3c Cree XRE Maglite modding with a megabyte of pics to show you how.

Also see my easier 4D cell K2 Magmodding step by step with a megabyte of pics to show you how


Time to break out the tools again!


The cam on the reflector needs to go bye-bye.


Break out the aviation snips to get started and finish nice and neatly with sharp scissors.
This is important due to the Cree XRE's slightly different focus.


It should end up like this with the cam trimmed all the way down to the apex, or the Cree XRE can't focus to a laser tight spot.


Take off the switch boot without tearing it up.


Use a 5/64rths allen wrench to take to loosen the switch assembly like this.


The c cell version will usually fall out freely once loosened.
If not use a chopstick, or something similar to get it out.


Use that same 5/64rths allen wrench to remove the cam roller from the bulb assembly.


Dump out the bulb holder guts.


Trim that amber piece of plastic just like so and bend over the (-) tab like this.
That amber piece can be removed all together by opening up the switch assembly,
but then there might be switch parts ending up everywhere and we don't need that for this project.


Get a soldering iron and warm it up.
Presolder the (-) tab like this.


Now get the (+) tab in the center of the switch assembly like this.
A thick blob is fine for soldering the (+) wire into later.


Put the wires in.
The (+) wire needs to be 4-5 inches long.
The (-) should be 3-4 inches in length.


Re-install the wired switch assembly into the flashlight with your 5/64rths allen wrench.


Dang it!
I thought I had a Hotlips heatsink for this and could only find this older Osink.
Those ridges at the top need to go bye-bye. The top MUST be flat!


Done!
Make sure whatever heatsink you use is flat like this on top like a hotlips heatsink is.


Let's get these parts together.


Houston, we have a problem...
Those thin tin strips on the sides underneath need to go bye-bye, or it's short circuit city!


Done!
And do it carefully, or the project may fail right here.


Make your resistor ( a 1 ohm in this case) look something like this.


Now look carefully, this is another place where the project can easily end in failure.
The (-) input is closest to the heatsink.
The (-) out to the led is farthest from the heatsink.
Don't let this one short to the heatsink, or flashlight body.
Use as much adhesive as you must to get it to stay put without blocking the heatsink's wire holes.
Regular 2 part epoxy was used in this case.


WARNING! This step may try your patience!
Do the (-) side 1st.
It's the long unbroken strip on the led.
The 2 part strips on the other side of the lense are each (+)
One of those are done later on in this tutorial.
Pre-flux and then presolder the led solder strips and the wires to be soldered to them FIRST!
By the way.. a 25 watt soldering iron is the minimum for this.
This was where I threw my new, smaller soldering iron off the balcony and switched back to my stronger old one. LOL!


Ok, there's the (-) wire. Again, the long single strip on the led is the led's (-).
Keep the wire and it's solder away from the lense retaining ring to avoid a possible short circuit.
A half millimeter gap will suffice for now.
We will get the (+) wire later.


Mix up some arctic alumina and coat the whole underside of the led.
Even where the tin strips were before they were removed, get the whole thing coated!


Put the led's (-) wire into either heatsink hole and slide the led down onto the heatsink and "bullseye" center it.
Clean off the excess thermal compound and hold the led firmly and centered onto the heatsink until the adhesive "sets".
Don't let it block the (+) hole in the heatsink.
You will notice that the led nearly centers itself due to the factory placement of the electrodes on it.


Solder the other end of the led's wire to the part of the resistor farthest from the heatsink.


Grab the Maglite and put the (+) wire through the heatsink.
Then solder it's (-) wire to the side of the resistor closest to the heatsink.


Now strip off some insulation from the (+) wire and leave about 2-3 millimeters exposed.
Bend that over into an "L" shape and pull it down onto the (+) side of the led.
Pre-flux and presolder wire and led(+) soldering pad.
Then smash the wire down onto the led's solder pad until ot melts right on there good.
Make sure there is no solder within a half millimeter of the lense retaining ring.


Alright. "deep breath"
Leave the tailcap off and load in some batteries.
Try it out with an ampmeter.
710 milliamps should be no problem for this led with all that aluminum attached to it.
It's... ALIVE!!


Now we can start making messes here.
Apply some thermal grease to the heatsink.


Bend the wires a little and push the heatsink into the light.
Mine went all the way in with a firm hand push this time.
See how some of the white heatsink grease squooshed out? Perfect.
A malot and a short piece of plastic pipe can be used to make yours go in the rest of the way if need-be.


Ok, Now we are going to tackle the issue of wires being too close to the lense retaining ring.
There needs to be at least a quarter millimeter, or more of "gap" between the wires with thier solder, and the lense retaining ring.
Mix up a few drops of regular 2 part epoxy and put some on here like this.
Then get the other side the same way.
Let the adhesive set.


I also took a quarter inch off the tailspring to keep it from squashing the batteries quite so hard.


