wquiles
Flashaholic
Thanks to GJW and his GB (Xnova, 8-LED, 1AA in HA-III) I got a few of these affordable LED lights.
Since most 5mm LED lights these days almost "always" come with some sort of angry-blue tint to the LED's, I bought them knowing I was going to be modifying them. I have both Nichias from a GB several months back and the "newer" 35K white LED's from KevinL (thanks Kevin!). So far the KevinL's have been the most white and Nichias always had some blue tint, but since I have "relatively" cheap hosts I decided to build one of each this time so that I can trully do side-by-side comparisons.
Of course, only a true nutcase will buy a $5 LED light and put $9 worth of premium 35K LED's into it, but I am hopefully within the right group of folks in this forum to almost go "undetected"
Thanks to GJW I learned that the method to open these is exactly the same as with the Inovas - you emphty them, fill them with water, freeze them, let them melt (!) and the expanding water as it freezes pushes the front of the unit. Note that I had to do twice to get them to be loose enough to open.
To actually get to the back of the PWB that holds the LED's you must remove this soft plastic spacer - I just used a small knife:
Note that the polarity is "opposite" to most lights!:
To actually separate the two PWB's so that you can actually de-solder the LED's you need to de-solder the "one" long LED-type leg that holds the two PWB's in sort-of-alignment, pointed to here by the tip of my (very hot!) iron:
Now, with no offense intended to our outstanding Chinese members/sellers/contributors, most of the Chinese lights follow no convension of any sort regarding cable colors, often using the same color for both positive and negative. This being the case I used a blue pen to mark the "true" positive cable:
on this second module, the yellow and red collors mean nothing (yellow was actually the positive!):
Once you have the LED PWB free, simply use your favorite method to get the solder removed (I use desoldering braid). If you do a good job, the LED's will drop out by themselves or might need a small pull from a set of narrow pliers:
EDIT (with additional information for this picture)
In this picture, note the patern on the PWB: the outer ring is the positive side of each LED - you need to know this once you start puting new LED's. The tricky one is the LED in the middle - just follow the traces on the PWB to make sure you maintain the correct polarity. In this particular photo, the positive point for the inner LED is top left:
I found out that one of the "defective" lights that I bought on purpose as having a bad LED (since I was going to replace the LED's anyway) really did not have a defective LED - the problem was that the cheap/low quality PWB does not always reach to each LED contact point. I scraped the edge to expose the bare metal and added more solder - problem solved!:
The go solder all new LED's back, noting the positive and negative, and re-assemble. Note that the plastic spacer is not perfect, but it all fits fine inside of the host:
Use your favorite method to press-fit the module back into the head:
Now, what every flashaholic wants to see - beamshots!!!
35K's from KevinL on left, Nichia on right, about 1 foot from wall:
Same as above, but adding the completely OEM unit on the far right (35K, Nichia, OEM), about one foot from wall:
And finally, a 5-6 foot shot of the 35K on the left and Nichia on the right:
In this application, with this 1xAA converter the Nichias are actually brighter, and deliver a wider beam. The OEM LED's (as I noted at the beguining) have the typicall angry-blue tone/tint that I hate so much. Note also how "nice" and relatively white KevinL's 35K really are. The Nichias have two components: a warmer white on the outside and then some of the angry blue in the middle. I am going to keep these two as-is, but I do personally like the 35K's better
For those who care/wanted to know, from an almost new 1xAA Energizer cell the stock circuit/LED draws about 300mA, the one with 35K's and the one with Nichias draw about 365mA each.
One last note: the space in between the two PWB's should be enough to fit a different converter if somebody wanted to
Will
Since most 5mm LED lights these days almost "always" come with some sort of angry-blue tint to the LED's, I bought them knowing I was going to be modifying them. I have both Nichias from a GB several months back and the "newer" 35K white LED's from KevinL (thanks Kevin!). So far the KevinL's have been the most white and Nichias always had some blue tint, but since I have "relatively" cheap hosts I decided to build one of each this time so that I can trully do side-by-side comparisons.
Of course, only a true nutcase will buy a $5 LED light and put $9 worth of premium 35K LED's into it, but I am hopefully within the right group of folks in this forum to almost go "undetected"
Thanks to GJW I learned that the method to open these is exactly the same as with the Inovas - you emphty them, fill them with water, freeze them, let them melt (!) and the expanding water as it freezes pushes the front of the unit. Note that I had to do twice to get them to be loose enough to open.
To actually get to the back of the PWB that holds the LED's you must remove this soft plastic spacer - I just used a small knife:
Note that the polarity is "opposite" to most lights!:
To actually separate the two PWB's so that you can actually de-solder the LED's you need to de-solder the "one" long LED-type leg that holds the two PWB's in sort-of-alignment, pointed to here by the tip of my (very hot!) iron:
Now, with no offense intended to our outstanding Chinese members/sellers/contributors, most of the Chinese lights follow no convension of any sort regarding cable colors, often using the same color for both positive and negative. This being the case I used a blue pen to mark the "true" positive cable:
on this second module, the yellow and red collors mean nothing (yellow was actually the positive!):
Once you have the LED PWB free, simply use your favorite method to get the solder removed (I use desoldering braid). If you do a good job, the LED's will drop out by themselves or might need a small pull from a set of narrow pliers:
EDIT (with additional information for this picture)
In this picture, note the patern on the PWB: the outer ring is the positive side of each LED - you need to know this once you start puting new LED's. The tricky one is the LED in the middle - just follow the traces on the PWB to make sure you maintain the correct polarity. In this particular photo, the positive point for the inner LED is top left:
I found out that one of the "defective" lights that I bought on purpose as having a bad LED (since I was going to replace the LED's anyway) really did not have a defective LED - the problem was that the cheap/low quality PWB does not always reach to each LED contact point. I scraped the edge to expose the bare metal and added more solder - problem solved!:
The go solder all new LED's back, noting the positive and negative, and re-assemble. Note that the plastic spacer is not perfect, but it all fits fine inside of the host:
Use your favorite method to press-fit the module back into the head:
Now, what every flashaholic wants to see - beamshots!!!
35K's from KevinL on left, Nichia on right, about 1 foot from wall:
Same as above, but adding the completely OEM unit on the far right (35K, Nichia, OEM), about one foot from wall:
And finally, a 5-6 foot shot of the 35K on the left and Nichia on the right:
In this application, with this 1xAA converter the Nichias are actually brighter, and deliver a wider beam. The OEM LED's (as I noted at the beguining) have the typicall angry-blue tone/tint that I hate so much. Note also how "nice" and relatively white KevinL's 35K really are. The Nichias have two components: a warmer white on the outside and then some of the angry blue in the middle. I am going to keep these two as-is, but I do personally like the 35K's better
For those who care/wanted to know, from an almost new 1xAA Energizer cell the stock circuit/LED draws about 300mA, the one with 35K's and the one with Nichias draw about 365mA each.
One last note: the space in between the two PWB's should be enough to fit a different converter if somebody wanted to
Will
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