milkyspit
Flashlight Enthusiast
Introducing... The Milky Redbird 1AAA: A Photo Essay
On a bright and sunny New Year's Day with wife and kids still playing with their new toys, what's a modaholic flashaholic to do to enjoy the day, other than mod? It's been a while since I've put together a truly interesting mod (meaning: something NEW, not just another whatever)... a long, difficult journey to the next plateau, fraught with fried circuits, gored fingers, scraped housings, and emitters reduced to cinders... I kept telling myself this was all a learning process, some form of modder rite of passage I would eventually get through, with great things on the other side all teeming in photons... this just may be the light at the end of that long, dark tunnel, the bird in hand, so to speak... (okay, pun intended)
The subject of our mod today will be the humble Dorcy 1AAA single LED flashlight as sold for a whopping $5.94 or so at your generic neighborhood WalMart. As some of the elder CPF folk know, I've gutted these lights for circuits in many of my mods for quite some time now. Time to give something back! Er, I mean, mod THIS light for once, not just use it as a parts donor...
This story involves the color silver, a 10mm LED, nylon spacers and rubber gaskets, and a classic modernist teapot marketed by Alessi...
Confused? Read on!
It all started many years ago, when about the same time I graduated from college (year omitted to avoid embarrassing myself), I came to be a big fan of architect Michael Graves and his designs. Graves was a professor at Princeton as well as a principal in his own practice... and just for good measure, quite a good industrial designer as well. Target carries several of his creations, from dinnerware to clocks to egg timers.
Then (fast forward several years) I got married, and it was about this time that I invested in my very own Michael Graves creation, a classic, the Alessi "Whistling Bird" teakettle. There's something about the understated styling, use of stainless steel, and that cute little dark red bird perched atop the spout, that spoke to me, and before I knew it, the money had jumped out of my wallet and I had one of these water heating appliances on my stovetop.
From the Michael Graves website...
(Some trivia: this teakettle appears in an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation)
So on a bright, sunny New Year's Day out in the country, surrounded by snow-swept fields and glistening apple and peach orchards, what's a flashaholic to do but enjoy a warm mug of hot chocolate and get down to business?
I love the smell of modding in the morning!
It all started innocently enough: I accidentally discovered a great source for some terrific 10mm LEDs with truly spectacular output, and I've been a big fan ever since... so on this day, I resolved to replace the head on a silver Dorcy 1AAA light with a second tailcap, guts removed, and have a beautiful 10mm LED poke its head out the top, the result being an easy mod and a nifty little light with a nice streamlined look. Well, things ALMOST turned out that way, but then I made a few improvements...
Redbird upright, 10mm LED and stock Dorcy to right, Alessi teakettle behind.
An overhead view of modded and unmodded lights, along with a 10mm LED.
So what exactly did I do? Well, first here's what I didn't do... the circuit itself is 100% stock, for fear of cooking the LED if I'd juiced things up any further. The only "mod" other than the LED itself, was to add a little solder to the surface of the tabs that slip into grooves in the flashlight's body, making the negative contact... the solder will hopefully provide better connectivity over the long run by virtue of a tighter, cleaner fit. The LED itself sits flush with the top edge of the board just as the stock one did, and the leads are trimmed to the same length... didn't replace the metal bulkhead that sat around the 5mm LED, but instead slipped an O-ring over the 10mm LED, which made a nice seal when the spare endcap was tightened around the head end.
Most of the modding took place on the OUTSIDE of the light. I've never liked the overly slippery rubber sleeves on these lights as they tend to slip down the barrel while using the light in momentary mode, cigar-style... to remedy this, I found a red rubber plumbing gasket, triangular shaped, with an inner diameter absolutely perfect to sit in the rubber sleeve recess without slide any further down the light. This became a grip ring... I cut down the rubber sleeve for a nice fit above the new grip ring, and now the rubber stays in place far better. Problem solved!
:thumbsup:
Next, I wanted a way to hang the light on a hook when not in use, so I located a very short loop of paracord (I think originally from a Streamlight ProPolymer 4AA) and attached it to the tail "ring" of the light. The short length is just right for hanging up, yet not getting in the way while the light's in use.
I fired up my little mod for the first time, but still wasn't happy. The backsplash of light from the LED was too much to maintain night vision when outdoors. To reduce this effect, I rummaged through my parts bin, eventually settling on a nylon spacer to friction fit around the LED. After a little fine tuning of the inner diameter using a Dremel, the fit was perfect: plenty snug, but not so much that installation risked damaging the LED itself. At this point the mod just felt right... done!