Load the batteries, tailcap and head.
With the finished flashlight together and working, it's time for some fun.


Here it is at 710 milliamps (left) versus a UWOJ bin Luxeon3 at 1100 milliamps on the right.


Same lights in the living room.


Same lights against a wall.


Heads removed.
Cree XRE on the right this time.


Heads back on aiming up against a white wall.
Cree XRE on the right again.


This project is not for the faint of heart as you can see.
Beginners should do a Luxeon, or K2 mod 1st and get good at that before trying something like this.

Happy modding!!!

Do you always mod barefoot? I've never tried that, due to I'd likely drop something heavy on my foot, and the basement concrete is cold! hehe

Removing the switch boot, I find just a good pinch can pull it off. Gotta make sure your fingers are nice and clean though to get that good grip.

As far as removing the centering from an osink/etc I prefer to get out some sand paper, and a nice flat surface (glass/mirror is good) and lap it down. Start with course grit first obviously. Then lap it smooth (search for CPU lapping for more info). You want the surfaces as flat as possible for maximum thermal contact. This is the easiest way to do it and get it as good as possible by hand. You could start out with the dremel to get the ridges off then lap it later too, but I'm not that good with a dremel and likely I'd end up gouging it deep!

You can also snip the corners off the cree to disable the bottom contacts as well. Since the body of the flashlight is negative, no problem leaving the negative one. I just snipe the corners of the positive pad, just enough to get rid of those 2 dots, as thats what connects the top to the bottom. This may be easier for those like me who don't have a steady hand or patience to dremel them off.

For the resistor, I have used a 1ohm 1W before too. I solder it to the postive wire, (that way if the led somehow gets connection from the negative through the heatsink, it's not bypassing the resistor, call me paranoid. This is only an issue if you don't isolate the led negative from the heatsink, or the slug isn't neutral). I will put heat-shrink over the connections to the resistor, and just let it dangle below. It doesn't rattle. Those ceramic resistors however I will mount to something, usually I glue them to the switch.

Pre-tinning the XRE is a must. After doing so I've mounted it to the heatsink and pre-tinned the wires, then reflowed them. Even with my low wattage iron. So it's possible this way. This way too when you epoxy the led down, you don't have to worry about the wires pushing it up/off or moving it, so you can just press it down and slide it a bit to work out the excess epoxy and center it, and then walk away. The first XRE I mounted to a huge pentium heatsink, and didn't pre-tin the led. That wasn't very fun soldering the wires on!!! Oh yeah, teflon wires are a must, it's so nice not having the insulation melt back!

Not sure why the epoxy on the leads, after soldering them, they shouldn't move and cause a problem, but over-building stuff never hurts! I'm more worried about luxeons leads bumping the heatsink than the cree. A good time to use glow powder/epoxy mix!

Good idea to mod the tail spring, they are killer on batts, and if you have NiMH, it's best to protect them as they WILL dent the neg side of them and that can lead to faster internal discharge just sitting around as it damages the layers. I speak from experience!

Have you shortened the reflector so it goes down more than it does by just cutting off the cam? You could dremel a relief in the heatsink for it to screw down more, and possibly sand the back off the reflector more to give you more adjust-ability. From what I hear it makes the spot a lot more intense if you can bring the led up further pas where the reflector bottoms out..

Nice pics! Very interesting to see how others do the same thing ya know? I don't use solder flux, just very find rosin core solder. I don't have a problem using this, but YMMV! I usually start the flow by pushing the core of it on the iron then moving it down onto the part as it gets the flux flowing over everything. Please don't take my comments as "you should do this instead" but rather just sharing my own ways of doing it too, to give others ideas as well.

BTW What soldering iron is that? I need a new one that doesn't cost a whole lot, my 1980's radioshack iron has seen better days!

The 1st soldering iron was a 2.99 one from Fry's Electronics.
It was a Boxer "30 watt" rated unit.

It was far weaker than the older "25 watt" Wall Link brand that was used to finish the project.
The Wall Link brand was given to me last Christmas.

Update:
The light measures;
910 milliamps with fresh Rayovac alkaline c cells.
520 milliamps with partially discharged nimh C cells.

I have been letting the light run nonstop on the nimhs since my 1st post in this thread.
It's still a match for the 1100 milliamp UWOJ Luxeon3 led.
The flashlight is just barely getting warm.
The led is also still cool enough to easily touch.
A .75 ohm resistor instead of a 1 ohm, should work if more output is needed.

Edit:
I just took another Cree XRE and tried out it's underside with a 3 volt battery and a couple of wires.
The large metal part underneath does appear to be electrically isolated to both (-) and (+) contact after all. "whew"

The only reason I can think of for leaving the corners uncut is to allow a little more soldering real estate available, but I will probably give cutting off the corners a whirl soon enough.

