TigerhawkT3
Flashlight Enthusiast
This is a Minimag modded with an MC-E and Li-Ions, driven pretty darn hard. I'm not certain that it's never been done before, but it's definitely the first one I've heard of.
Body: Traditional incan Minimag
Window: Stock plastic
Optic: Carclo 20mm Frosted Medium optic, model 10195
Emitter: MCE4WT-A2-5A0-K0-0-00001 370 min Lumens Neutral White, wired 2S2P
Epoxy: Standard 2-part AA
Heatsink: mariposaoyako's OFC solid copper heatsink, modified
Battery: 2x14500 AW protected Li-Ions in series
Tailcap: Nite-Ize clickie (if anyone knows of a better clickie, please share it)
Here's a macro of the MC-E. How, uh, exciting.
This is a closeup of the wired MC-E. That wire looping around the top connects pairs of terminals for the 2S2P configuration. I'm glad I didn't have to individually address each of the eight tiny contacts for this mod.
Here's the back of it. Notice how I put very little solder on this side - that's because the little contacts are extremely close to the surface. I actually had to bend each one upwards with some fine needlenosed pliers before I started.
This is how the wired emitter looks as it sits on the heatsink with the wires going through the proper heatsink holes. Nothing is glued; it was basically a practice assembly so that I could plan.
Here's a closeup of the heatsink and wired MC-E, after a little modification. To put it shortly, the wired MC-E is a ship and the copper retaining ring is a bottle. This way, I could connect everything in place with a bit of slack, then slide the ring in from the side, past the wires, and screw it down. I probably could have avoided that by soldering the wires to the MC-E as the last step, but that would be more difficult and give me much less room with which to check for shorts and so on.
I then noticed that the Minimag itself presented another ship-in-a-bottle dilemma. However, that lip is much thinner than the retaining ring, so I was able to tilt the MC-E slightly, slide it in from the tail, then pull it all the way out the neck and tilt it back down. This pic shows the wired MC-E tilted and poking partly through the neck.
I clipped the long leads to the proper length, making sure to give myself space to slide in the heatsink retaining ring, then stripped the ends and wired them up. I popped the emitter off a dead sandwich module I had lying around, ground the little conductive patches off one side, and used the other side's large conductive surface as the contact for batt+. If you look closely, you'll see the ground wire screwed to the heatsink, just like mariposaoyako intended.
Here, the assembled module has been inserted up through the tail with the tilted MC-E still floating. I pulled the MC-E through the Minimag's neck and righted it.
I then put a couple AA alks (the ones that originally came with the Minimag, as a matter of fact) into the Minimag, so I could push from the bottom and screw on the retaining ring. The optic (Carclo 10195) is resting on the left. Notice that nothing has been AAed yet. If I wanted to at this point, I could have unscrewed the retaining ring, slipped the MC-E back through the Minimag's neck, and worked on it some more. I didn't end up needing to do that, though.
After that, I mixed some AA, put it under the emitter, and closed the light, using the pressure from the optic on the emitter to press it gently but firmly into the AA.
The following step was very important. I spent quite a bit of time doing it while the AA dried. "O Lord, bless this Thy... FLASHLIGHT... that with it Thou mayest... NOT... blow Thine enemies to tiny bits..." These AW cells are protected, but I still really really didn't want a short, or magic smoke, or any of that jazz.
Several hours later, I decided to go ahead and just take the plunge. I took the 14500s from my Auroralite (one measured at 4.2V, the other at 3.9V), put tiny magnets at the proper places, and screwed on the Nite-Ize tailcap.
Settings were kept locked for both of the following pics. You can look at the EXIF data if you want the details. Room lights (warm fluorescents) were on for both pics. The white balance is way off, but since that's really hard to do properly anway, I can just tell you about tints.
Nitecore D10, GDP version, on High, with a NiMH. The classic creamy white hotspot, slightly yellow-green corona, and white spill.
Mini-KT3. This emitter is slightly on the warm side, but still definitely white, IMHO. Quite pleasant.
Battery was 8.1V OC, current draw around 2A. I don't think it's 1000 "SF lumens," I don't know if it's OTF but with fresh cells, it may or may not be emitter lumens with fresh cells... but it's gotta be close to one of those.
AFAIK, this is the first MC-E Minimag, and the brightest Minimag (one might say, the "Penultimate Stealth Light" ). I don't pretend to have conducted an exhaustive or even perfunctory search for others, but I did a couple Google searches and didn't find anything. If I'm wrong, please let me know.
