuously adjustable brightness.

[ohaya]

@Ouchyfoot

I don’t want to take up a lot of room in this thread, but I need a few thoughts on this matter.
I’ve been thinking about building a small 7 LED (Luxeon Rebel) light with a single 18650.
Is this asking too much from a single cell? What kind of runtime would this thing have?

Hi,

If the LEDs draw 1 amp, the battery (and driver) would need to supply 7 amps. So if you had a 3000 mAh battery, that would be about 3000/7000 or ~0.42 hours theoretically.

If 1.5 amps, the battery would need to supply 10.5 amps. So if you had a 3000 mAh battery, that would be 3000/10500 or ~0.28 hours.

What would be using for a board?

[Ouchyfoot]

@ohaya

@Ouchyfoot

I don’t want to take up a lot of room in this thread, but I need a few thoughts on this matter.
I’ve been thinking about building a small 7 LED (Luxeon Rebel) light with a single 18650.
Is this asking too much from a single cell? What kind of runtime would this thing have?

What would be using for a board?

I want to try one of the 7 emitter DTP SinkPad 2 that Luxeon Star mounts their rebels with a khatod optic. I’d really like a compact host with an e-switch. Might have to go with 26650. Lens diameter between 39mm and 50mm. The smaller the better.

Ohaya. Remember those triple boards we bought long ago? I always thought they were rebels, but they’re Luxeon R emitters. I still have a bunch…

[Ouchyfoot]

Convoy M1 “CYANIDE”

Rebel Rebel, you’ve torn your dress

Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess

Rebel Rebel, how could they know?

Hot tramp, I love you so!

[DB_Custom (Dale)]

INSANE!

[DB_Custom (Dale)]

And I thought I was nuts, scraping the phosphor off an XP-G3 with scissors and running it bare die in a zoomie…

[Ouchyfoot]

Credit to djozz’s emitter testing thread for placing the germ of an idea in my head that became the “CYANIDE”

[MRsDNF]

:+1:

[giorgoskok]

Special mods!

[KawiBoy1428]

Way cool, now to break out Diamond Dog’s AhWooo!

[lostheplot]

today I put 3 x nichia 5000k in my srk ,(took out the xpl hi;s)
lost a bit of output I think. Just thought I’d try a different tint…and
yesterday I built a convoy m1 with xml u4 and 2.8 3/5 driver
great little light

[DB_Custom (Dale)]

Found a new output trick for my preferred X6.

Cutter now makes a 32mm copper T-Pad in triple XM-L footprint. The SS/Cu X6 is a perfect candidate for some max output with it’s robust copper head, so I put 3 XM-L2 U4 1A emitters on the T-PAD and the CUTE-3 fits right over em! In excess of 4600 lumens from a LG HE-2 18650. Of course, if you can get an extension tube, 3 XHP-50’s are doable for even more… just sayin!

[Ouchyfoot]

Zowie!

[Ouchyfoot]

Dale. This is a grey area for me. I haven’t dealt with XPL emitters…yet, but is there any difference in the output of three XPL vs XML. I was led to believe that XPL is just an XML plunked down on a smaller substrate. Of course, XML should be able to sluff off heat faster with its larger thermal footprint, but is there any real gain to be had between the two?

[DB_Custom (Dale)]

Check power bins, the XP-L is limited to a V6 which should be about an U2 or maybe U3, the XM-L2 now has a U4 power output bin.

The different binning for the 2 is deceptive. I’ve seen an XM-L2 U4 1C do 1800 lumens, I think Tom got 1900 out of one, the XP-L hasn’t been known to do that.

[Ouchyfoot]

Hmmmm. I’ve never had a U4. I tried some U3s and didn’t like them.