qwertyydude
Flashlight Enthusiast
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2008
- Messages
- 1,115
Well I've ruined as many reflectors as anyone else here. So instead of just polishing and settling for the ringy beam I noticed my inova bolt isn't OP but polished machining. Well My solution to replicate this is to sand the reflector evenly around with 320 grit sandpaper, you can leave it as this for pure even flood, or to restore a smooth throwy beam you then use metal polish to polish the rough sanding and voila you can even adjust how floody to throwy you want by polishing more or less. I think this will be a great way to restore so many ruined reflectors. By the way I'm also giving a light to a friend as a late night reading light, so to make it easy for reading I completely sanded the reflector so as to make it pretty much flood but with an almost imperceptible hotspot. Throw went from about 50 or so feet to maybe 20. But the transition from hotspot to edge is sooo smooth with no rings or dark donuts. It's quite nice and I may transform one of my P60 drop ins to this for close in work.
Now that I got around to it I decided to post some beamshots as I think this mod will help ease the minds of those who have ruined there nice op reflectors. This is my Ultrafire Q5 606A. Direct drive with a custom two cell 14500 parallel battery pack, 1800 mah capacity.
This is the actual close up of the reflector, 320 grit sandpaper and some light-medium polishing, what's great is with varying degrees of polishing you can achieve anywhere from total flood to complete throw depending on how much polishing, yet at flood level it's brighter than no reflector type floods since you have a diffuse reflector. This one is light-medium polishing so I get a smaller hotspot than original OP with excellent throw but completely smooth transition to a brighter spill than original OP.
This is a normal exposure shot, hotspot is hard to make out but look no rings! Good flood too.
Here is a -2 ev underexposure to show the tight hotspot which throws a considerable distance, though not as far as the original due to the dispersion into the flood area because of the sanding. I could make it brighter by polishing more but I'd sacrifice the nice usable flood.
Now that I got around to it I decided to post some beamshots as I think this mod will help ease the minds of those who have ruined there nice op reflectors. This is my Ultrafire Q5 606A. Direct drive with a custom two cell 14500 parallel battery pack, 1800 mah capacity.
This is the actual close up of the reflector, 320 grit sandpaper and some light-medium polishing, what's great is with varying degrees of polishing you can achieve anywhere from total flood to complete throw depending on how much polishing, yet at flood level it's brighter than no reflector type floods since you have a diffuse reflector. This one is light-medium polishing so I get a smaller hotspot than original OP with excellent throw but completely smooth transition to a brighter spill than original OP.
This is a normal exposure shot, hotspot is hard to make out but look no rings! Good flood too.
Here is a -2 ev underexposure to show the tight hotspot which throws a considerable distance, though not as far as the original due to the dispersion into the flood area because of the sanding. I could make it brighter by polishing more but I'd sacrifice the nice usable flood.
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