Body: Traditional incan Minimag
Window: Stock plastic
Optic: Carclo 20mm Frosted Medium optic, model 10195
Emitter: MCE4WT-A2-5A0-K0-0-00001 370 min Lumens Neutral White, wired 2S2P
Epoxy: Standard 2-part AA
Heatsink: mariposaoyako's OFC solid copper heatsink, modified
Battery: 2x14500 AW protected Li-Ions in series
Tailcap: Nite-Ize clickie (if anyone knows of a better clickie, please share it)
Here's a macro of the MC-E. How, uh, exciting.
This is a closeup of the wired MC-E. That wire looping around the top connects pairs of terminals for the 2S2P configuration. I'm glad I didn't have to individually address each of the eight tiny contacts for this mod.
Here's the back of it. Notice how I put very little solder on this side - that's because the little contacts are extremely close to the surface. I actually had to bend each one upwards with some fine needlenosed pliers before I started.
This is how the wired emitter looks as it sits on the heatsink with the wires going through the proper heatsink holes. Nothing is glued; it was basically a practice assembly so that I could plan.
Here's a closeup of the heatsink and wired MC-E, after a little modification. To put it shortly, the wired MC-E is a ship and the copper retaining ring is a bottle. This way, I could connect everything in place with a bit of slack, then slide the ring in from the side, past the wires, and screw it down. I probably could have avoided that by soldering the wires to the MC-E as the last step, but that would be more difficult and give me much less room with which to check for shorts and so on.
I then noticed that the Minimag itself presented another ship-in-a-bottle dilemma. However, that lip is much thinner than the retaining ring, so I was able to tilt the MC-E slightly, slide it in from the tail, then pull it all the way out the neck and tilt it back down. This pic shows the wired MC-E tilted and poking partly through the neck.
I clipped the long leads to the proper length, making sure to give myself space to slide in the heatsink retaining ring, then stripped the ends and wired them up. I popped the emitter off a dead sandwich module I had lying around, ground the little conductive patches off one side, and used the other side's large conductive surface as the contact for batt+. If you look closely, you'll see the ground wire screwed to the heatsink, just like mariposaoyako intended.
Here, the assembled module has been inserted up through the tail with the tilted MC-E still floating. I pulled the MC-E through the Minimag's neck and righted it.
I then put a couple AA alks (the ones that originally came with the Minimag, as a matter of fact) into the Minimag, so I could push from the bottom and screw on the retaining ring. The optic (Carclo 10195) is resting on the left. Notice that nothing has been AAed yet. If I wanted to at this point, I could have unscrewed the retaining ring, slipped the MC-E back through the Minimag's neck, and worked on it some more. I didn't end up needing to do that, though.
After that, I mixed some AA, put it under the emitter, and closed the light, using the pressure from the optic on the emitter to press it gently but firmly into the AA.
The following step was very important. I spent quite a bit of time doing it while the AA dried. "O Lord, bless this Thy... FLASHLIGHT... that with it Thou mayest... NOT... blow Thine enemies to tiny bits..." These AW cells are protected, but I still really really didn't want a short, or magic smoke, or any of that jazz.
Several hours later, I decided to go ahead and just take the plunge. I took the 14500s from my Auroralite (one measured at 4.2V, the other at 3.9V), put tiny magnets at the proper places, and screwed on the Nite-Ize tailcap.
Settings were kept locked for both of the following pics. You can look at the EXIF data if you want the details. Room lights (warm fluorescents) were on for both pics. The white balance is way off, but since that's really hard to do properly anway, I can just tell you about tints.
Nitecore D10, GDP version, on High, with a NiMH. The classic creamy white hotspot, slightly yellow-green corona, and white spill.
Mini-KT3. This emitter is slightly on the warm side, but still definitely white, IMHO. Quite pleasant.
Battery was 8.1V OC, current draw around 2A. I don't think it's 1000 "SF lumens," I don't know if it's OTF but with fresh cells, it may or may not be emitter lumens with fresh cells... but it's gotta be close to one of those.
AFAIK, this is the first MC-E Minimag, and the brightest Minimag (one might say, the "Penultimate Stealth Light"
). I don't pretend to have conducted an exhaustive or even perfunctory search for others, but I did a couple Google searches and didn't find anything. If I'm wrong, please let me know. 
Those were not pretty.
I used it with an Auroralite (very similar voltage and current) and it seemed to work fine. If it eventually melts itself closed, I can just remove it and buy a new switch.
I did a quick search on a few of the semi sites for a tiny package like SOT-23. All of the MOSFET's I saw were both integrated into the output of some sort of regulator and not powerful enough for your needs. The stand alone "just switches" were in the larger packages that won't fit. Maybe you could start a thread in the Incan forum just to ask.
