I have the TangsFire C8 8W XM-L2 U3 1300LM from tmart and I was wondering if I can make this brighter? I have an AR lens on order and I have never done any soldering before. Also I am using these batteries .
I would suggest this if you want real throw on a 45mm head, you got the latest LED there for sure and serious heatsinking.
http://intl-outdoor.com/xintd-c8-v5-xpg2-s2-multioption-18650-flashlight-p-789.html
The AR coated lens will not make a visible to the improvement in throw, surely will be registered on a luxmeter so improvement in the real sense of the word will exist.
I suppose you could very carefully dedome the emitter with the emitter and star sti attached to the driver in the pill.
This would about double your throw but also decrease your brightness by about 10-20%.
To accomplish the dedome in this manner I would pull the star out from the pill as far as possible (not a lot of force!), and submerge the entire star in a small container of gas so the pill and driver isn’t also submerged. The dome should fall off within a few hours, rinse the star with rubbing alcohol and air dry. Carefully Push the dry star with dedomed emitter back onto the star and you’re good to go.
Dedoming, but only way to dedome is to drop the emitter and star in gasoline for 24hrs to soften the silicon dome covering the emitter so you can pluck it off with tweezers
Only way to do that is to pull the star, only way to do that is desolder
Since you are pulling the star, might as well get a noctogon or sinkpad and reflow your emitter to a direct path to a good heat conductor (the copper star) then dedome, then epoxy back in the pill
C8’s are great little flashlights…but pretty much ALL aluminum star emitters run ALOT hotter than the direct heat path copper ones
You could also try softening/loosening the dome with heat. Remove th reflector then run the light on high for ~10 minutes, should heat the LED enough you can pull the dome off with a pair of precision tweezers.
Note heat doesn’t always work, especially not just heat from the emitter running, but if you absolutely refuse to try soldering it is an option.
The best option for anyone not wanting to mod, is to simply pay the bucks up front, to buy a serious thrower.
Pay me now, pay me later, it's all the same. Either you spend money up front buying a good thrower, or you pay the bucks to buy all the equipment to mod and all the components to do it.
May I emphasize that dedoming should be done by soaking in car fuell for 24 hours only?
There is no need to heat, pluck or squeeze or whatever, risking damage.
But, maybe he could put the whole pill upside down in car fuell, with only the LED submerged?
I guess the best option is to get the XinTD C8 V5 XP-G, or dedome. It seems the batteries I am using are fine.
That XinTD is very nice… 
So what I’m hearing is that if you don’t have any skills in soldering then just buy the light you want up front or have someone else mod it for you. Is that a fair statement? Are there no DIYs which don’t require soldering?
The emitter in all LED flashlights is soldered in. If you’re ruling out soldering, then you’re stuck with whatever emitter the light came with. That rules out any kind of upgrade to a higher end emitter.
The emitters are soldered to the driver, which is the little circuit board which governs how much power is going to the emitter. In many lights you can increase the brightness by swapping in a driver that supplies more current. But again… if you’re ruling out soldering you can’t do any driver swaps.
That leaves you few options for increasing brightness or throw.
- You could swap in an AR coated lens. This may increase brightness by 5-10%… not enough to be noticeable to the naked eye. You’d need a luxmeter to tell.
- If it’s a reflector light, you could replace the lens with an aspheric or fresnel. If properly focused this should increase throw, but overall lumens may go down. You’d also get an ugly beam with a huge ring around it unless you also black out the reflector (with black paint).
- You could swap in a bigger head, if you can find one. A larger reflector will increase throw… but won’t increase brightness.
- You could get some copper solder braid, cut off a chunk and wad it up inside your tailcap spring. While not as good as soldering it in, this can increase the current to the driver in lights where the tailspring is limiting current. Unfortunately, stock lights aren’t likely to fall within this category.
