kosPap
Flashlight Enthusiast
Well it took me a while but here it is, A Solarforce Masterpiece PRO head XM-L mod.
Friday morning I was waken up by the postman. I expected a package with a P60 XM-L drop-in that I would change the electronics of as a guide project before moving to bigger 7 more complicated XM-L modifications.
Instead it was one with a single 20mm LED in it. What the heck I thought, lets do the big one. Now the rest of the materials were already at hand and the mod was detailed planned already. But what followed I did not expect!
It took me 3 days and more of 20 hours of work. Within these 3 days there were the new year’s festivities, hanging out with visiting friends and lots of Greek eating boozing.
And flashlight modding mishaps!
To quote them,
The DMM battery gave out and I cannibalized one from a light to run it.
3 out of 4 of my battery case connections failed and I fixed them.
My battery drill craped out but I fixed it
My temp-adjustable soldering out craped out but I fixed it.
With temp all over the place solder pads in both of the drivers gave away. Thanks god I had some extra drivers
Then I had to drill an extra hole in the drop-in and the drill pulled the LED out. Regluing it set me back half a day.
And then I assembled the driver group without the retaining ring between them (see below) and I had to pull apart start all over again.
Talking about a good start if the year!@
Mod Structure
Well if anyone wishes to see how the Masterpiece Pro head is structured can look here.
Briefly put a special drop-in is screwed on a big hunk of a reflector and then the head is screwed on the body. Then the drop-in will rest in the socket....
Here it is before the mod.
Do you see that LOOOONG spring? Change that and you will end with more extra silly space in the already long Solarforce body tube!
On top of that the base of the drop-in will not touch the end of the body well. I am using 2 outer spring –one on top of the other- to establish some thermal connection. If you have a lathe I suggest making a copper sleeve instead.
The Driver Assembly
I went for full throttle and decide to make a 12 AMC7135 sandwich. Space inside the pill/drop-in was ample and BTW the PRO head uses a 18mm driver.
This is the way the 2 drivers were connected together. The 8 chipped one is the older Shining beam style without the mode reconfiguring stars. I had only too left and ended using them both. They are the only ones with the proper architecture to make a sandwich that will accept a BIG spring at the bottom, an absolute necessity for a module of this kind.
The post connecting the + lead to both the boards is a cut down push pin
Eagled eyed modders will see that I missed establishing mode change signaling to the slave board.
HELP! How do I do it? Connecting through a thin wire the right-most pad of any 2 chips on the two drivers (not the none output the power which is at the left of). I mean the pad that is next to the Q# mark in teh pic above
So now modes are. Medium-Medium and High
And here is a pic of the assembled module (with he earlier spring)
Soldering is bad, I knwo, but I could not do better with my soldering iron at the state it was in....
More trouble
The beast is a contact/electrical resistance hog! Set it up with lose battery contacts and power drops at the two thirds of!
While testing it I used a AW cr123 batt spacer to establish pressure on the battery ends. That thing is 1.5 cm long! In the process the pill spring was squashed and I had to change it to a stiffer and longer one, that do not shows in the pics.
I yesterday evening I decided that it was high time to install and use the Oveready Z41 tailcap Zero Resistance mod.
Damn I had to boil the tailcap good to break the thread locking epoxy. Then I had to reverse engineer the thing in order to make the Chinese tailcap booties work. They are close but not that much to the original Surefire one.
Anyway water under the bridge......
Wrapping it up with Measurements
The table is self explanatory....Further tries for a better focusing of the LED gave me some more Lux at the hotspot but nothing to brag about.
edit: new table installed
Something to be noted is that I based my Lumens estimates on comparison with the Mag61 output. These are a hmmmm! Thing ‘cos there are beam differences between the two lights – the definitely affect the reading in my ”shoebox” I.S. and I remember “Quickbeam” fining out output differences between incandescent and LED lights that measured close to his lightbox.
Beamshots
Pending, but the thing is very close to my XP-G Dereelight DBS in appearance.
edit:
Sorry no beamshots...the pics were rather bad and I cannot shoot in a better location
The only bad thing is that a wide yellow ring appears around the hotspot.
