Aspheric XR-E R2 4D mag on the cheap!

[AmperSand]

Hey everyone!

I haven't been around your community on here for long, however used to get into flashlight modding quite a bit when I was younger.

I have only really just started again with some cheap lights from DX and some locally sourced. Simple driver upgrades and emitter upgrades, also some polishing and general aesthetic cleanup.

I also have a few 4D maglites I have been playing around with at the moment. One of them I did a basic LuxIII --> SSC P4 swap on the MagLED.
The other I thought I might go a little further. However, wanted to do this as cheap as possible.

I had a Cree R2 WG tint I had used in a direct drive mod on a Dorcy 3AAA light, I thought I would put to better use. Also had a Terralux TLE-6EX with K2 tffc chip on it which had failed. Driver on this was ok. Was tossing up whether to use the driver in the terralux dropin or direct drive with a 5watt rated 1.8ohm resistor. Ended up using the terralux dropin's driver.
So far, total cost $0. Next was a trip to Bunnings (largish hardware chain in AUS). Found a brass plumbing fitting with a hex head that had a diameter just on 35mm at the shortest points, this cost $2.
After a bit of dremel work, and cutting down the switch tower in the mag. R2 went in and all was reassembled. Used a good whack of thermal adhesive to keep everything in place at a decent focal point for the next piece of the mod, DX sku 12834 (50mmx18mm aspherical optic). To fit this in easily and cheaply without the reflector, I simply put DX sku 5948 (52mmx1.8mm glass lens) directly under it, bezel screwed down quite ok, maybe 1mm short of being completely closed like standard. $3.93 for the Aspherical optic and $1.31 for the glass lens. So far I'm upto $7.24 and a little bit of time to mod this far.
I guess the 4D LED mag cost me $28.99 AUD from coles on sale and $7 or so for the Cree R2 when I got it if we were to count that $43.23.

I was surprised I was able to pull this off so cheaply. I've wanted to do this mod for a while now but hadn't really had the time or cash spare to warrant doing it as I have no real need to use it daily, just more a toy to play with.
Glad I finally got around to it.

After some testing with the brass heatsink.. seems to be going quite well. I didn't know if it would dissipate the heat generated from the R2 fantastically. But seems to be doing quite well from the feel of it. Ideally I wouldn't have minded grabbing a H22A DHS HAIII heatsink, but wanted to do this ASAP and see how cheaply I could do it with locally sourced items that required little effort to mod. I guess its probably not being driven overly hard at the moment tho. Unsure how much current is getting fed to it from the terralux dropin driver. I might get around to measuring it at some stage, for now it seems to be throwing quite a distance tho.
After some tweaking I got the focal point so the head is steady at full focus at top O-ring at the top is completely covered and everything is steady at full 'led projecting on wall' focus. This leaves a good amount to close back down towards the LED for a very useful flood action.

All in all I am quite pleased with the outcome and will endeavor to get some pics of it all.

Thanks for your time.
Todd

 

[^Gurthang]

Welcome! Seems like you've already gotten the Mod Bug.... Keep reading and you'll have a great time. BTW, my first mod was a M@G 2D w/ an R2, now looking at a 2C XPG mod....

 

[420light]

Welcome.

Post some pics.

 

[AmperSand]

Took a few pics now that I had some time.

This has been done for a week or so, so no build pics unfortunately, although its not much different to every other build, except the cheapness on my part.

Here is the brass plumbing fitting I used. The hex edges were sanded down with a dremel to a very tight fit in the mag body. There is a fair bit of contact area with the body. The threads also touch the body and are filled with thermal adhesive.

Here is a messy pic of it installed with the Cree XR-E R2 emitter and a good whack of thermal adhesive. Will fill in some of it with epoxy + glow powder when my glow powder arrives.

Here is a pic of the head with aspheric lens in.

Disassembled head.

Here is how I made the DX aspheric lens fit in the mag head without needing to modify anything. The aspheric lens just sits on top of the glass lens, bezel screws down on it all. So its basically, head --> glass lens --> aspheric lens --> bezel.

Here is a complete pic.

 

[old4570]

:twothumbs

 

[Scattergun]

I did the exact same mod on a Mag 3D this evening... With this lens you really need to lower the LED into the Mag body. I solved the problem by using a H22A heatsink, turned upside down. I had to remove some material to get it into the flashlight body, but the LED PCB fit perfectly between the holes in the underside of the heatsink. With 2mm of the heatsink left above the flashlight body, the LED is perfectly focused in the SKU.12834 aspheric lens (with some adjustments possible for a more floody beam).
To get the lens to fit without rattle within the bezel, i cut the reflector and left just the outer rim in the flashlight, making up for the height needed to make the lens stay in place.
Very low cost, and extremely bright!!:twothumbs