Anyone De-Domed a Crelant 7G5CS or similar?

[papershredder]

How do you get to the star PCB on this one? I see it underneath the centering and plastic cover when I take the reflector head off. I was thinking about getting a small drill bit and putting a hole in there. Something I could get a tool into and pry the plastic off. Does it go back on well again? Any better way?

 

[ThirstyTurtle]

How do you get to the star PCB on this one? I see it underneath the centering and plastic cover when I take the reflector head off. I was thinking about getting a small drill bit and putting a hole in there. Something I could get a tool into and pry the plastic off. Does it go back on well again? Any better way?

Great question! I couldn't figure it out either so I just took the head off, flipped it upside down and placed it in a shot glass with a little gasoline at the bottom. I only had the dome and maybe 1mm of the threads in the gasoline. After I was all done I let it sit in the sun for like 3 days to evaporate any residual gasoline (and it helped with the smell as well). If you can manage to get the emitter out that would obviously be ideal but my way worked just fine.

Btw, this light now throws EXACTLY like my Stanley FatMax XM-L which has a HUGE 3.5" diameter smooth reflector that is also very deep. Obviously I'm now considering de-doming that. I feel that de-doming any dedicated thrower just makes too much since to not do it.

Also, the light is now a MUCH more pleasing tint and I've run it on max now for probably 15 minutes to play with it and everything is working just fine. Last night I shined it at a cell tower 600' away and lit up the top FANTASTICALLY!

 

[papershredder]

It was easy. I jabbed the plastic with a knife where one of the scoops is cut out of the PCB. That made a crack in it. I could then stick my knife into said crack and pry the plastic bit off.

I put a different PCB in there with an XM-L2, and de-domed it by heating it up and prying the dome off. It worked well, but there is still some dome around the bonded wires, so I'm not touching that. It's giving it some artifacts, but it's not bad.

I think I'll play around with it, but I'll eventually go back to domed with the smooth reflector. I find that most useful.

 

[Tiresius]

It looks like they built the 7G5CS better than the 7G5 V2. I had the V2 at one time and the light engine was a whole module that was threaded into the body. Not the best design but that light rarely heats up. I remembered I was able to machine my own module and thread it into the host. It was an XR-E at 2.8a of power. This thing was powerful but did not last long. Heat became an issue and the emitter went out.

 

[ThirstyTurtle]

It was easy. I jabbed the plastic with a knife where one of the scoops is cut out of the PCB. That made a crack in it. I could then stick my knife into said crack and pry the plastic bit off.

I put a different PCB in there with an XM-L2, and de-domed it by heating it up and prying the dome off. It worked well, but there is still some dome around the bonded wires, so I'm not touching that. It's giving it some artifacts, but it's not bad.

I think I'll play around with it, but I'll eventually go back to domed with the smooth reflector. I find that most useful.

Impressive! I think if this thing was overdriven, de-domed, and run with the aspheric it'd be doing ~300k cd

Merely de-domed with the reflector I'm thinking about 1/3 of that.

At any rate, de-doming it made it throw further and a much prettier tint so it's a win-win for me.