ejot
Enlightened
Recently I’ve been wanting to delve a bit deeper into the hobby and start doing some mods. Finally decided to start with a modest project – direct-driven P7 into an E-series head – a la the “Room Sweeper”. Not nearly as exquisite as a Milky version, but bright just the same.
I had absolutely no real clue what I was doing and messed up just about every step at least once. :) But I am mostly pleased with the final result, for a first try. My photography isn't the best either – both my equipment and skills are lacking in this dep't.
First up was hacking out most of the reflector on the E1e head. From the back, I first trimmed the pedestal flush off, and then opened up the size hole I needed through everything that was left. Once I got started cutting, I didn’t want to stop – and I like bare aluminum – so I made a few other changes to the head and then polished it.
Teflon leads were soldered to the P7 DSWOJ. Not being very experienced, my solder blobs are fairly fat. I covered them with Plasti-Dip since they were very close to shorting on the material under the reflector. Hopefully it won’t melt. :thinking: It’s not pretty, but my plans called for this area to get covered.
Attention was then turned to the heatsink. Starting with 1” tellurium copper rod stock, I ended up with this after polishing:
Since I didn’t know how to center the emitter, I made a centering and mounting jig, which came in handy many times throughout the rest of the build. It is designed to press on the outer plastic ring of the P7 and leave flat clamping surface, so the parts can be clamped in a vice while gluing the LED:
For my first go at attaching the LED, I used AA compound, not the glue. I was pretty unhappy as the centering didn’t turn out quite right. Worse, when I put the LE in the head and did a test run, I got a disgusting donut hole right in the middle of my beam. :sick: I thought the emitter wasn’t deep enough, so I started shimming it (Incidentally, these shims were a real *%$#^ to make!). This didn’t help so then I figured the emitter was too deep. Began cutting away some of the thickness behind the reflector in the head, and retrying. Finally the donut began to disapper! :grin2:. A few more iterations of trimming and trying, and I was happy with the beam.
Of course, now my heatsink was no good. It was too shallow. :sigh: Since it was both easier and more effective to just make a new sink than the required adapter parts … out came the copper bar stock again. To better center the emitter, I cut a 0.020” deep centering area (taking care to adjust my other dimensions to take this into account):
(Yes – the lathe is from 1920. :p )
(Sadly, this left a much rougher mounting surface for the LED, that I could not polish out. :duh2: )
Once again, I used my centering jig to mount the emitter. Even though the centering function was ineffective and now redundant, the jig was still useful to tightly clamp the emitter down to minimize thickness of the thermal adhesive. This time I used the epoxy, along with two strands of hair under the plug to keep electrical isolation. Clamped into a bench vise, and then checked that there was no continuity where continuity was not welcomed – thankfully all was good:
You can see some thermal compound residue on the plastic part of the emitter package. I actually mounted and dismounted the LED four times with thermal compound before I was confident enough to do it with epoxy.
The negative connection was an easy blob of solder in the hole, then filed flat. For the positive side, I first made an isolating sleeve from Delrin and a positive contact from brass that pressed tightly inside the sleeve. (Yes, I made this out of aluminum first. Yes, I now know that you can’t solder to aluminum.) A small hole was drilled into the brass contact right below the join between the two parts, and a bare wire soldered to the contact. Then I soldered the bare lead to my positive lead coming from the LED:
The final job was to pot the whole area around the contacts. I used MarineTex grey epoxy. Super great stuff for many jobs – but don’t use it for this!! (More about this in a moment).
After drying overnight…
Starting the cleanup …
Notice anything funny about the epoxy? Right … it’s METAL FILLED. :banghead: I checked and it doesn’t seem to conduct at all, so I just went with it. :shrug: But needless to say, I will look for another product.
I wasn’t too happy with all the air bubbles that were left either, but after some more work got a reasonable finish and also added a small chamfer. Here is the completed LE:
And the completed head with glo-ring (remember I said the LED contacts would be covered?):
The original plan was to de-anodized and polish a Vital Gear FB2 body for use with AW protected 17670. However, I just picked up a bare McLux 2x123 body that I’m hoping to use instead. Hopefully the battery fits, if not I’ll bore it or use for something else. Also picked up a Balrog 1x123 bare alu body for IMR pocket rocket status. :D For now, it’s on the still-anodized FB2:
Well, this thing sure does light up a room! Wow! I took some comparison beamshots at work, but now I realize I can’t post them as we’re not allowed to publish any photos with our lab in it! Here is what I can offer for now until I get a chance to reshoot at another location:
That’s not the tint :green: ! (It’s a blue wall.) :duck: Against white, it is a very bright, neutral white with a slight yellow tinge. This was taken in an otherwise pitch black room, 3’4” from the wall with the camera and emitter @ the same distance.