Another edit:
I just looked over my shoulder and found the old Titanium brand nimh c cell batteries already pooping out.
These were fully charged 5000 milliamp hour rated batteries. :huh2:
Well, they do have a ton of use on them already.

Good 5-6 amp hour rated nimh c cells should be able to go 8-10 hours in a light like this.
A single rechargeable lithium ion battery should also be ok with a cutdown battery tube version of this light.

another awesome mod...........great job man

Great show and tell.
Thankyou for taking the time to do this post, it gives me some more ideas for future builds.
Once finished, how do you think the cree mod performs compared to 3 watt Luxeon, 5 watt Luxeon or a K2 ?
Last question, out of all the different mag mods you have built, which is your favorite?
I whish I had more time to do another build (sitting here typing with one hand, 9 week old baby in othert hand!)

Nice mod - thanks for the picture guide!

Will

....out of all the different mag mods you have built, which is your favorite?

Click to expand...

This one is my new favorite.

Much better runtime than a K2 and just as bright, or brighter.
It''s beating all my luxeon3's as far as overall brightness goes.
Even my UWOJ binned 3D magmod.
A Luxeon5 X*** bin will still be brighter, but at a much greater power consumption.
It's also giving my W*** flux binned Luxeon5's a run for thier money too. :laughing:

Plus the Cree XRE runs cooler, and is thus even more reassuring to use anytime, anywhere.

I was afraid you would say that.
Now I will have to build one of these.
How do I explain to the wife that I need another "special" maglite ?
BTW, where did you buy the cree LED from? and what bin was it?

I got the led from member Nitroz in the group buys part of cpf.
He has already sold out of those.
I'm now having troubles finding anyone with any of these leds lately.
It is actually a "lower rank" P4 bin rated for 78-83 lumens at 350 milliamps.
Still heads and shoulders above the best Luxeon3's and K2's though.
I have 3 left myself.

I still want to do a regulated 700 milliamp 6D Maglite mod with one.
140+ lumens for 24-36 hours straight runtime would be awesome!

Reason?
Because the same procedure for building a regulated 6D will also work with a 6-8 AA batteried 2D Maglite.
This is the next tutorial I'm wanting to do.

Also... FYI I do strongly encourage suggestions and other ideas much like IsaacHayes has come up with.
Reason?
The whole purpose of these tutorial threads I start is to "pass the torch" to you guys to do your own useful, and kickin' butt Maglite mods. :rock:
For those who already know, keep the ideas coming. :bow:

I'll keep an eye out for the Cree LEDs in the new year.

What were you thinking of using to regulate the 6D mag? I've been looking at different drivers lately, a) for my space needle, b) for future projects.

One idea I read on here somewhere ( IsaacHayes? ) was to use two of the MicroPuck 2009 drivers in parallel. Wired with a another switch, so that you could run both drivers for high (800mA) and with just one driver for low (400mA). As the MicroPuck 2009 is a boost driver you may be able to run a cree from 3V, i.e. two C or D cells? If this set up works it would be perfect for a 2c or 2D mag fitted with a Cree LED.

www.taskled.com has a very good driver "CC5W" in 700 milliamp and 1000 milliamp sizes here.
These fit easily in D cell Maglites, and are a tight fit, but doable with a little heatsink grinding in c cell Maglites.
For the 400 milliamp one, I have a "downboy 400" 400 milliamp unit that I got from here at The Sandwich Shoppe
The downboys are much smaller in physical size and are suitable for D, or C cell Maglite mods.

Edit:
Which one of these Maglites should I use in my upcoming 3x cr123, downboy 1000 regulated, 170-plus lumen, 2c Cree XRE Maglite modding tutorial? :thinking:

I'd go for the blue one, I'll take a look at those drivers in the new year, cheers for sharing the info.

Oh, and Happy Christmas everyone !

I vote BLUE.

Nice mod and nice pictures! :thumbsup:

Waffle said:

I vote BLUE.

Click to expand...

Hmm... I don't think it's blue but purple. :thinking:
I would vote for this one too.

Icarus said:

Hmm... I don't think it's blue but purple. :thinking:
I would vote for this one too.

Click to expand...

I have one I bought at Home Depot a year ago that is purple, but what I saw a couple of weeks ago are a bluish purple color.

I think the package is marked purple, but it looks more blue to me.

It's the camera making it look more blue than purple.
My bad.

I will do the purple one 1st then.
It and the others have sat on the balcony for a while now out in the weather.
Next question;
Should I do a 400, 700, or go for broke with a 1,000 milliamp regulator?
I have all 3 of these on hand at this time.

Quess which one I'm thinking of.... 1000 mAh.

A single LED so I say go for broke with the 1000ma and lets see some serious light shinning in the beamshots!


Ken

Excellent tutorial! I would go for the 1000mA to the LED for the next one. With a P4 LED, it's on par with a W bin Lux V but uses less power than a lux V.