Nitecore D10 XP-G R4 emitter swap

[wyager]

Oh, man. This was one of the most trying projects I've ever performed, and that's saying something. It shouldn't have been hard. In fact, it wouldn't have been hard, except for that literally everything went wrong that could. :shakehead At first, everything was going great. Perfectly, in fact. I had the XP-G perfectly centered, everything felt fine and it all went together OK. However, much to my chagrin, nothing happened when I put it back together and pushed the button. At this point, I should have been done. About an hour's worth of work.
I spent another two or three hours testing and poking trying to figure out what was wrong. As a last sorry attempt, I tried removing and re-applying the small NPN transistor at the base of the driver board. (At this point, the driver had somehow fallen out of the pill, and I had no idea how to put it back properly.) Success! My test LED lit up. OK! Now, to put it back together. I re-soldered everything, tried to re-center the LED, and tried to stick the driver back in the pill. The driver didn't seem to go in properly, but I ignored it. OK, so with the light all back together, there were a few problems-the LED was WAY off center! I must have gotten lucky before. The driver board was touching the ring, and the device did not click properly. At this point, I sort of forget how it behaved before, but the light did not work properly. Screwing it in all the way made it ramp. Big problem, but at least it worked a bit. So, fast forward to tomorrow (today)-after I got home from school, I basically started over. I took off the LED, cleaned off all the thermal paste I had put on, pulled the driver board off. OK, so far so good. I put it all back together, sanded off the edges of the driver board, and stuck the driver back in. I still needed a way for the driver to stay in place, and nothing had worked so far. Anyway, later that day I bought some super glue. I pushed the driver in as far as I could and glued it. So that's basically where I am now. The LED is a little off center, there is less tactile response than there used to be, and it's not quite 100% reliable when switching. But hey, it works and it's perfectly sun-colored! It's also a lot brighter (but with less throw). It's between standard cool white and the neutral white of my quark. I imagine that with time the mechanism will loosen up and start to function more normally again. Perhaps I can mess with it to make it work better. Anyway, this was a pretty crazy project and I'm glad the thing is working OK. Maybe not 100%, and maybe not worth the effort/money, but it was a learning experience, and now I have a very cool unique light that will probably be fixed completely within the next couple days. Pics!

(old emitter-basically gets auto-centered because of the "cree ring")

tools

new LED

everything apart

pill in vice, ready for new LED

perfectly centered!
This is before it all went wrong. (note-those pictures might be too big, sorry about that. I can't seem to get photobucket to work properly)

OK, this is after repairs. Everything more or less works now.

I left my sweet $300 workbench in idaho when I moved. This is my bedside table.

Anyway, yay! It's basically done! Comments?

 

[MosesM]

It's funny how I have the same light and emitter and was just about to do this mod. Looks like you beat me to it!

I also ran into the issue of the driver not staying put in the pill after taking it out, and a couple dabs of gel superglue worked out just fine as well.

As for the less tactile switching, maybe you could try greasing up the outside wall of the brass ring slightly, so it doesn't bind with the inside walls of the body. Also it wouldn't hurt to try different types of grease/oil on the piston o-ring, though make sure they're o-ring safe!

Thanks for the pics and nice mod by the way

 

[wyager]

Thanks MM, the slight loss of tactile feedback is actually due to the pill not being as deep in the head as it used to. I'm not sure why that is, perhaps because the wires leading to the LED jut up a little bit. Also, I don't have a piston O-ring right now, my old one got stretched out and I'm waiting for some more from nitecore. I use nyogel 760G, and for $10 a tube it had better be some of the best stuff available :nana:

Edit:also, a word of advice, to get the plastic washer out, put some hot glue on the end of a wire or something and let it bond to the washer for a minute or so. Pull it out, and the washer will come with it. The hot glue will then easily peel off the washer.

 

[MosesM]

Could the height of the MCPCB (10mm width, from Cutter I assume?) be causing the difference in the depth of the head?

Thanks for the tip on removing the washer.

I actually decided to swap the R4-5B into my EX10 instead of the D10, and did not run into any problems there. The tint on it is amazing, to say the least, with a very smooth transition from hotspot to spill, but that's also probably because the hotspot turned into a hot-area . The hotspot is extra large, making it very floody. I also noticed an extra faint corona just beyond the spill area, did you come across this too?

I miss the throw that the XR-E produced, so I'm probably gonna swap it back in.

 

[wyager]

Yeah, I think maybe the taller PCB could be causing the problem. And I didn't notice a corona, rather I see a very faint dim area in the hotspot. This is probably due to the fact that the emitter is a tiny bit off center.

It's true that the throw was nice, but if you really want throw in your pocket you might as well get something with an aspheric. I think the increase in overall lumens is worth the loss of throw.

 

[gunga]

I couple tips.

I reflow the XP-G onto a 14mm board. It gets the wires out of the hole in the reflector, looks better, and may be helpful in preventing shorts.

I had to space the reflector out a bit on my EX10. Add a thin plastic spacer ring between the reflector and the emitter. This will focus the LED better giving a bit more throw. I did not need to do this when I did the D10 mod (using 14mm board).

Be very careful of the driver (as you know). It is press fit in there, so if you don't disturb it, you don't have to do anything. I had one come out once, I used some rubbery thermal glue to stick it back in place. Seems to work fine (years later).

Try unscrewing the head and body a tiny bit. If that helps the action/swicthing, then yes, the pill sticks out a tiny bit more. 2 things you can do.

First, you can sand/file the piston down. I do that on all of mine to increase travel and improve feel. Don't do it too much, the piston has to stick up above the body (just a tiny bit) or it won't work properly.

Second, you can cut down the spring a tiny bit (about 1 cm off the outer loop) and/or weaken it a bit by bending back through itself. The extra loop on the outside sometimes gets caught under the entire spring, reducung travel.

I've done a bunch (12+?) of these mods, they are well worth it. I think I prefer doing them to the newer D10s because the XP-E reflector gives a bit more throw.

 

[wyager]

Thanks for the advice, gunga. However, the piston barely peeks above the battery tube as is. Reflowing probably would have been ideal, but I didn't want to mess with that. The more I use the light, the more normally it seems to work, so it probably just needs to be "broken in" a bit. Momentary mode now works as it used to as well. At some point I'll have to re-center the emitter, but I don't want to risk making the switching funky again by warping the brass ring. However, I doubt I'll even notice the slight beam irregularity in real use so I'm in no hurry.

 

[gunga]

One more thing, the newer D10 have more piston travel, so the new design does have other benefits...