Techjunkie
Enlightened
When I first began collecting LED flashlights, these were two of my favorites, the Lowe's Task Force 2C and the Professionals Favorite 2C.
I wont give a history lesson about them as they were pretty popular and impressive when they first came out. I'm sure there's plenty about them here at CPF.
They're still two of my all time favorites.
...but, as technology advanced, these didn't thrill me as much as they used to and I wanted more power from them. Time to update these two to some quad die emitters...
(I have a third, which is another Loew's 2C that I kept closer to stock, keeping the collimator and just changing the CREE XRE to warm white and doubling up on the drivers using one I pulled from the LTF2C above. Also, I modded the switches on all three to forward clickie after finding I liked the action on the Maglites better than these reverse click switches.)
Unable to find a suitable driver that would boost two high current NiMH C to drive a P7 or MC-E at 3A, I opted to change the battery configuration. Desperate to keep the battery chemistry safe for my kids, I adapted these 6AAA holders I got from Dorcy Direct for $1 ea. I changed them from 3s2p to 6s for 7.2V operation. In this way, I could direct drive an MC-E wired as 2p2s. The holders are a bit longer than 2C batteries and the forward click switches are also taller, so I had to do some trimming, spring clipping, epoxying, etc. In this config, 2 Li-ion 18500s work just as well, sagging just enough to keep from cooking the MC-Es.
Unfortunately, the 34mm Fraen MC-E reflectors I opted for did cook. Check out the warping on this one:
Not suitable for high current, depite claims.
Time to get radical. Aluminum reflectors don't melt easily, right? Darn, the pill that came with this one wont fit the modded serial star the MC-E was mounted on. It's so darn small too, will silver thermal epoxy conduct heat well enough with this little heatsink? No problem, I'll just heat it up in frying pan to desolder it, and use this handy plumbers propane torch to solder it directly to the reflector base. Solder conducts heat better than epoxy, right? (Don't try this at home, kids!):
After soldering solid 24ga. wires to the emitter, I electrically isolated them (and thermally conducted them) with some AAA.
That orange peel coating of the KD 35mm AL reflector sure stood up to the heat of the torch well while I melted the solder paste. (How else could I get it perfectly centered?
No worse for the blowtorch, uh, wear.
As long as I'm changing things up, I thought I'd add some regulation this time. I had a KD 8x7135 2.8A driver laying around that I never used. It's only spec'd for 6V input, but those little AAA Duraloops must sag plenty under the load of an MC-E + driver, right?
Here's the remodded next to the first DD mod. Current draw off the 6AAA pack is 2.58A at the tail cap. Judging by the output, I'd say the full 2.8A are making it to the MC-E. Nice!
Here's the business end of the two modded torches.
The neutral white MC-E in the Lowes torch sure took a beating. I took some chances with it when mounting to the star and de-mounting using my makeshift hotplate, but I never would have bet that it would have tolerated several re-positions with the blowtorch.
And here's the beauty shot.
The beam profiles look remarkably similar, which is surprising, because I've tried a dozen different reflectors with MC-E and no two look alike. In this case three, the Ultrafire C2 I modded with MC-E (also ~35mm) matches these very closely.
I wonder if that 8x7135 driver would hold up to 2 LiFePO4 C cells? Those things don't sag at all, so I'd be looking at ~6.6V to the driver, 10% over spec. Runtime would be awesome though ; )
I wont give a history lesson about them as they were pretty popular and impressive when they first came out. I'm sure there's plenty about them here at CPF.
They're still two of my all time favorites.
...but, as technology advanced, these didn't thrill me as much as they used to and I wanted more power from them. Time to update these two to some quad die emitters...
(I have a third, which is another Loew's 2C that I kept closer to stock, keeping the collimator and just changing the CREE XRE to warm white and doubling up on the drivers using one I pulled from the LTF2C above. Also, I modded the switches on all three to forward clickie after finding I liked the action on the Maglites better than these reverse click switches.)
Unable to find a suitable driver that would boost two high current NiMH C to drive a P7 or MC-E at 3A, I opted to change the battery configuration. Desperate to keep the battery chemistry safe for my kids, I adapted these 6AAA holders I got from Dorcy Direct for $1 ea. I changed them from 3s2p to 6s for 7.2V operation. In this way, I could direct drive an MC-E wired as 2p2s. The holders are a bit longer than 2C batteries and the forward click switches are also taller, so I had to do some trimming, spring clipping, epoxying, etc. In this config, 2 Li-ion 18500s work just as well, sagging just enough to keep from cooking the MC-Es.
Unfortunately, the 34mm Fraen MC-E reflectors I opted for did cook. Check out the warping on this one:
Not suitable for high current, depite claims.
Time to get radical. Aluminum reflectors don't melt easily, right? Darn, the pill that came with this one wont fit the modded serial star the MC-E was mounted on. It's so darn small too, will silver thermal epoxy conduct heat well enough with this little heatsink? No problem, I'll just heat it up in frying pan to desolder it, and use this handy plumbers propane torch to solder it directly to the reflector base. Solder conducts heat better than epoxy, right? (Don't try this at home, kids!):
After soldering solid 24ga. wires to the emitter, I electrically isolated them (and thermally conducted them) with some AAA.
That orange peel coating of the KD 35mm AL reflector sure stood up to the heat of the torch well while I melted the solder paste. (How else could I get it perfectly centered?
No worse for the blowtorch, uh, wear.
As long as I'm changing things up, I thought I'd add some regulation this time. I had a KD 8x7135 2.8A driver laying around that I never used. It's only spec'd for 6V input, but those little AAA Duraloops must sag plenty under the load of an MC-E + driver, right?
Here's the remodded next to the first DD mod. Current draw off the 6AAA pack is 2.58A at the tail cap. Judging by the output, I'd say the full 2.8A are making it to the MC-E. Nice!
Here's the business end of the two modded torches.
The neutral white MC-E in the Lowes torch sure took a beating. I took some chances with it when mounting to the star and de-mounting using my makeshift hotplate, but I never would have bet that it would have tolerated several re-positions with the blowtorch.
And here's the beauty shot.
The beam profiles look remarkably similar, which is surprising, because I've tried a dozen different reflectors with MC-E and no two look alike. In this case three, the Ultrafire C2 I modded with MC-E (also ~35mm) matches these very closely.
I wonder if that 8x7135 driver would hold up to 2 LiFePO4 C cells? Those things don't sag at all, so I'd be looking at ~6.6V to the driver, 10% over spec. Runtime would be awesome though ; )
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