My First Mod

This is probably going to seem like small stuff to most of you guys, but I'm proud of it. Here is what I did:

1. I unscrewed the top of my 2AA Mini-Mag like I was gonna put it in "candle mode."

2. I took off the little black plate that held the current light bulb.

3. I took the light bulb out.

4. I put a red 5mm LED in instead of the old bulb. Red because that is the color of my mag.

5. I put the plate back on.

6. I took it back off, and trimmed the longer wire of the LED because it was too long to let the other wire reach the hole. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twak.gif

7. I put it back in.

8. I took it back out, and put it back in the other way because it was in backwards. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twak.gif

Whoo-hooo! It lit up!/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/buttrock.gif I made my first mod before I turned 16, how cool is that? Not much I know, but I like it. I had to widen the hole in the reflector with my advanced machinery (my pocket knife/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif) so the LED would fit because it was bigger than the original bulb. Now I have a focusable 2AA LED light!

Beamshots! They are with my mod on the left and my ARC AAA standard on the right. The first is with my mod on tight focus, the second on wide focus. Both flashlights have fresh Duracell batteries.

EDIT: I just saw how dark these pictures are. I will try to bighten them up, but for now you just have to turn up the brightness on you computer if you even want to see anything in the second picture. Let it suffice for now to say that I could barely see the ARC.





I call it... the Mighty Mouse. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Cool! And congratulations on your first mod. You got to use an LED and you cut stuff with a knife /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif You are well on your way. Just remember, imagination is more important than what you have to work with.

Wilkey
"The guy who made a flashlight out of a butternut squash"

Getting your hands dirty BigMac... excellent! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif No doubt soon you'll want to move onto mods with different colour LEDs, different brightness, different sized bodies, 1w, 5w, etc...

Good luck with all future mods....

you can make the minimag mod with white led. All you have to do is to change the led to white, change one of the battery to AAA + one of those button cells (Ag13 or LR44) and you got a nice white flashlight /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Thanks guys. Shiftd, I had no idea I would need to change the batteries I used to make a white LED work. I just picked red because my minimag is painted red, and I thought that would be cool. Looks like a got a bit to learn /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif. But now that I think about it, my blue and white photon II's take different battereis than my red and green. There must be some relationship here... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Ok, now I got a problem. I take off the top of the light (with the reflector and lens) and the light is smoking. It is warm to the touch. This cannot be good. I have heard people talk about heatsinks, how exactly might I make one (with my slightly limited resources)? Or should I use a different combo of batteries like shiftd suggested for a white led?

you problem is that you are overdriving a single red LED with 3v but it is rated at probly 2.2v and 20ma. i dont think you can really heatsink a 5mm led most people use heatsinks with luxeon emiters. what you could do is add a resistor but i dont think there is much room in a minimag for a resistor

You could use used batteries that have dropped down to 1.2 or so. You could zap some new batteries by running them in a regular light for a few minutes until they drop voltage but that is kind of wasteful.

Best option would be use new batteries in a regular mag and then when it starts to become yuckier save them for the led light.

You were lucky, sometimes the plastic turns brown and bubbles over the die. It is amazing how such a small thing can emit such a large stink.

Ok, thanks for the advice.