Surefire Hellfighter tear down LED swap done

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foxtrot824

foxtrot824

Enlightened
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Sep 24, 2008
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I recently picked up a very used and broken SF Hellfighter on the eBay. I've torn between keeping it HID or going LED either with a reflector or multiple sources and lenses. I'm open to suggestions and will keep the thread updated with progress.

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Thoughts?
 
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Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

Despite the size, I'm concerned with the lack of thermal relief if you are going LED. HID is not susceptible to damage from heat and the design probably made it insulative to protect the remaining circuitry. Some substantial modification may be necessary including a custom heatsink.

If its broken, I'd say go ahead. Surefire doesn't build lights like Inova, the likeliehood of press fit parts is probably minimal. Take it apart and see if its fixable.
 
Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

That will be a heck of a project, but certainly worth it in my eyes to bring it back to life!
 
Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

I figured there would be lots of custom involved if I went LED. As for thermal management, I think the fixture can manage 20-30w worth of LED. Certainly it will run warm but I'm not too worried about getting my 50K hours out of the fixture until L70 🙂

Illum said:
Despite the size, I'm concerned with the lack of thermal relief if you are going LED. HID is not susceptible to damage from heat and the design probably made it insulative to protect the remaining circuitry. Some substantial modification may be necessary including a custom heatsink.

If its broken, I'd say go ahead. Surefire doesn't build lights like Inova, the likeliehood of press fit parts is probably minimal. Take it apart and see if its fixable.
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If I do remove the ballast it will be messy.
 
Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

Well it turns out the potting isn't that bad to remove after all.... HID pill anyone? 😛
This will make the LED plans a lot easier, more to come on that.


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Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

Illum said:
that was a clean gutting... :wow:
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I think I just got lucky on this one. I wiggled it loose by hand then used a bar clamp to push the "pill" out, getting over the O ring was probably the hardest part. That's over after about 1/2" of travel.
 
Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

First off, I know many people will see this as blasphemy so my apologies a head of time 🙂

I went back and forth on making this a single source or a multi emitter setup. In the end I decided to go with quad setup to take up space, and because I could use the XP-L HIs for their punch. The LED board has been modified from work so I've blacked out some parts. I turned up a puck to both hold the LED board as well as transfer heat to the case.

I thought about putting some sort of internal battery but then decided to go with an external source for increased run time. It has a Mountain Electronics buck driver with two modes, about 200mA on low and 2A on high, I'd like to bump it up 2.5A but that's a project for another day.

Punches pretty hard, the tower in the picture is approximately 100m away. Still need to find a place to really test this thing out, somewhere that won't upset the neighbors.

Thoughts, feedback, ideas?
Thanks

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Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

That looks awesome 🙂
For mine I was thinking of using bent copper heatpipes instead of a copper disk but that may be difficult to center, maybe I should do both.
 
Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

Enderman said:
That looks awesome 🙂
For mine I was thinking of using bent copper heatpipes instead of a copper disk but that may be difficult to center, maybe I should do both.
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That 1" aluminum "puck" weighs a lot, if it were copper at ~3.54" diamter x 1" thick = 9.84 cubic inches x 0.324# / cubic in = 3.18 pounds on the disc alone! Making it thinner would help weight but then make it harder to fit in the body of the lamp. Good luck either way!

Thanks archimedes for updating the title!
 
Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

foxtrot824 said:
That 1" aluminum "puck" weighs a lot, if it were copper at ~3.54" diamter x 1" thick = 9.84 cubic inches x 0.324# / cubic in = 3.18 pounds on the disc alone! Making it thinner would help weight but then make it harder to fit in the body of the lamp. Good luck either way!

Thanks archimedes for updating the title!
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You're right that's really heavy...
I guess I will try bending some short heatpipes and mount the LED using that.
The hardest part will be getting the reflector and LED centred, but maybe I can machine a small aluminum piece that fits right in the body and aligns the LED and reflector.
I also just got a nice XHP70.2 so that should heat up less than my old XHP70 was 🙂
 
Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

Enderman, I look forward to seeing your copper work 🙂

I finally got around to finishing and photographing the battery box for this beast. I'd considered making some sort of internal battery system but in the end decided that having something external would both give more flexibility as well as look cool. I know that using some sort of D sized lithiums would have been the preferred power source from a capacity point of view but for the cost of each cell vs 18650s I went the 18650 route. At the very least there is room for future expansion. I ditched the stock Surefire cable because it was really think and did not coil up nicely. I did however keep the original amphenol connector and went to eBay to get one for the power box side of things, which is a 4 pin connector not 5 so it is clear which end goes to which side. A simple illuminated switch from amazon claiming it is weather resistant sealed did the trick for switching the power out of the pelican case to the connector.

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Re: Surefire Hellfighter tear down and possible mods, LED? (lots of pics)

Awesome build fox! love the custom work!🙂
 
Whoa, that's cool. Not sure what I was expecting, one giant die and a giant reflector, but quad XP-L Hi at 2A each is at least 3000 lumens in total give or take? Pretty nice. Awesome that you got that light running again.
 
sween1911 said:
Whoa, that's cool. Not sure what I was expecting, one giant die and a giant reflector, but quad XP-L Hi at 2A each is at least 3000 lumens in total give or take? Pretty nice. Awesome that you got that light running again.
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It's been a while since I had access to a sphere (12", 1.5m, and 2m : -) but I remember it coming in low, like maybe 1500 lumens? It doesn't run hot but you pay the losses in the TIR and the glass and since because it's 4 light sources you pay that price per emitter. That said, it's bright, and I don't worry about it over heating, running in the high 20w it's still nothing considering it has plenty of heatsinking. Also compared to the HID the quality of light is better.
 
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