A few mods with pics **and now, videos**

I've been playing with some parts from DX, which are cheap enough that I don't have to stress about breaking something.

First, I Seouled a Scorpion LED:



Then, I Seouled a Survivor LED:



Then, I used a 3.6-4.5V 350mA board powering a bare Cree star to supercharge an old lighted book cover I have. I never used the incan version, but now I can pop in 3AA NiMH and have a really good, bright reading light. The old bulb only pulled a quarter amp, though, so I'll get less runtime. I potted the whole thing in JB Stik Weld (the gray stuff).

Front:


Back:


Front, with cap:


In action:


Seouling the Scorpion and Survivor was really fast and easy. Make a shim, rip out the Luxeon, AA, shim, AA, stick on the SSC, solder the legs, trim the reflector. Yeehaw.

The book light was harder, because it took me a while to decide to open the head up and remove the threaded bulb socket (trying to solder wires to the inside of the bulb socket was NO fun) and to realize that the thing was originally intended to have the cells' +ve terminal down, and I had put them in +ve up, and the reverse polarity protection was keeping the circuit from closing (a solder blob fixed that problem).

Any comments are welcome.

Re: A few mods with pics

I think my next mod (hopefully tomorrow) will be an Argo HP. Maybe I'll film it.

Re: A few mods with pics

Nice mods and pics tigerhawk. Strealights sure are easy to mod! I have done a few myself. I have thought about making a cree desklamp similar to yours with some spare parts!

Re: A few mods with pics

nice work on the booklight. looks bright!
I did my argo with a seoul star and the 17mm seoul reflector from photonfanatic. works great and slightly brighter than my backup, a pt eos modded with the same. well worth the effort.

Re: A few mods with pics

I, too, was struck by how easy some (not all) SLs are to mod. They allow easy access to the emitter, with great hosts.

Well, I finished Seouling the Argo HP, and I uploaded the videos (three parts). I just swapped the emitter and widened the reflector opening. I had some surprises, but they make the vids a bit more entertaining. The reflector was blocked by the legs of the Seoul, so I dremeled out some notches in the reflector to accomodate them. It looks ugly, but amazingly enough, the thing now has a tight, creamy-smooth spot with bright, useful sidespill.

If you pay attention during the beamshot testing, you can see my reflection in the window. Heh heh.

It was probably a bad idea to make this video outdoors when it was 92F in the shade, where my workbench is. Oh well.

So, enjoy!

Link

I sure love watching your videos. I laughed when you jerked back before realizing the old LED was epoxied. I was thinking I would mix the AA before putting it in the light, and use some tweezers.

Seeing that the focus was off a bit, in retrospect, do you need to put that shim in under the Seoul?

Man, I'm not an LED fan, but your video makes me want to go do something like that. Thanks again!

Glad you liked it, Lux! :thumbsup:

The reason the focus was off at first was because the Seoul's legs were blocking the reflector from going down far enough. I dremeled out a pair of notches for the legs to occupy, and then the reflector seated properly and gave me a beautiful spot, corona, and flood. I successfully stuffed a 17670 in there, and now I think I may actually use this headlight!

I made a short video of the results of the mod earlier this evening, including the reflector, emitter area, and beamshots, but the sprinklers were on, the dog kept barking, and it didn't turn out well. When the sprinklers are off and the dog is snoring, I'll tiptoe outside and try again.

Some of you more loyal viewers may have noticed that I have a bit of a lisp, in the form of a sibilant "S," or should I say, ssssssssssibilant "SSSSSSSSS." Once, I even recorded a slightly whistling "S"! The word "Seoul" also comes out weird when I say it.

Easter egg: In Part 3, near the end, when I'm testing the light, you can see my reflection in the window, above the beam! Yep, that's me!

I'll ssssssssssee if I can reshoot the little results video ssssssssssssometime later tonight.

I didn't notice that lisp....so don't even think twice about something like that. Oh, I love Easter Eggs!

What's your mod on the Minimag torch? (If you told at the end I must confess that I grew bored at what I knew was going to be a lot of smoke and no fire, and tuned it out)

Sorry I didn't respond to you earlier, Lux. I was shooting the Results video.

That's an Auroralite Minimag.

Okay, the new video is up! I had to do more than half a dozen takes, as something would always go wrong. Either I'd forget to replace the reflector between a failed take and a new one, or I'd lose my train of thought, or I noticed an ugly would that needed to be bandaged, or I messed up the focusing procedure, or the puppy dog made a funny noise, or...

The next time you see something "written, produced, directed by, and starring so-and-so" or a long list of credits with the same name under every job, DON'T LAUGH. Being responsible for every aspect of even a short film is no picnic.

What's involved, you ask? ("No, I didn't ask! Please don't continue!") Here's a short list ("Here he goes again..."):
-Acting
-Props
-Equipment
-Lighting
-Scriptwriting/Direction
-Sound
-Security
-Publicity
-Filming
-Editing
-Processing

Fulfilling all of these roles is difficult, to say the least, so the compliments (and well-meaning constructive criticism) are a big motivation for me.

Link (segment at end)

P.S: Sorry for rambling. It's late for me, and I'm pretty sleepy. G'night, all.

Hi Tiger -i'm pretty much with Lux on any comments.
Glad you left the stuck emitter video part there -absolutely cracked me up.

Good tip for newbies on the "+ and - " as well.
Cheers
Dom

That did turn out well. Now you just need to buy one more and do a side by side comparison because you can't really appreciate the improvement without it.

Where do you get all those parts if I wanted to do this exact mod? I'm not an LED afficionado, so I don't even know where to buy parts or the headlamp.

Also, hope you appreciate all the 5-Stars I'm giving you! LOL!

Could we get some stills? I have dial-up

The Nuwai (FavourLight) HLX-712L is very similar to the Argo HP, running off 2xCR123A, multi-level (3 instead of two, with 3-2-1-off and hold-flash instead of the HP's 1-2-off), half-stipple reflector, and SE LuxI. The one I have and use (I have a couple still in the box just in case) has a significant green tint due to the Lux Lottery, but it's still useful.

The highest output on the 712L (which used to be about the same as that of the HP) is now about equal to the modded HP's lowest output. With the unmodded HP and 712L, the beam was a wide, horribly artifacted spot with very dim sidespill. The modded beam is a much tighter spot (about half the angle of the old spot) with a much brighter sidespill. The Seouled HP has some very, very slight concentric circle artifacts, but it's barely noticable even on a white wall.

I get my Seouls (and Crees) from DX, but I got my HP at a great bargain ($28 shipped) from an internet company that went under as I ordered. I was lucky to get my order at all. BrightGuy has the HP for $31+shipping.

Pics!

Great close ups. Thanks again!