I don't get it!
I've tried lots of polishing with the felt pad dremel thingy but I don't get it to go really clear. What am I doing wrong???
Also I drilled out the whole flat center part of my X7 reflector and now it does 120 kCd ! NICE 
But I think a better polishing is in order but I have only about 0,4-0,5mm dome left!
Does anybody know how thick the xml dome really is from top down to phosphor layer/bonding wires??
And before I forget - thanks to OP for the method! It rocks!
Thats one AWESOME mouseover _the_
What a spectacular difference. You _the_ man with the right mod so far!
I also love having a more neutral/warmish thrower - what is your thoughts so far???
I’ll take the original FandyFire STL-V6 beam anyday. So much more useful spill.
I have to side with ILF here, while the added throw is nice I much prefer having that spill.
Nice beamshots the :bigsmile:
It says all your de-dome lights are belong to us.
That reminded me of something 
Trouble is when you squeeze and pick a zit they stick arround for longer. If you just ignore them they go away quicker….
Hard to resist though…
Woody
How about just not reading what someone writes?
Ahhh, Ok this is starting to annoy me to: is it possible for Mr Admin to move this discussion to another thread… it is really cluttering up this thread and makes it hard to read about only de-doming if you have to wade through pages of off topic argument (its not that far off topic but its still off topic).
Back on topic: I have ground the dome of the U2 I was playing with earlier all the way past the gold contacts. The result: LED no work.
As I measure it the dome is still sticking up 0.2 mm past the rest of the die: this is not enough, I think minimum thickness is around 0.3mm before you get to the gold wires.
Thanks for the destructive test MM. I don’t have a good way to accurately measure what’s left of my dome (dial caliper but hard to get a good measure) .014 inch .355mm was what I have left.
I don’t think it’s so important to get so close to the die. The dome lens is long gone, so more important to get an optical smooth surface. I did not have much luck with the polish rouge (used a polish paste and wheel on the dremel) seems the 1500 wet paper did better.
In the interest of science, I went ahead and sliced my second XM-L 3C. This one is mounted in a P60 SMO dropin. (one with a terrible ringy color separated beam I referred to earlier…. I need a better XM-L P60 reflector for this light)
I was able to use the lip on the pill to guide a razor blade at the proper height across the dome. A straight blade was too thin and flexible to use this as a guide and I had no suitable washer of proper thickness and center hole to use as a blade guide.
…so I oiled a fresh mat cutting blade and used that. One clean cut and it worked quite well, leaving a reasonably clear surface (better than my polished attempts) I had to move the blade at a diagonal much as you would slice through a tomato.
I think this works better than grinding and polishing to get a clean smooth top on the de-dome.
Result back in the reflector: …well not so great. The color separation is greatly improved, but there is still rings and artifacts (though far fewer in the now smaller hot spot, still not good enough to take off the DC-Fix diffuser though). I think I just have a sucky reflector in this thing. I don’t need a new LED, I need a new reflector. Of note when trying to focus a tight hot spot, I have to back the LED down the throat to get there. I was hoping the de-dome would move this point forward, but it did not appear to help much if at all. By the time the hot spot comes to focus, the rest of the beam and spill is full of rings and artifacts. (WTB: good quality XM-L P60 reflector.)
I have a Gossen Luna Pro-F, nice analog photographic light meter, but really not precise enough for critical measures like this. I took measures before and after with it though. It measures less than 1/3 stop reduction in light. Barely measurable with this meter.
Hohum, this is just a random question, but:
Has anyone measured lux from any Aspherical before and after de-doming?
Will aspherical even work as well with de-dome or will it just go worse?
Nice Thread, BTW! Learned a lot 
Has anyone considered flattening the dome, keeping the curve but decreasing the size?
I have a bunch of C8s on the way so will try something along those lines once they arrive however no idea when that will be, got to wait for my brothers Dremel as well.
That’s just like doing a dedome halfway. The effect won’t be as pronounced as fully dedoming (<1mm from phosphor), but it will still make more light hit the reflector than leaving it alone.
agenthex,
I would be happy to discuss what I see as important differences between BLF and CPF,
If only you would please start a new thread to discuss it. This is really making a mess of this thread, and really off topic. Please.
@ manual man: TY for the measurements and I am sorry to hear about your deceased XMl.
Seems I will have to leave mine alone now. But the lux has dropped since yesterday down to 102 kCd. It is like the dome got more frosted again.
Ugh!
the,
Awesome beamshots! Easy to see the difference in intensity there. Spill and spot size ratio will always depend on ones’
personal preference, not everybody likes such dedicated throwers but you have to admit they are damn cool. 8)
It looks like the polishing process still needs to be defined and refined for reliability, great work guys!
We did it too
We take the Custom Made Fritz 15 Thrower with 4,9A and 108 KLUX
with DX LUXmeter.
10 minutes at 4,9 A
Then Andi removed the dome with his fingernail.
An little bit phoosphor stays at the dome.
But it is still allive.
216 KLUX with DX Luxmeter
That means 250 KLUX with other Luxmeters @ 10 Meters.
Xandre
now that is an impressive result