1.25D Mag SST-90 TIR light mostly done

Just put this together tonight, my first "awesome" flashlight.
What went into it:
Fivemega 1.25D Dualbored mag body with charger port
SST-90 Glued into a britelumens Mag D heatsink.
Taskled H6Flex driver on the back of the heatsink
Carclo 10391 plain tight 26.5mm TIR optic
Britelumens custom MOP reflector bored to 23.5mm, with the holder for the above optic glued into the opening.
Glass lens from britelumens
2x Ultrafire 2500mAh 18650 unprotected Li-Ion batteries in a pack with a batteryspace protection PCB
Novak racing silicone wire
"Handmade electronics" Teflon wire
Deans micro connectors thoughout, some modified for right angle instead of the wires straight in.

Pics:
The whole thing, nice and small compared to my usual 3D, and light too



Business end, TIR optic with the reflector holding it in place.



Reflector/TIR combo. The reflector doesnt do much optically, but it does hold the TIR optic holder. (Yes a holder for the holder) That way I can pull out optics just by taking the bezel off, as opposed to gluing down the holder to the heatsink. The focus is adjustable, but doing so is pretty pointless, just makes the beam ugly. At the moment its just down past a "perfect" focus all the way down against the heatsink, and it smooths out the grid on the surface of the SST-90 which is visible.



The emitter on the heatsink, Since the H6 flex has the pads for the wires are on the edge of the PCB, I drilled some holes though the heatsink in the spot needed. Another note, the holder for the Carclo optc fits perfectly on the britelumens heatsink with the LED mounted. If you wanted to, you could just epoxy it down on the heatsink and be done with it.




Batterypack, black connector is the deans micro, white is the revolectrix balance lead


The battery in the tail end, seated all the way. No spring needed, so the connector/wiring hides in the tail cap.



(crappy)Beamshot left hand, 3D Mag light with Mag LED drop in. Right, SST-90 mag on high, (6600mA)
I'd say the beamshot is pretty accurate, the hot spot of the mg is about the same as the hot spot of this. Very slight hot central spot in the beam not noticeable outside. The spill on the mag light is completely washed out in this shot. Also a bit of dim spill not visible in this shot too. Camera says F3.9 1/34 sec exposure



Whats left to do:
Gonna add some Green and/or Blue glow in the dark powder between the optic holder and the reflector.

Add some foam in the tailcap area to keep the battery solidly in place and keep stuff from shaking around.

Some duracoat, or molyresin to paint the whole thing possibly, still on the fence for that.


And a some mini reviews of the different components.

Fivemega 1.25D body:
Excelent work, nice fit and finish, the charging jack setup was well put together. Some burrs on the finning on the head, nothing that a single pass with an x-acto knife couldnt fix. If you wanted to do something that used the 2 18650's in parallel, the included battery holder setup would work great.


Tasklet H6Flex
Fantastic driver, bit big, just barely fitting inside the mag body, but I'm pretty sure it was a squeeze to get it to fit but that was George's goal. Lots and lots of options and features, low voltage cutoff, temperature foldback, high effiency, looks well built, great product

Britelumens heatsink
Excelent fit, slips right in with the set screw in the mag loosened, but with it tight, the flexing of the body grabs the heatsink solidly in place. The SST-90 drops right in place, snug fit but not so snug that its hard to put in place. A flat back would be nice for this, but the cupped back like there is now would be good for potting a smaller driver in place.

Carclo optic:
Nice beam, not very tight for being "plain tight", but its definitely great for a general use around the house and some outdoors stuff in close if its not too far. Wear gloves handling it to keep it from getting finger oils on it, no where to hold the optic at since the back is the surface the light refracts off of. Good alternative to reflectors if youre not looking for something tight and throwy.

Handmade electronics teflon wire
Very stiff, presumably from low strand count wire, strips fine with thermal strippers. I would buy something else when I need more.

