Kill-O-Zap
Enlightened
LEDmASAP told all about his toils to make this mod in this thread. Considering how much labor was involved, and the quality of the result, I feel I got great deal.
Here's a slightly better pic than has been previously seen of the little wonder pill:
How do I like this mod?
I love it!
First, I have to say that the MiniMag AAA form factor is great. Feels great in the hand and the pocket, turns on and off very easily, and to my eye it's a good looking light. I was originally hung up on a tailcap switch, (Kroll AAA?) but I quickly took to the twist-head. For me, this is a great host.
But enough about the Mag. Now the pill.
Output is semi-regulated. There is some dropoff in output as the batteries wear, but not a lot. I run it exclusively on NiMH, so the drop-off is really minimal. On freshly charged NiMH's it draws 750mA. This gives me around an hour of runtime. To be honest, I haven't bothered to measure it, I tend to top off the batteries before they're depleted. [It's down to 500mA from the NiMH's after 45 minutes continuous operation, just tested now.]
I use this light at night to read to the kids. I run it for about 20-30 minutes straight, and it does get quite warm pretty quickly. Not as hot as a MadMax Legend, but pretty hot; it does need to be held to keep the temperature down to a reasonable level. I've been doing this a few nights a week for 5 months without trouble, so I guess I've convinced myself that it's not going to self-destruct.
Output is very bright and white, as you would expect from a Q3J LS driven at 400+mA.
I find the beam pattern is very useful. I'm not too hung up on throw. I like a lot of sidespill light, which the combination of a HD LS with a reflector seems to provide. The MinMag reflector is very small and shallow, so the beam does have quite a wide angle, but it does also have a fairly tight hot spot. It's not really focusable though; the doughnot hole sets in almost immediately as soon as you leave tight focus.
Because the pill drops in from the battery side and is retained by a lip at the top the MiniMag battery tube, candle mode is possible. Sometimes I use it that way to read, but I worry about it heating up too much without the extra mass and surface of the head to cool things off.
There was a bit of a "bug" in the design, which fortunately I quickly worked out and easily fixed. The light would sometimes not go off as it is supposed to when the head was tightened down all the way. I believed that the reason for this was that the reflector was not pushing the pill down enough to clear the lip of the tube. My first attempt at solving this problem was to build up the depth of the reflector a bit. This did solve the problem, but not to my satisfaction because best focus is achieved with the LS as far into the reflector as LEDmASAP had it. So I undid that "fix" and for a while lived with the occasional having to twist the head several times to get it to shut off. Then one time I experienced a far worse problem. While off and being carried in my pocket, the light got hot, and I mean HOT!. I was able to unscrew the end cap without disturbing the pill and batteries, and measured 2A of draw! Ouch!
I studied the problem and concluded that the cause of both the no-turn-off and the apparent short circuit was that the clearance between the lip of the battery tube and the base of the LS and its contacts was so tight that if the module was not held perfectly in center by the reflector, either the - or the + of the LS would contact the lip. In the former case, the light would not go out, and in the latter, the LS would be shunted out and the driver output short-circuited.
Some *carefully* applied clear nail polish fixed that problem with no recurrence in about four months. I say carefully because it would have been easy to paint over the heatsink as well, ruining the "contact patch" and worst case also the electrical path. I expect I may have to repeat this treatment at some point if the enamel eventually wears off.
Other than that, this light has been very reliable. Been dropped on hardwood floors many times without problem. Been run continuously for long periods again, no problems.
At this time, 5 months into ownership, this remains one of my favorite and most used lights. It has taken over for a number of other lights. It seems to have supplanted my MadMax Legend, primarily because of its form factor, although the MadMax is brighter. And my kids stuffed my LEDmASAP Solitaire (another winner) somewhere and I can't find it (argh!), so the Mini has taken over for that as well. And finally, I'm "in between" 123 based lights, so the Mini is filling in for that as well. A very versatile light!
In conclusion, I highly recommend this mod. I don't know if LEDmASAP will sign on to do any more of them after how much labor this one required, but maybe now that he's been through it once, subsequent units will be easier.
Not that I mind being the owner of a unique-in-the-world flashlight /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif but I guess the secret has been kept long enough. The word needs to get out. This is a great mod. Thanks LEDmASAP!