- You could try de-doming the emitter, but this is risky… you risk potentially destroying it and since you aren’t soldering, a destroyed emitter means the entire light is wasted. A successful dedome reduces overall light output by 15-20, increases throw by 70-100, and makes the tint warmer.
Better options:
- Why not get a soldering iron and learn to solder? It’s a useful skill and would greatly open up your options in modding your light? A cheap soldering iron costs less than $10 on Amazon. You’ll also get loads of tips from here on how to get started.
- Buy a pre-modded light from a supplier like Mountain Electronics
- Send out your light for modding to someone capable of handling it.
What me and jerommel suggested would be a very nice mod increasing throw without requiring soldering and is very simple.
Nothing else is coming to mind that would be a noticeable increase without soldering. A better battery (20r) would increase the drive current and might offer an increase in brightness/throw, but with that aluminum star the LED would probably fry.
i think the BEST option, is to earn how to solder… soldering irons can b had cheap for brand new… and learn to solder little scraps of copper wire.
the main rule is? newbs heat up the SOLDER instead of heating up the WIRE… if i want to solder 2 wires together? i heat up the 2 WIRES… and wait till that heats up the solder, and it will flow onto the joint…
your gonna want to learn to solder eventually anyways… might as well get started learning it! It wont cost you anything…
I will learn to solder, what store has cheap lights I can upgrade so I don’t break this one. $10-$15 light would be OK just something cheap.
I really like the light I have now, I just want MORE. I also have a Thrunite TN12 thats about 600LM and is good for close work.
OK TY but my question is a more general one about moding any FL. I’ll start another thread asking this more gerneal question.
How about a host kit? It’s a fun way to get a start in soldering.
Total cost should be around $20, but you’ll end up with a very good quality light fully assembled by you.
Frankly get yourself some scrap bits of thin metal, some wire and practice joining the wires and also soldering them to the metal. Learning the technique of getting good joints before starting on any projects will stand you in good stead, nothing more soul destroying than not doing it right when it matters.
An evening messing around should be enough. Plenty of video tutorials on the ‘tube’
Get a soldering iron of at least 40w Solder wick, and decent solder and flux.
I admit I am biased but I like this light, for the price and as a host. you can practice on it and it is simple to take apart.
linky
Good to hear that you’re willing to go for soldering.
On top of my head, you can immediately do two things without soldering:
- Run bare copper wires on the battery contact springs, use the spring ends as clips. Trim the extras. This normally give you extra amps due to reduced resistance.
2. Remove the emitter base (star), wrap the pill with something (tape/ saran etc) and soak the ONLY the star in petrol. You can hang the assembly to do this with the pill just above the petrol level. After 8-12hrs it should be dedomed, soak similarly in rubbing alcohol for 30minutes or so for cleaning. Replace back everything (make sure there’s enough thermal grease, you may need to add more). This gives you 50% more throw with smaller hotspot.
There’s always chance that things get messed up. That’s why even with the above, you may need soldering skill to fix something.
I recommend some small lights for practice - like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-300Lumen-CREE-XPE-R2-LED-18650-FLASHLIGHT-TORCH-LAMP-LIGHT-85-/141014095871
Those are full-fledged lights similar to bigger lights, just underpowered. And of course, cheap.
I have done few flashlight mods including the BTU Shocker, T08, some C8s and so on. Guess what I was using $2 soldering iron for all the above mods! Of course it’s recommended to use better soldering iron (station) for more precise and better work but what I want to say is it’s so inexpensive to start learning soldering.
What you need is a cheap soldering iron, flux and solders. Then you can find some crappy stuffs like some obsoleted wires/parts to try your hands on. Beside all that, burning your hand for few times might be part of the learning process as well. 
Nice thing also, you can go to FT and get a Convoy series flashlights, they pretty much are “custom” production models…just click the arrow next to the buy now and see all they offer, low power, different tints, high power, SMO reflectors (for throw) OP reflectors for better flood
But for true “how you want it” you will eventually need to change out something…and only way to do that is to solder