Of course, the next step was to see if the effort was worth it, and assign it a name. (More on the name later.) I grabbed a stock Dorcy 1AAA, put fresh cells in each, and started comparing...
First observation: the Redbird is a little flamethrower... not that it generates any appreciable heat, but the 10mm optic built-into the LED is so tight, and the beam color so nice by comparison with the stock light's LED, that it really looks more like the flame coming out of a lighter than the beam of a 1AAA flashlight...
Tabletop, shining onto a 10mm LED.
Overhead... see the flame shape?
Let's take a look at the beams from stock and Redbird as they look on the countertop. The Redbird's hotspot isn't really pure white, but by comparison with the stock LED, it's one heck of a lot closer! IMHO, though, the dramatic thing about the hotspots (taken a foot or two above the counter) is how much tighter the 10mm keeps its hotspot, yet still retaining a reasonable amount of sidespill; whereas the 5mm pretty much sprays all over the place. The IMPACT this photo depicts is very real.
Hotspots: Stock 5mm (L) vs. Redbird 10mm (R)
What about the beam profiles? With both lights laying side by side on the table (10mm LED between them as a size reference), it's easy to see not only the profiles, but also the intensity falloff as photons travel farther and farther from home.
Beam Profiles: Stock 5mm (L) vs. Redbird 10mm (R)
I really love these 10mm LEDs. The amazing thing? All this photonic goodness comes with the same 20mA input current as any garden variety stock 5mm LED! (To quote the Croc Hunter,) I love it!! WOOOOHOOOOOOO!
One thing that's not shown: turns out that the translucency of the nylon means this light can do a HEADstand and act as a little tabletop lantern, with virtually no glare at all! I can't take credit for designing that into the light... it was just one of those happy accidents.
What's left to do but laser cut the head off the stock light?
Will the Redbird cut through the stock head?
Oh, that name thing... couldn't come up with a decent name for this mod, then in the kitchen I noticed the teakettle and it became clear... the modded light's styling almost seems half-designed by Michael Graves himself... and with that red grip ring (remember the cute red bird?) the name came into focus (yup, pun intended)...
Introducing: The Milky REDBIRD 1AAA, a Tribute of sorts to Michael Graves and the "Whistling Bird" teakettle.
This was a pretty long story... for those of you still with me, thanks so much for reading!
:bow:
On a bright and sunny New Year's Day with wife and kids still playing with their new toys, what's a modaholic flashaholic to do to enjoy the day, other than mod? It's been a while since I've put together a truly interesting mod (meaning: something NEW, not just another whatever)... a long, difficult journey to the next plateau, fraught with fried circuits, gored fingers, scraped housings, and emitters reduced to cinders... I kept telling myself this was all a learning process, some form of modder rite of passage I would eventually get through, with great things on the other side all teeming in photons... this just may be the light at the end of that long, dark tunnel, the bird in hand, so to speak... (okay, pun intended)
The subject of our mod today will be the humble Dorcy 1AAA single LED flashlight as sold for a whopping $5.94 or so at your generic neighborhood WalMart. As some of the elder CPF folk know, I've gutted these lights for circuits in many of my mods for quite some time now. Time to give something back! Er, I mean, mod THIS light for once, not just use it as a parts donor...
This story involves the color silver, a 10mm LED, nylon spacers and rubber gaskets, and a classic modernist teapot marketed by Alessi...
Confused? Read on!
It all started many years ago, when about the same time I graduated from college (year omitted to avoid embarrassing myself),
I came to be a big fan of architect Michael Graves and his designs. Graves was a professor at Princeton as well as a principal in his own practice... and just for good measure, quite a good industrial designer as well. Target carries several of his creations, from dinnerware to clocks to egg timers.Then (fast forward several years) I got married, and it was about this time that I invested in my very own Michael Graves creation, a classic, the Alessi "Whistling Bird" teakettle. There's something about the understated styling, use of stainless steel, and that cute little dark red bird perched atop the spout, that spoke to me, and before I knew it, the money had jumped out of my wallet and I had one of these water heating appliances on my stovetop.
From the Michael Graves website...
(Some trivia: this teakettle appears in an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation)
So on a bright, sunny New Year's Day out in the country, surrounded by snow-swept fields and glistening apple and peach orchards, what's a flashaholic to do but enjoy a warm mug of hot chocolate and get down to business?
I love the smell of modding in the morning!