--Sal
Here's a slightly better pic than has been previously seen of the little wonder pill:
How do I like this mod?
I love it!
First, I have to say that the MiniMag AAA form factor is great. Feels great in the hand and the pocket, turns on and off very easily, and to my eye it's a good looking light. I was originally hung up on a tailcap switch, (Kroll AAA?) but I quickly took to the twist-head. For me, this is a great host.
But enough about the Mag. Now the pill.
Output is semi-regulated. There is some dropoff in output as the batteries wear, but not a lot. I run it exclusively on NiMH, so the drop-off is really minimal. On freshly charged NiMH's it draws 750mA. This gives me around an hour of runtime. To be honest, I haven't bothered to measure it, I tend to top off the batteries before they're depleted. [It's down to 500mA from the NiMH's after 45 minutes continuous operation, just tested now.]
I use this light at night to read to the kids. I run it for about 20-30 minutes straight, and it does get quite warm pretty quickly. Not as hot as a MadMax Legend, but pretty hot; it does need to be held to keep the temperature down to a reasonable level. I've been doing this a few nights a week for 5 months without trouble, so I guess I've convinced myself that it's not going to self-destruct.
Output is very bright and white, as you would expect from a Q3J LS driven at 400+mA.
I find the beam pattern is very useful. I'm not too hung up on throw. I like a lot of sidespill light, which the combination of a HD LS with a reflector seems to provide. The MinMag reflector is very small and shallow, so the beam does have quite a wide angle, but it does also have a fairly tight hot spot. It's not really focusable though; the doughnot hole sets in almost immediately as soon as you leave tight focus.
Because the pill drops in from the battery side and is retained by a lip at the top the MiniMag battery tube, candle mode is possible. Sometimes I use it that way to read, but I worry about it heating up too much without the extra mass and surface of the head to cool things off.
There was a bit of a "bug" in the design, which fortunately I quickly worked out and easily fixed. The light would sometimes not go off as it is supposed to when the head was tightened down all the way. I believed that the reason for this was that the reflector was not pushing the pill down enough to clear the lip of the tube. My first attempt at solving this problem was to build up the depth of the reflector a bit. This did solve the problem, but not to my satisfaction because best focus is achieved with the LS as far into the reflector as LEDmASAP had it. So I undid that "fix" and for a while lived with the occasional having to twist the head several times to get it to shut off. Then one time I experienced a far worse problem. While off and being carried in my pocket, the light got hot, and I mean HOT!. I was able to unscrew the end cap without disturbing the pill and batteries, and measured 2A of draw! Ouch!
I studied the problem and concluded that the cause of both the no-turn-off and the apparent short circuit was that the clearance between the lip of the battery tube and the base of the LS and its contacts was so tight that if the module was not held perfectly in center by the reflector, either the - or the + of the LS would contact the lip. In the former case, the light would not go out, and in the latter, the LS would be shunted out and the driver output short-circuited.
Some *carefully* applied clear nail polish fixed that problem with no recurrence in about four months. I say carefully because it would have been easy to paint over the heatsink as well, ruining the "contact patch" and worst case also the electrical path. I expect I may have to repeat this treatment at some point if the enamel eventually wears off.
Other than that, this light has been very reliable. Been dropped on hardwood floors many times without problem. Been run continuously for long periods again, no problems.
At this time, 5 months into ownership, this remains one of my favorite and most used lights. It has taken over for a number of other lights. It seems to have supplanted my MadMax Legend, primarily because of its form factor, although the MadMax is brighter. And my kids stuffed my LEDmASAP Solitaire (another winner) somewhere and I can't find it (argh!), so the Mini has taken over for that as well. And finally, I'm "in between" 123 based lights, so the Mini is filling in for that as well. A very versatile light!
In conclusion, I highly recommend this mod. I don't know if LEDmASAP will sign on to do any more of them after how much labor this one required, but maybe now that he's been through it once, subsequent units will be easier.
Not that I mind being the owner of a unique-in-the-world flashlight /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif but I guess the secret has been kept long enough. The word needs to get out. This is a great mod. Thanks LEDmASAP!
--Sal