Glow-ring! Ran out of batteries before I could get a better shot:
It’s been a lot of fun building this light and I have plans for many more. I welcome any constructive criticism that will improve my builds as I am still learning just about everything! lovecpf
I had absolutely no real clue what I was doing and messed up just about every step at least once. :) But I am mostly pleased with the final result, for a first try. My photography isn't the best either – both my equipment and skills are lacking in this dep't.
First up was hacking out most of the reflector on the E1e head. From the back, I first trimmed the pedestal flush off, and then opened up the size hole I needed through everything that was left. Once I got started cutting, I didn’t want to stop – and I like bare aluminum – so I made a few other changes to the head and then polished it.
Teflon leads were soldered to the P7 DSWOJ. Not being very experienced, my solder blobs are fairly fat. I covered them with Plasti-Dip since they were very close to shorting on the material under the reflector. Hopefully it won’t melt. :thinking: It’s not pretty, but my plans called for this area to get covered.
Attention was then turned to the heatsink. Starting with 1” tellurium copper rod stock, I ended up with this after polishing:
Since I didn’t know how to center the emitter, I made a centering and mounting jig, which came in handy many times throughout the rest of the build. It is designed to press on the outer plastic ring of the P7 and leave flat clamping surface, so the parts can be clamped in a vice while gluing the LED:
For my first go at attaching the LED, I used AA compound, not the glue. I was pretty unhappy as the centering didn’t turn out quite right. Worse, when I put the LE in the head and did a test run, I got a disgusting donut hole right in the middle of my beam. :sick: I thought the emitter wasn’t deep enough, so I started shimming it (Incidentally, these shims were a real *%$#^ to make!). This didn’t help so then I figured the emitter was too deep. Began cutting away some of the thickness behind the reflector in the head, and retrying. Finally the donut began to disapper! :grin2:. A few more iterations of trimming and trying, and I was happy with the beam.
Of course, now my heatsink was no good. It was too shallow. :sigh: Since it was both easier and more effective to just make a new sink than the required adapter parts … out came the copper bar stock again. To better center the emitter, I cut a 0.020” deep centering area (taking care to adjust my other dimensions to take this into account):
(Yes – the lathe is from 1920. :p )
(Sadly, this left a much rougher mounting surface for the LED, that I could not polish out. :duh2: )
Once again, I used my centering jig to mount the emitter. Even though the centering function was ineffective and now redundant, the jig was still useful to tightly clamp the emitter down to minimize thickness of the thermal adhesive. This time I used the epoxy, along with two strands of hair under the plug to keep electrical isolation. Clamped into a bench vise, and then checked that there was no continuity where continuity was not welcomed – thankfully all was good:
You can see some thermal compound residue on the plastic part of the emitter package. I actually mounted and dismounted the LED four times with thermal compound before I was confident enough to do it with epoxy.
The negative connection was an easy blob of solder in the hole, then filed flat. For the positive side, I first made an isolating sleeve from Delrin and a positive contact from brass that pressed tightly inside the sleeve. (Yes, I made this out of aluminum first. Yes, I now know that you can’t solder to aluminum.) A small hole was drilled into the brass contact right below the join between the two parts, and a bare wire soldered to the contact. Then I soldered the bare lead to my positive lead coming from the LED:
The final job was to pot the whole area around the contacts. I used MarineTex grey epoxy. Super great stuff for many jobs – but don’t use it for this!! (More about this in a moment).
After drying overnight…
Starting the cleanup …
Notice anything funny about the epoxy? Right … it’s METAL FILLED. :banghead: I checked and it doesn’t seem to conduct at all, so I just went with it. :shrug: But needless to say, I will look for another product.
I wasn’t too happy with all the air bubbles that were left either, but after some more work got a reasonable finish and also added a small chamfer. Here is the completed LE:
And the completed head with glo-ring (remember I said the LED contacts would be covered?):
The original plan was to de-anodized and polish a Vital Gear FB2 body for use with AW protected 17670. However, I just picked up a bare McLux 2x123 body that I’m hoping to use instead. Hopefully the battery fits, if not I’ll bore it or use for something else. Also picked up a Balrog 1x123 bare alu body for IMR pocket rocket status. :D For now, it’s on the still-anodized FB2:
Well, this thing sure does light up a room! Wow! I took some comparison beamshots at work, but now I realize I can’t post them as we’re not allowed to publish any photos with our lab in it! Here is what I can offer for now until I get a chance to reshoot at another location:
That’s not the tint :green: ! (It’s a blue wall.) :duck: Against white, it is a very bright, neutral white with a slight yellow tinge. This was taken in an otherwise pitch black room, 3’4” from the wall with the camera and emitter @ the same distance.
Glow-ring! Ran out of batteries before I could get a better shot:
It’s been a lot of fun building this light and I have plans for many more. I welcome any constructive criticism that will improve my builds as I am still learning just about everything! lovecpf
