I thought I would do a short review of what I do to mod the U4-MCU and why I like using it for a mod.
The positives are the thickness of the Head, Glass lens and Aluminum OP Reflector. It can be modified without doing much at all to it. No extra parts needed except for some wire, solder & an emitter.
Here's the light with a P7 in it. I have made many of these using the CSXOI emitter and have had great success with them.
I'm going to show photos of the Reflector (which is the Heat Sink) and the Head, so you can see how thick they are.
The reflector is OP from the factory and I just open the hole with a small round file, to accept the P7 emitter, but the P7 is just about the biggest diameter you are going to get here. Any bigger and you start cutting into the reflector far enough that the lip thickens and the emitter will be too low and have a dark ring in the beam.
On this one I just used the stock brass pill, but normally I make a new pill from a 1/2" copper end cap and a copper plug, so the pill is thick and solid. Since I do this direct drive, the pill can fill the whole space, where the stock pill is hollow for the driver. I keep the stock plastic end cap and center pin for the positive and just solder the negative to the pill, which is press fit.
The reflector is the heatsink. It is a solid round of aluminum and it is very thick at the bottom, as you can see. Once the reflector is in the head, they fit tight together and the whole assembly weighs 3OZ., which I think is sufficient for a small 3AAA light.
You can see that the head is also thick aluminum and the reflector/hs sits in and touches all round, so with some thermal paste, this will be an excellent fit. The combination of reflector and head is the whole heatsink and it weighs a little over 3 ounces!
Here are a couple of beam shots in my garage. I have not done any modding on this light to correct all the resistance built into the stock light, such as the battery holder springs or the tail clicky spring. For my own use, there's not enough difference to waste the time. When I give or sell one to someone else, I do the resistance mods.
this is a 100 watt light bulb for reference. Distance is 3 feet from the wall.
This is the U4-MCU direct drive, 3 feet from the wall.
Both together for comparison
This is a shot of the garage area. Distance is about 10' from the light to the shrubs.
I use this mostly at 30' or less, as I check dark rooms and cubby holes at the plant. This light does great for up to about 40'. It has a large hot spot and great flood, but it has no distance. After 40' it isn't worth much and that's fine as I wanted flood close up.
I thought I would also just give a couple of shots of a mod I do on the stock battery holder. Basically I remove the stock metal and put copper back in.
Stock holder and metal inserts removed.
Use the inserts as patterns.
Cut out inserts (I use 26-30 gauge copper and it cuts with scissors). File and sand edges to fit in stock holder. Normally I solder the springs in place and put wires in them. I haven't finished this one, so I don't have any more photos. Some time when I do another one of these, I will do a seperate post showing more detail, if anyone wants.
