Questions on upgrading a old Mac Tools Luxeon Star flashlight.

The flashlight in question was a gift from a co-worker who bought several of them on special off the Mac guy many years ago, when 45 lumens was quite impressive.

It was my primary flashlight for years... until I started my flashlight addiction, now it just sits around. I started taking it apart and this is what I found:





The number on the back is 2706LXHLMW1D. More info on this can be found here: http://www.luxeonstar.com/Luxeon-Star-LED-White-Lambertian-45-lm-p/lxhl-mw1d.htm

I'd love to get this light up to around 150 lm or so. More is always better, but I don't want to get to extravagant on this old light.

It's powered by 3x AAA cells in series and according to the website draws 350 mA. The website says these are no longer available (duh), and suggests a SR-01-WC310 as a possible replacement. The SR-01-WC310 shows 350 mA putting out 135 lm, that's pretty close to where I would like to be. My problem is, the LED base/chip is surrounded by plastic. It sits on plastic, it has two plastic pieces that fit around the edges, there is a plastic ring that goes over top. Heat looks like it would be the limiting factor with the current setup. should anything that draws 350 mA or less be fine?

2nd, this appears to be wired direct. I see no other circuitry on the board other than the LED. I can only assume there is something limiting the current under the emitter. The existing setup is listed as 350 mA, the SR-01-WC310 lists it's output at various currents. I assume that means this is not internally regulated and is going to need some additional circuitry to prevent burning up the LED. Am I correct in this assumption.

I don't have my heart set on the SR-01-WC310 as an upgrade, I am just using it as a jumping off point to get the ball rolling. Other suggestions are very welcome. As you can probably already tell, I'm not extremely knowledgeable on this topic, I understand electronics fairly well and am handy enough with a soldering iron, but have never done a flashlight mod other than just drop in types.

Finally was able to find some reference to this light somewhere else on the internet. I found a record of one of these being sold on eBay back in 07. It had already been discontinued at the time of the sale.

Definitely an old light, and not a super expensive one but it has a nice heavy in the hand feel and works just as good now as it did when I got it many years ago. Here is the picture I was able to find from the eBay listing.



I was kind of expecting several responses to this post with people saying. Oh yeah, people replace those old Luxeon Star LEDs all the time. Just get a X, solder it it and your done. Or yeah, you can use X LED, but you'll have to also use Y driver if you want it to work. Apparently, not many people bother with this type of thing. But I'm still hopeful.

You re totally correct,
simply get an acutal led on a star board and solder it in instead of the Luxeon Star.
(a bit of thermal paste on the back is recommended)

possibilites are:
Cree XP-G or XP-G2 ... smaller beam, seeming "brighter"
Cree XM-L or XM-L2 ... wider beam, seeming "less bright"

personally I would not mind if its the "older" normal model, or the new with the "2",
if You get an XM-L2 or XP-G2 for almost the same price, then these, of course.

You will possibly have to adjust the position of the reflector but that should not pose too much of a problem ...


but my real advice were to get an actual light, with one of the led above, but in size 1*AA.
It will house more energy than the 3*AAA and is smaller and thus "more EDC"

(and not direct drive)



explanation why the simple emitter swap will work:
both led will be underdriven and so the very little "laboratory difference" in output will not come valid. But the 4 times wider main beam with the XM-L will look less bright in direct comparison to the more focused one with the XP-G

So you can direct drive an XP-G or XM-L from 3x AAA and be ok? If so, I would probably go with the XP-G or XP-G2 for this light.

I understand that getting a new light makes much more sense. I have 3x XM-L2 18650 lights already, but I'm going through a phase of upgrading my old lights to be more current. I have a hard time retiring old stuff. Plus I like having unique flashlights, and enjoy the challenge of a mod.

Also, this light has the 3 cells sitting next to each other in the tube with one of those capsuls. I have powered this light from an 18650 battery at one point, I just barely got the threads to catch enough for the tail cap to ground enough for the light to work. The battery capsule is about 55-56 mm long. I'm thinking this light might also be a good candidate for 18500 batteries. Does this open any doors?

I think I have a few of those emitters lying around.
I am not sure how much brighter they are than 45 lm.
Let me know if you would like a few.
I'm happy to just send them to you if they are what you need.

