Everett
Newly Enlightened
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2004
- Messages
- 177
I don't know if this has been done before; if it has, I must have missed it. I give you...
Novatac 120P with Cree MC-E!
After I got my Ra Clicky, my Novatac just sat around, so I had to do something interesting with it. With the Novatac's constant current regulation, I wasn't expecting my output to go up by a lot. The object was mainly to increase efficiency.
The shape of the MC-E makes this mod a pain--you have to both remove and add material to the Novatac pill because the MC-E is wider but shallower than the P4. I used a vertical miller to remove a rectangle to fit the LED in, but I didn't take it all the way to the bottom so as to minimize alterations the Novatac heatsink.
Sorry these pictures are so bad--in the shop I only had my phone to take them with.
That cut gives the LED plenty of room around the sides for wiring and alignment slop. It doesn't need to go to the bottom because the MC-E is so shallow; the LED has to be raised up to meet the reflector. I hand-filed this aluminum disc to fit the cylindrical recess for the P4. I left it a bit thicker than it needed to be so that the MC-E protrudes above the top of the heatsink. This allows the reflector to provide a lot of downward force (for better heatsinking).
That was pressed in with some heatsink compound. Then I sat the LED on it and soldered it in (parallel configuration).
The reflector needed to be drilled out just barely so that the dome could fit through. I left a little slack in the wires and let the reflector center the LED when I assembled it. Here's the finished product:
The beam is much floodier after the mod. It is also a perfect white tint--not even a hint of color. There is certainly some squareness to it as well.
I suspect that the lower Vf of the MC-E (compounded by the diodes being paralleled) is causing the constant-current Novatac driver to push much more power than it was before. I left it on maximum and it took only a couple of minutes for it to start thermal step-downs. It runs very hot! There is certainly more light out the front now. The output beats my Clicky 140n, but they are hard to compare because the quad-die Novatac is so much floodier. This ain't no 120 any more...
Novatac 120P with Cree MC-E!
After I got my Ra Clicky, my Novatac just sat around, so I had to do something interesting with it. With the Novatac's constant current regulation, I wasn't expecting my output to go up by a lot. The object was mainly to increase efficiency.
The shape of the MC-E makes this mod a pain--you have to both remove and add material to the Novatac pill because the MC-E is wider but shallower than the P4. I used a vertical miller to remove a rectangle to fit the LED in, but I didn't take it all the way to the bottom so as to minimize alterations the Novatac heatsink.
Sorry these pictures are so bad--in the shop I only had my phone to take them with.
That cut gives the LED plenty of room around the sides for wiring and alignment slop. It doesn't need to go to the bottom because the MC-E is so shallow; the LED has to be raised up to meet the reflector. I hand-filed this aluminum disc to fit the cylindrical recess for the P4. I left it a bit thicker than it needed to be so that the MC-E protrudes above the top of the heatsink. This allows the reflector to provide a lot of downward force (for better heatsinking).
That was pressed in with some heatsink compound. Then I sat the LED on it and soldered it in (parallel configuration).
The reflector needed to be drilled out just barely so that the dome could fit through. I left a little slack in the wires and let the reflector center the LED when I assembled it. Here's the finished product:
The beam is much floodier after the mod. It is also a perfect white tint--not even a hint of color. There is certainly some squareness to it as well.
I suspect that the lower Vf of the MC-E (compounded by the diodes being paralleled) is causing the constant-current Novatac driver to push much more power than it was before. I left it on maximum and it took only a couple of minutes for it to start thermal step-downs. It runs very hot! There is certainly more light out the front now. The output beats my Clicky 140n, but they are hard to compare because the quad-die Novatac is so much floodier. This ain't no 120 any more...
