archer6817j
Enlightened
Hi folks,
So Ive been playing around with some lights. I did a couple of off the cuff builds just to get some experience with the electronics and engineering that go into making a flashlight.
First Light
Second Light
Third Light
I'm at the point where I wanted to be able to compare different optics and LED's side by side. Right now I have to tear down a light every time I want to try something new, so I thought it would be ideal to have several (somewhat identical) lights to use as semi-permanent test beds. I also decided to go with 1x 18650 just to keep things simple.
Three of the lights will be MCE and three will be XRE. In the MCE variant I'll be comparing a 20mm aspheric from DX, a Ledil Boom SS reflector, and a carolco TIR optic. In the XRE variant I'll be comparing a glass 22mm aspheric, a McR19xr reflector, and a carolco TIR optic.
Whew. After all that, I hope to select the configurations that seem to work the best and produce a small batch. At this point Im not terribly concerned with the appearance, but Ill try some stuff and see if there is anything I like. I had also intended to have some awesome christmas presents this year, but at this point the timing looks a little tight
Here we go!
Time to cut some stock to length. I decided to do three heads in brass. I think it looks cool and has a nice weight. Well see what others think. The heads are 2 long and the body is 4 long. However, there is 1 of overlap so the overall length is 5. I picked that proportion based on the golden ratio.
The first task is to take the body tubes and clean up the ends. Ah also, I picked a body diameter of 1 since thats the largest size 5C collet I have. I used a parting tool to skim off the end and broke the sharp edge with a hand file...all six in a row.
This looks the same, but now its time to cut all six tubes to the same length. I used my height gage to scribe a line at exactly 4 inches. It doesnt really matter if the length varies by a few thousandths, so I didnt go with anything more accurate...like a work stop or something.
There we go, so far so good! I'm going to put in (almost) every step. I recently saw another really excellent mod-log that was amazingly detailed and really shows how much work goes into something as simple as a mod. In many ways that's more work than building a light from scratch.
I have to run but stay tuned, I promise it gets more interesting!
So Ive been playing around with some lights. I did a couple of off the cuff builds just to get some experience with the electronics and engineering that go into making a flashlight.
First Light
Second Light
Third Light
I'm at the point where I wanted to be able to compare different optics and LED's side by side. Right now I have to tear down a light every time I want to try something new, so I thought it would be ideal to have several (somewhat identical) lights to use as semi-permanent test beds. I also decided to go with 1x 18650 just to keep things simple.
Three of the lights will be MCE and three will be XRE. In the MCE variant I'll be comparing a 20mm aspheric from DX, a Ledil Boom SS reflector, and a carolco TIR optic. In the XRE variant I'll be comparing a glass 22mm aspheric, a McR19xr reflector, and a carolco TIR optic.
Whew. After all that, I hope to select the configurations that seem to work the best and produce a small batch. At this point Im not terribly concerned with the appearance, but Ill try some stuff and see if there is anything I like. I had also intended to have some awesome christmas presents this year, but at this point the timing looks a little tight
Here we go!
Time to cut some stock to length. I decided to do three heads in brass. I think it looks cool and has a nice weight. Well see what others think. The heads are 2 long and the body is 4 long. However, there is 1 of overlap so the overall length is 5. I picked that proportion based on the golden ratio.
The first task is to take the body tubes and clean up the ends. Ah also, I picked a body diameter of 1 since thats the largest size 5C collet I have. I used a parting tool to skim off the end and broke the sharp edge with a hand file...all six in a row.
This looks the same, but now its time to cut all six tubes to the same length. I used my height gage to scribe a line at exactly 4 inches. It doesnt really matter if the length varies by a few thousandths, so I didnt go with anything more accurate...like a work stop or something.
There we go, so far so good! I'm going to put in (almost) every step. I recently saw another really excellent mod-log that was amazingly detailed and really shows how much work goes into something as simple as a mod. In many ways that's more work than building a light from scratch.
I have to run but stay tuned, I promise it gets more interesting!
