All I wanted was a Lambda Pocket-Illuminator...

Darksky

Newly Enlightened
Joined
May 5, 2006
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UKish
Having got hold of a couple Nuwai 0.5W TM310H 1AAA from Litemania and as I missed out on Lambda Pocket-Illuminator I thought I'd have a go at making one. A quick email to Lambda and some $$ got me the heatsinks and circuit boards. I knew this was going to be a tight fit but looking at the picture below the heatsink is nearly a third the height of the original circuit.
hstq4.jpg


So after assembly of the Minipro heatsink and SSC P4 USWOH it looked like this
leuu2.jpg


Next up was to widen the hole in the reflector to fit the P4 seeing as the reflector is not removable from the back of the head and the lens is held in by what Kevin described as as"some nuclear type glue" I used a bit of sandpaper stuck to the end of a wooden dowel. Great I thought not long before I'll have a pocket rocket!
So after carefully washing out the bits I set the head by the fire to dry. Well it all went pear shaped from there yep you guessed it I left it too long and the reflector melted.
meltlj7.jpg


I did have another head I could use but not wanting to waste this one I pulled the reflector out. The lens was fine. So in order to get a new reflector in I discovered that with a bit more heat I could pop the lens out. Luckily when I ordered my P4s I also got a couple of the Khatod 17mm reflectors as well.
dscf0819ug3.jpg



As you can see it's not quite a direct replacement.
dscf0820pc7.jpg


I had to dremel out the head and also sand the reflector to fit. Sorry no pictures as I didn't have my camera with me.
When I went to assemble the head again I discovered that when the Minipro was installed I had about 4 threads left for the barrel to screw into however the barrel had a few threads shy of the end and wouldn't even grip.
So it was out with the dremel again to cut the barrel down and cut a new lens from a thinner lens I had lying around.
I also wrapped the barrel in some Teflon tape to give it a friction fit and some stability. Those of you that have read this far probably can guess what my next problem was that the battery was now sticking too far out the back for the tail switch to fit on.
The tail switch on these has a momentary push and you twist it for constant on. I could have removed the switch and just made it a twisty but nope I liked the momentary bit so I made a very basic one out of a thin copper disk and a small spring with a foam doughnut acting as the insulator to hold the spring off the battery.

After all that what does it look like?
tallmi5.jpg


Can you spot the difference? It's the left one and it ended up a little shorter.

However face on that's a different story..
faceonkp8.jpg



And now some beam shots taken rather badly as they were done in a hurry.
All using fresh Energizer AAA Lithium's

Standard
dscf0865sn9.jpg


Modded
dscf0868hj9.jpg


And just for reference standard (not for long) Luxeon LOD on high
dscf0873jz5.jpg


Eryk
 

bombelman

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Aug 26, 2005
Messages
1,751
WHOA !! And all that juice out of a single Ni-MH AAA !

And what are the specs on the board ? (current/efficiency)
 

Essexman

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Messages
1,192
Location
U.K.
Nice job.
How hard was it to build the minipro? I've looked at them a few times, but i've been put off by the small scale soldering.
 

ROK

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Sep 30, 2004
Messages
261
Location
Dynamic Land
Essexman said:
How hard was it to build the minipro? I've looked at them a few times, but i've been put off by the small scale soldering.
I have built several MiniPro's. You need a fine tip soldering iron and good soldering skill. The Maxim chip is really small. :whistle:
 

Darksky

Newly Enlightened
Joined
May 5, 2006
Messages
87
Location
UKish
Moeman

About $4.00 each for the heatsinks and $2.00 for the PCBs.
However I think I got his last lot of the heatsinks as these were made specifically for the Nuwai.

Bombelman

Here is the original page for the Pocket Illuminator http://home.mchsi.com/~lambda_lights/pocket.htm
it shows a runtime graph.
It's pulling approx. 930ma from battery and about 210ish to P4 with about 3.2volts
across it. My Fluke 73 meter was on auto range.
By the way it was running on Lithiums and not NI-MH.

Essexman

Here you go.
Left to Right Minpro Adjustable MKIII, one of my homebrews, X5R cap, Maxim 1797 behind it, pontimeter,coil, and the circuit board.
miniprosizent9.jpg


As ROK said fine tip iron and a big magnifying glass help!
By the way nice piece on the Mag mod. I'll have to get a move on and do one myself.

ROK

Thanks for the time and input.
 
Last edited:

Essexman

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Messages
1,192
Location
U.K.
Darksky - Thanks for the compliment. That looks sooo small! But I guess that's half the fun.
When I was planning the mag builds I looked at the minipro as a driver. I planned to ID the parts from RS and knock up my own. But I run out of time and took the easy (and more costly) way by using a ready made driver (Micropuck 500mA).

BTW what does UKish mean?
 

rhuck60

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Sep 27, 2007
Messages
89
is there any chance some of these minipro's will still be available?
 
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