Hope it was of help and that you enjoyed it....Kostas
Friday morning I was waken up by the postman. I expected a package with a P60 XM-L drop-in that I would change the electronics of as a guide project before moving to bigger 7 more complicated XM-L modifications.
Instead it was one with a single 20mm LED in it. What the heck I thought, lets do the big one. Now the rest of the materials were already at hand and the mod was detailed planned already. But what followed I did not expect!
It took me 3 days and more of 20 hours of work. Within these 3 days there were the new year’s festivities, hanging out with visiting friends and lots of Greek eating boozing.
And flashlight modding mishaps!
To quote them,
The DMM battery gave out and I cannibalized one from a light to run it.
3 out of 4 of my battery case connections failed and I fixed them.
My battery drill craped out but I fixed it
My temp-adjustable soldering out craped out but I fixed it.
With temp all over the place solder pads in both of the drivers gave away. Thanks god I had some extra drivers
Then I had to drill an extra hole in the drop-in and the drill pulled the LED out. Regluing it set me back half a day.
And then I assembled the driver group without the retaining ring between them (see below) and I had to pull apart start all over again.
Talking about a good start if the year!@
Mod Structure
Well if anyone wishes to see how the Masterpiece Pro head is structured can look here.
Briefly put a special drop-in is screwed on a big hunk of a reflector and then the head is screwed on the body. Then the drop-in will rest in the socket....
Here it is before the mod.
Do you see that LOOOONG spring? Change that and you will end with more extra silly space in the already long Solarforce body tube!
On top of that the base of the drop-in will not touch the end of the body well. I am using 2 outer spring –one on top of the other- to establish some thermal connection. If you have a lathe I suggest making a copper sleeve instead.
The Driver Assembly
I went for full throttle and decide to make a 12 AMC7135 sandwich. Space inside the pill/drop-in was ample and BTW the PRO head uses a 18mm driver.
This is the way the 2 drivers were connected together. The 8 chipped one is the older Shining beam style without the mode reconfiguring stars. I had only too left and ended using them both. They are the only ones with the proper architecture to make a sandwich that will accept a BIG spring at the bottom, an absolute necessity for a module of this kind.
The post connecting the + lead to both the boards is a cut down push pin
Eagled eyed modders will see that I missed establishing mode change signaling to the slave board.
HELP! How do I do it? Connecting through a thin wire the right-most pad of any 2 chips on the two drivers (not the none output the power which is at the left of). I mean the pad that is next to the Q# mark in teh pic above
So now modes are. Medium-Medium and High
And here is a pic of the assembled module (with he earlier spring)
Soldering is bad, I knwo, but I could not do better with my soldering iron at the state it was in....
More trouble
The beast is a contact/electrical resistance hog! Set it up with lose battery contacts and power drops at the two thirds of!
While testing it I used a AW cr123 batt spacer to establish pressure on the battery ends. That thing is 1.5 cm long! In the process the pill spring was squashed and I had to change it to a stiffer and longer one, that do not shows in the pics.
I yesterday evening I decided that it was high time to install and use the Oveready Z41 tailcap Zero Resistance mod.
Damn I had to boil the tailcap good to break the thread locking epoxy. Then I had to reverse engineer the thing in order to make the Chinese tailcap booties work. They are close but not that much to the original Surefire one.
Anyway water under the bridge......
Wrapping it up with Measurements
The table is self explanatory....Further tries for a better focusing of the LED gave me some more Lux at the hotspot but nothing to brag about.
edit: new table installed
Something to be noted is that I based my Lumens estimates on comparison with the Mag61 output. These are a hmmmm! Thing ‘cos there are beam differences between the two lights – the definitely affect the reading in my ”shoebox” I.S. and I remember “Quickbeam” fining out output differences between incandescent and LED lights that measured close to his lightbox.
Beamshots
Pending, but the thing is very close to my XP-G Dereelight DBS in appearance.
edit:
Sorry no beamshots...the pics were rather bad and I cannot shoot in a better location
The only bad thing is that a wide yellow ring appears around the hotspot.
Hope it was of help and that you enjoyed it....Kostas
