I am a self professed tint snob and beam profile snob. I tried the usual stuff with my Fenix E01, like sandpapering the LED and reflector to smooth it out. I also bought a bunch of these flashlights looking for a nicely tinted version. I was never 100% pleased with the results. I don't like angry purple.
I have now fixed that issue. Enter the 5000K, 90 CRI, 5mm LED:
As you can see, I bought a few more than I need. Nevermind that, let's move into the mod. Click for larger images.
First step was to remove the pill in the light. As you may know, the pill is epoxied into place. I read about many people boiling or cooking their lights to remove the pill. I figured the epoxy would be brittle and so took the less refined approach. I placed the head in a vice so that the lip of the light rested on the lip of the vice, grabbed an allen key with a diameter <5mm and a hammer. The allen key was centred on the LED and the hammer struck the allen key. Out popped the pill. Easy peasy.
You will notice that the LED is not a focused LED - it a shortie, so that required a bit of creativity. Basically, the LED needed to be raised up in the body of the light to get a reasonable beam profile. A bit of sandpaper and I was able to remove the lip on the base without too much trouble. I placed the LED so that it was flush with the base of the cone. This produced a nice beam profile. Check that one off the list.
Once the LED was in place, I soldered a couple wires to the clipped leads and placed it in position. A bit of epoxy to hold it in place, and we were ready to go the next day.
For the pill, I had to take a pair of wire cutters to try to break away the epoxy and uncover enough of the connectors on the board that I could solder to them. I tried the first time with a bit too much cable and had to trim it down so that it was very short and tricky to work with. The result were two very short wire leads that I soldered to the former LED stands. I had to break away some more epoxy to get the pill back in, but managed to coax it all the way back into place.
The LED itself is specified at 5000K and 90 CRI. I don't think it is quite up to that specification, although I am quite pleased with both its colour rendering and also the tint. Check that off too.
I am very pleased with the result. Beamshots below. I selected a manual white balance on the camera (daylight, I think) and these are the results. The LED actually does look better than is depicted here.
Original LED:
Modified LED:
eala
I have now fixed that issue. Enter the 5000K, 90 CRI, 5mm LED:
As you can see, I bought a few more than I need. Nevermind that, let's move into the mod. Click for larger images.
First step was to remove the pill in the light. As you may know, the pill is epoxied into place. I read about many people boiling or cooking their lights to remove the pill. I figured the epoxy would be brittle and so took the less refined approach. I placed the head in a vice so that the lip of the light rested on the lip of the vice, grabbed an allen key with a diameter <5mm and a hammer. The allen key was centred on the LED and the hammer struck the allen key. Out popped the pill. Easy peasy.
You will notice that the LED is not a focused LED - it a shortie, so that required a bit of creativity. Basically, the LED needed to be raised up in the body of the light to get a reasonable beam profile. A bit of sandpaper and I was able to remove the lip on the base without too much trouble. I placed the LED so that it was flush with the base of the cone. This produced a nice beam profile. Check that one off the list.
Once the LED was in place, I soldered a couple wires to the clipped leads and placed it in position. A bit of epoxy to hold it in place, and we were ready to go the next day.
For the pill, I had to take a pair of wire cutters to try to break away the epoxy and uncover enough of the connectors on the board that I could solder to them. I tried the first time with a bit too much cable and had to trim it down so that it was very short and tricky to work with. The result were two very short wire leads that I soldered to the former LED stands. I had to break away some more epoxy to get the pill back in, but managed to coax it all the way back into place.
The LED itself is specified at 5000K and 90 CRI. I don't think it is quite up to that specification, although I am quite pleased with both its colour rendering and also the tint. Check that off too.
I am very pleased with the result. Beamshots below. I selected a manual white balance on the camera (daylight, I think) and these are the results. The LED actually does look better than is depicted here.
Original LED:
Modified LED:
eala
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