Not too shabby, js. I still have the regulated TL you made for me, complete with ring-potted bulbs. I saw you selling yours recently, and it made me sad for an era gone by!
Shut the front door! I had totally forgotten that I made a TL-11R for you!
Yeah . . . definitely an era gone by . . . although for someone like you, or milkyspit or SilverFox, I could always make some more ring-potted lamps, if it was really important to you guys. I just ran out of my Cotronics 940LE low-expansion ceramic potting compound, and it's like $100 for a quart of the stuff, and no one has needed or wanted ring-potted lamps from me in two or three years now, and it's such a PITA to make those things, that I didn't see the point in holding on to so much money in bare WA lamps and investing even more money in potting compound.
It's a real downer . . . thinking of all the mods I put out there, and how most of them are probably just gone and faded away by now. So much work, so many hours spent, and so little remaining evidence of all that. I once thought that my rechargeable M6 packs would last for years and be traded/sold on B/S/T for years, but then, like in so many other instances, they got hit by the battery-death plauge. The same plague that hit the USL's and countless TigerLight packs that I made. That's NiMH for you. Left sitting alone for a year it will be in pretty bad shape--probably permanently damaged in terms of performance, if not having one or more dead cells. Even worse, if someone forgets and leaves their light on during a discharge, then it's really likely to result in a dead cell or two. I'd be surprised if there are even three working M6-R packs out there right now--and they are even more problematic due to the 2/3A cells, and also because the regulator is constantly drawing a very small current, so if you leave those packs sitting for even just 6 months, you are likely to permanenty damage them.
The only mods of mine that are likely to remain around for much longer are the regulated TigerLights with 8AA eneloop cell packs. And, even better, the LVR3K regulator in those is set to TURN OFF at 6.4 volts V-in (or was it 7.2? Can't remember). So you CAN'T over-discharge the pack. And the eneloop cells CAN sit around for a year or two and be fine. I only made a handful of these, though. You have one, SilverFox has one, milkyspit has one, bwaites has one, and I sold one to . . . I think it was Jerimoth . . . oh, and of course, Michael Teig has one--he has the first one, actually--although I replaced the Titanium 2400 pack with an eneloop pack at some point. This is part of the issue with the TL-R: TigerLight OWNS the design. I was really really hoping that we could bring a regulated TL running a WA1111 at 7.2 volts to market. 530 lumens (I think that's right) for 35 minutes (maybe it was 38 minutes?). But, it didn't pan out . . .
And, hell, in these days of 500 lumen AAA key-chain lights that cost $25, what does it really matter . . .
Yeah, it makes me sad, too. I was thinking about all this because I was thinking about all of McGizmo's lights (and other LED custom lights) and I was thinking that those will still be around for years and years to come. Serves me right for making BATTERY PACKS, I guess--an inherently ephemeral and limited life (and even disposable) item.
Ah well, it's OK. It was a whole LOT of fun and was very rewarding!
And YOU started it all, Phaserburn. YOU sold me my first TigerLight, if I'm remembering correctly! :devil: See what you did?
Oh, and as for Phaserburn threads, I think I like the "My Pimped out Nuwai Q3" (or whatever the exact title was) thread best!