It all started innocently enough: I accidentally discovered a great source for some terrific 10mm LEDs with truly spectacular output, and I've been a big fan ever since... so on this day, I resolved to replace the head on a silver Dorcy 1AAA light with a second tailcap, guts removed, and have a beautiful 10mm LED poke its head out the top, the result being an easy mod and a nifty little light with a nice streamlined look. Well, things ALMOST turned out that way, but then I made a few improvements...
Redbird upright, 10mm LED and stock Dorcy to right, Alessi teakettle behind.
An overhead view of modded and unmodded lights, along with a 10mm LED.
So what exactly did I do? Well, first here's what I didn't do... the circuit itself is 100% stock, for fear of cooking the LED if I'd juiced things up any further. The only "mod" other than the LED itself, was to add a little solder to the surface of the tabs that slip into grooves in the flashlight's body, making the negative contact... the solder will hopefully provide better connectivity over the long run by virtue of a tighter, cleaner fit. The LED itself sits flush with the top edge of the board just as the stock one did, and the leads are trimmed to the same length... didn't replace the metal bulkhead that sat around the 5mm LED, but instead slipped an O-ring over the 10mm LED, which made a nice seal when the spare endcap was tightened around the head end.
Most of the modding took place on the OUTSIDE of the light. I've never liked the overly slippery rubber sleeves on these lights as they tend to slip down the barrel while using the light in momentary mode, cigar-style... to remedy this, I found a red rubber plumbing gasket, triangular shaped, with an inner diameter absolutely perfect to sit in the rubber sleeve recess without slide any further down the light. This became a grip ring... I cut down the rubber sleeve for a nice fit above the new grip ring, and now the rubber stays in place far better. Problem solved!
:thumbsup:
Next, I wanted a way to hang the light on a hook when not in use, so I located a very short loop of paracord (I think originally from a Streamlight ProPolymer 4AA) and attached it to the tail "ring" of the light. The short length is just right for hanging up, yet not getting in the way while the light's in use.
I fired up my little mod for the first time, but still wasn't happy. The backsplash of light from the LED was too much to maintain night vision when outdoors. To reduce this effect, I rummaged through my parts bin, eventually settling on a nylon spacer to friction fit around the LED. After a little fine tuning of the inner diameter using a Dremel, the fit was perfect: plenty snug, but not so much that installation risked damaging the LED itself. At this point the mod just felt right... done!
Of course, the next step was to see if the effort was worth it, and assign it a name. (More on the name later.) I grabbed a stock Dorcy 1AAA, put fresh cells in each, and started comparing...
First observation: the Redbird is a little flamethrower... not that it generates any appreciable heat, but the 10mm optic built-into the LED is so tight, and the beam color so nice by comparison with the stock light's LED, that it really looks more like the flame coming out of a lighter than the beam of a 1AAA flashlight...
Tabletop, shining onto a 10mm LED.
Overhead... see the flame shape?
Let's take a look at the beams from stock and Redbird as they look on the countertop. The Redbird's hotspot isn't really pure white, but by comparison with the stock LED, it's one heck of a lot closer! IMHO, though, the dramatic thing about the hotspots (taken a foot or two above the counter) is how much tighter the 10mm keeps its hotspot, yet still retaining a reasonable amount of sidespill; whereas the 5mm pretty much sprays all over the place. The IMPACT this photo depicts is very real.
Hotspots: Stock 5mm (L) vs. Redbird 10mm (R)
What about the beam profiles? With both lights laying side by side on the table (10mm LED between them as a size reference), it's easy to see not only the profiles, but also the intensity falloff as photons travel farther and farther from home.
Beam Profiles: Stock 5mm (L) vs. Redbird 10mm (R)
I really love these 10mm LEDs. The amazing thing? All this photonic goodness comes with the same 20mA input current as any garden variety stock 5mm LED! (To quote the Croc Hunter,) I love it!! WOOOOHOOOOOOO!
One thing that's not shown: turns out that the translucency of the nylon means this light can do a HEADstand and act as a little tabletop lantern, with virtually no glare at all! I can't take credit for designing that into the light... it was just one of those happy accidents.
What's left to do but laser cut the head off the stock light?
Will the Redbird cut through the stock head?
Oh, that name thing... couldn't come up with a decent name for this mod, then in the kitchen I noticed the teakettle and it became clear... the modded light's styling almost seems half-designed by Michael Graves himself... and with that red grip ring (remember the cute red bird?) the name came into focus (yup, pun intended)...
Introducing: The Milky REDBIRD 1AAA, a Tribute of sorts to Michael Graves and the "Whistling Bird" teakettle.
This was a pretty long story... for those of you still with me, thanks so much for reading!
:bow:
