Besides that I had to make a 10108 Soli. to see how short I can make it be, I also wanted to try some inexpensive solutions to generate narrow beam from Soli. using high power leds. Something I haven't been able to achieve with either Carlos TIR, 10 mm Aspherical lens or 10mm Lisa Optics.
The Carlos TIR & Aspherical gives reasonably narrow beam but both gives a square hot spot where I really wanted to achieve a narrow & round hot spot without going to the expensive route of getting McR11 Draco reflector (Available from Shoppee).
My Google search came back with two 13mm narrow optics, both for
Golden Dragon, as I happen to have a GD around, I decided to order a few lens & try it out.
http://www.mouser.com/Optoelectroni...N-74g9w?P=1z0wuaa&Keyword=13mm+optics&FS=True
As the cut down & build is very similar to my recent mag soli. 10280 thread, I am going to keep this thread simple & focus on just those area that are different.
The Two Optics are both 6 degree optics, near identical looking except that one has "s" at the end of the part # (735-0-002s). The one with "s" has a frosted center doom & gives a round hots pot, the other one gives a square
beam similar to Carlos 10mm TIR
The optics installed in Soli:
The optics was filed down by 1 mm on the top edge to fit into the soli.,
as a result, some of the lights will be lost. The ideal optics would to 11 mm, but I don't such thing exist.
This photo shows the Golden Dragon mounted on a 1.5mm thick aluminum disk that was ground down from larger PCB (You can also use the 10mm XPE/XPG PCB from cutter to avoid the grinding step).
The length without tail is cut to ~45mm using a Home Depot small tube cutter. The cutting is a simple 5 min. job (Wrap some masking tape before cutting to avoid damage the ano.). The re-threading is the same as described in my 10280 build, so I am not going to elaborate except that with thicker rubber hose material, I was able to re-thread it much faster, about 30min. vs ~3 hrs when I did the 10280 cut-down.
This is the shortest length you can do with 10180 on mag soli, because the switch section (about 8mm long) has smaller ID that you can not push the 10180 up further. I know this because in my first cut, I went for 37mm, as a result I had to bore out the switch section. Before I could fit in the 10mm li-ion, I bored open the tube & resulted in premature death of my first soli. 10180 attempt:shakehead
Even at the 45mm length, the tail cap still need to be filed down about 4-5mm to fit, if you don't want to file the tail cap, then you'll need to cut at 49 -50mm position to house the long tail cap from soli.
One thing I forgot to mention in my 10280 thread is that the stock tail cap does not fit the 12x1.0 re-thred without modification. To make it fit, you need to file away half of the soli. tail cap threads, i.e. leave behind only 1.4-2 turns of thread, that way, it'll screw in completely. So the tail cap isn't 12mmx1.0 exactly, but pretty close. Perhaps 12x1.25? But I haven't try that.
I put 2x 2ohm resistors into the tail, to get the final resistance of 1 Ohm.
Now the finished light is shown on the left of the AA battery in the group photo, with a final size of 52mmx12.5 mm, just a hair taller than AA battery but much more skinny. If the switch section didn't have a smaller ID, I would have been able to make it 45mm & much shorter than AA, unfortunately, the switch section length is a limitation on soli. that might not be easy to overcome.
I'll take some beam shots after dark, but I can already tell that it's got a narrow beam,
narrower than any of my prior soli. mods except the 10280 soli. nano-hotwire. :devil:
The Carlos TIR & Aspherical gives reasonably narrow beam but both gives a square hot spot where I really wanted to achieve a narrow & round hot spot without going to the expensive route of getting McR11 Draco reflector (Available from Shoppee).
My Google search came back with two 13mm narrow optics, both for
Golden Dragon, as I happen to have a GD around, I decided to order a few lens & try it out.
http://www.mouser.com/Optoelectroni...N-74g9w?P=1z0wuaa&Keyword=13mm+optics&FS=True
As the cut down & build is very similar to my recent mag soli. 10280 thread, I am going to keep this thread simple & focus on just those area that are different.
The Two Optics are both 6 degree optics, near identical looking except that one has "s" at the end of the part # (735-0-002s). The one with "s" has a frosted center doom & gives a round hots pot, the other one gives a square
beam similar to Carlos 10mm TIR
The optics installed in Soli:
The optics was filed down by 1 mm on the top edge to fit into the soli.,
as a result, some of the lights will be lost. The ideal optics would to 11 mm, but I don't such thing exist.
This photo shows the Golden Dragon mounted on a 1.5mm thick aluminum disk that was ground down from larger PCB (You can also use the 10mm XPE/XPG PCB from cutter to avoid the grinding step).
The length without tail is cut to ~45mm using a Home Depot small tube cutter. The cutting is a simple 5 min. job (Wrap some masking tape before cutting to avoid damage the ano.). The re-threading is the same as described in my 10280 build, so I am not going to elaborate except that with thicker rubber hose material, I was able to re-thread it much faster, about 30min. vs ~3 hrs when I did the 10280 cut-down.
This is the shortest length you can do with 10180 on mag soli, because the switch section (about 8mm long) has smaller ID that you can not push the 10180 up further. I know this because in my first cut, I went for 37mm, as a result I had to bore out the switch section. Before I could fit in the 10mm li-ion, I bored open the tube & resulted in premature death of my first soli. 10180 attempt:shakehead
Even at the 45mm length, the tail cap still need to be filed down about 4-5mm to fit, if you don't want to file the tail cap, then you'll need to cut at 49 -50mm position to house the long tail cap from soli.
One thing I forgot to mention in my 10280 thread is that the stock tail cap does not fit the 12x1.0 re-thred without modification. To make it fit, you need to file away half of the soli. tail cap threads, i.e. leave behind only 1.4-2 turns of thread, that way, it'll screw in completely. So the tail cap isn't 12mmx1.0 exactly, but pretty close. Perhaps 12x1.25? But I haven't try that.
I put 2x 2ohm resistors into the tail, to get the final resistance of 1 Ohm.
Now the finished light is shown on the left of the AA battery in the group photo, with a final size of 52mmx12.5 mm, just a hair taller than AA battery but much more skinny. If the switch section didn't have a smaller ID, I would have been able to make it 45mm & much shorter than AA, unfortunately, the switch section length is a limitation on soli. that might not be easy to overcome.
I'll take some beam shots after dark, but I can already tell that it's got a narrow beam,
narrower than any of my prior soli. mods except the 10280 soli. nano-hotwire. :devil:
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