I spent way too many hours this past weekend modifying my Cyansky P10 that I won with their GAW. But had fun doing it!!!
Although the flashlight was very bright, I didn’t like the low CRI and greenish tint of the OSRAM P9 LED.
The P10 head is pressed fit and glued together. In order to replace the LED with a 2700K SST-20, I had to hammer the TIR lens thru the head which cracked the lens, tore off the LED, and bent the MCPCB and aluminum shelf.
I then made some customize parts in order to rebuild the head:
Created a driver retaining ring from a lock washer. Lots of filing and sanding in order to screw it into the head threads.
Modified a plastic reflector taken from a cheapo AA flashlight by sanding down the top of it.
Dremeled a green S2+ AR lens to fit in the head.
Filed the driver and shelf so they would move freely in the head. The shelf still presses against the head, but no longer needs to be hammered into place.
Put it all together (also replaced the wires with durable Teflon wires and added 3 layers of Kapton tape to insulate the driver) and the beam was not the best. It was ringy, but thankfully no donut hole. So I put some DC-Fix between the reflector and lens and the beam turned out great.
The high mode lumens is noticeably less than before, but the tint/CRI/CCT and beam is much better. I’m very happy with how well it turned out!
I broke out all the Boruit D-10 headlamps/ Sofirn versions of the D25 and their version with the Red emitter in it and hit them with a minus green filter.
They are an easy light to open with4 screws , all of them had the Samsung 351 higher cri but all shared that green tint . Now they are 100 times better and each took about 10 minutes .
The D-10 took about 40 seconds to mod and again the tint got much much better.
All this got me feeling rather stupid for waiting so long to do a 3 minute , 30 cent micro mod.
So I decided to fix the tint on a Skillhunt H03
I used a regular minus green filter instead of the thicker cut a square/ trimmed off each corner to avoid screws and once again made a questionable tint into something you’d never consider doing an emitter swap on .
Once again … what the hell was I waiting on??
I was using the zircon 1/8th minus green that I call # Z-2 on the Samsung emitters and on the Vg-10’s I used regular lee filter Minus 1/4 green .
I took a pic of the Thorfire VG-10’s one stock and one with the filter added side by side on low med and high … one creamy white with a hint of peachy yum … and the other like the Grinch was shot while stealing Christmas presents.
Been away from this kind of mod for too long, forgot how bad copper is about seizing. Tried to hold the copper disc on a wedge of wood to angle wire holes through on the drill press…. Seized and bit me!
Hope the throbbing isn’t too bad and it heals up quickly!
I learned pretty fast that copper is grabby. You can “dub” your bits to help, and I think the traditional 118° tip angle is supposed to be more forgiving here than the usually-on-the-store-shelf 135° these days. Lead is even worse, if you ever have the misfortune of needing to drill lead.
Looking at my Sofirn SP70 and calculating… have these new SFH-55 emitters and a diamond textured Illuminations Machines reflector, anyone think it’s worth the trouble? I’d have to build an FET driver for the high amp 3V emitter and either create a 2P 21700 carrier or go with a dummy cell + 1 arrangement.
No copper would be harmed in this potential venture. Lol (No promises on that though)
Put a dedomed 4500K 519a into my Jaxman M2. The relatively big, heavy OP reflector makes a beautiful beam. Solder joints shorting on the back of the reflector were an issue as I didn’t have kapton tape. One of those self adhesive paper led insulator discs sorted the problem though.
Reflowed a 4000k 519a into my SP10. Left the dome intact on this one, I prefer the slightly warmer colour temperature, reds seem to pop more.
Reflowed 4000K XP-L Hi into my Emisar D1S. Somewhere along the line I’d swapped in a 4000k(ish) SST-20, the XPL is cooler than I expected, and looks cooler compared to my stock 4000k D1 v1…