FourBin Labs said:

So you can direct drive an XP-G or XM-L from 3x AAA and be ok?

Click to expand...

I wouldn't direct drive it. Fresh AAAs would overdrive it hard.

Also, this light has the 3 cells sitting next to each other in the tube with one of those capsuls. I have powered this light from an 18650 battery at one point, I just barely got the threads to catch enough for the tail cap to ground enough for the light to work. The battery capsule is about 55-56 mm long. I'm thinking this light might also be a good candidate for 18500 batteries. Does this open any doors?

Click to expand...

A cheap Chinese driver and a XP-G would work perfectly from a LiIon cell. You can *probably* get it to accept a 18650 by cutting the spring, otherwise a 25500 (C-sized) would be a better fit than a relatively weak 18500.

This would be the only sensible way to upgrade it. 3-AAA lights are notorious for the crappiness of their power source.

Ok, so I need to be looking for a driver. Any recommendations on where to start or just play with Google and see what happens?

I'll check to see about cutting down the spring, but I suspect that this isn't going to give me enough room to accommodate the 18650 cell. So 18500 cells very weak compared to an 18650? That kinda sucks because I can't see a C-size diameter cell working here either. I'll check when I get home, but I don't think it would fit (even with a little boring). I might see about finding out the thread size and then ask a friend who does some machining if he can make a screw on extension for the tube as method of getting an 18650 to fit.

Is the biggest drawback to the 18500 just capacity, or does it have other issues?

Thanks for the advice. You have been a big help.

How about just using a single AMC7135? A 10x pack costs about $2 shipped, not sure if anywhere has single chips cheap enough to warrant a smaller quantity.

Why not stay with the stock driver? 350mA seems fine for an LED that is attached to a plastic "heatsink." If it was fine for that LED, then even less power will be converted to heat for today's LEDs. The biggest problem is that not many LEDs in that shape anymore. These days, they're surface mounted on ceramic substrates, leading to an LED optical center height being considerably lower, meaning you'll have to tweak the reflector to sit lower, or shim the LED up to make it sit higher. That might be fine, though. Stack some metal under that MCPCB to give it more thermal mass so's you can up the current without running too hot...

bshanahan14rulz said:

Why not stay with the stock driver?

Click to expand...

Problem seems to be that there doesn't actually appear to be a driver? Hence why I suggested the 7135, it'll still hold the current to 350mA (or 380mA for the newer ones) and take up not much space, so should help keep the temperature within reason for the plastic pill.

Ah, I see, that was simply a manufacturer spec.

Yeah, 7135s are so dern'd convenient! Can even get away with soldering a bare chip to wires if your voltages are close enough! I had a 2.7V load wanted to give it 350mA. Just floated a chip between the wires and made the appropriate connections, worked fine. This device was meant to be used with a very very low duty cycle, i.e. just a few seconds at a time, a minute tops. I reckon with a voltage difference of 1.5V needing to be burned up by the chip, it would go into thermal safe mode pretty quickly, and I used very thick solid copper wire for the chip's tab, may have contributed to being able to run for a minute or so without any dimming.

Long story short, 7135 are yes!

Hey four bins, what ever happened with your Mac tools flashlight mod? I happen to have one of those exact flashlights and was wondering the same thing.

G20-Budo, Welcome to the forum. If you click on a users name, then hit "view profile", it will show you the last time the member was logged in. I checked FourBins for you and they haven't been logged into the forum since: 2-10-14.

​I hope that helps you.
Good luck on your search.

Str8stroke,

Thanks for your reply. Yes I know how to view a person's profile, and i almost PM'd him but decided to post here thinking it might send him an alert and maybe he'd log in again. It was pretty late and maybe my logic wasn't the best at that hour.

Ha! Well, you are smarter than me. I took me 6 months to stumble on that feature! lol I am not a huge forum guy. In fact, over the years, I have really only been on 3 forums. I kinda bounce back and forth. To me, they all work Totally different.

I went looking for this thread today to show a coworker what he would likely see if he took apart a similar flashlight he owns and noticed the replies here. I didn't end up modding the light because I ended up loaning it to a friend during a power outage and have not gotten it back. At this point, I'm happy to let my friend keep the light. I keep accumulating lights, and as a result, each light gets used less and less. I figure it's getting more use where it's at.