Novak racing silicone wire
Flexible as all heck, high strand count, very temperature resistant, even with my thermal strippers orange hot, it takes a bit of twisting and pulling for it to get though the silicone, I would buy more

Deans micro connectors (3 pin version not the 2 pin!)
Very nice compact connectors. High contact pressure, between the connectors but not difficult to mate and unmate once the wire is soldered on. For my right angle ones, I bent the back of the pins 90 degrees, solderd on the wire, shrunk the heatshrink, and put some kapton tape on to keep stuff clean, and added some JB weld to the exposed pin and reinforce it some. Definitely buying more


Hope you all enjoy.

Very nice

donga said:

Very nice

Click to expand...

Thanks!



Just ran with a freshly charged battery pack... with the thermal fold back on the H6flex set to 70C (the driver is on the back of the LED heatsink, so the coupling should be decent) I get 7 mins of run time from it being cool at ambient. light was horizontal, and there was a cieling fan running in the room, so not perfectly still, but not like it was parked in front of a desk fan.


I need to get some nice quality 18650 cells to build the pack with. One of the cells in this pack takes a dive at the end and the pack goes into protection because that cell goes < 2.5 but the pack voltage is still over the 5.8v cutoff I have set. But upon charging, the voltage come right back into balance with the other cell, even though the balancing doesnt occur till the end of the charge. Some nice LG or sanyo cells methinks.

According to Carlco's specs, the full width half max is 15.2°. Would make a great P60 mod where you're stuck with the 26 mm diameter. For a longer focal length TIR with a tighter spot, you need something like this?:devil: FWIW, when I look into my SST-90 Mag (stock reflector), the reflection of the yellow phosphor doesn't appear until about 24 mm out. The MOP Britelumens must be similar having the same diameter and depth. If you were to remove the Carlco TIR and just use the modified MOP reflector, I don't think you wouldn't suffer any performance loss vs a stock Britelumens reflector. I don't think this is a one way mod. You might have a brighter hotspot and some usable spill without the Carlco. Have you tried it without the TIR?

Can I ask how you were able to bend the Deans micro connector without it fracturing? I bought a bunch of them a while back because they were only 2 bucks each. I tried bending at 90° to fit in a Mag-C between the switch and the heat sink. They all cracked at about 60°. I gave up after I broke the third one. I ended up cutting the connector about 2 mm from the plastic housing and covering the solder joint with tape. It seemed like the brass was sintered and very brittle.

Also how were you able to mount the H6Flex to the back of the Britelumens heatsink without the wires getting in the way?

Just took a measurement and I'm getting 16.7 degrees half width with it cranked all the way down, 11.3 degree half iwith the die image in focus so you can see the ugly lines from the gold traces overtop the die.

If someone wants to make a custom glass TIR for me for < $100 and can get a 4 degree half width, I'm all ears.

At the moment I'm actually digging the pattern of the light though, the even, wide beam seems nice to use indoors etc. But the carclo isnt glued to the heatsink so I can change it whenever I feel like it, which was part of why I put it where I did. I have a KD, DX, and edmund optics aspheric lenses kicking around too, so I might compare how the 3 of those compare. Though the brite lumens heatsink is a bit high for the longer focal length ones. A Der Wichtel "low" heatsink would be better suited.

I have another MOP reflector from BL, but due to the wires coming straight out from the side, it interferes with the reflector going down enough. If I milled out some aluminum on the pedistal it could help, but I dont think I'll be doing that now. Though I could just get another overbored reflector at some point to try. The optic definitely isnt coming out of this one though, decided to remove the legs from the holder and re-seat the holder deeper, and even with just a dab of epoxy on each leg, it still ripped a lot of the reflective plating off of the reflector. Now its got epoxy all around the bottom. This reflector is permanently a mount for the carclo optic

Also, as far as the H6flex on the back of the heatsink, I drilled the holes at the perimiter of the heatsink for the wire to get to the front surface. More ideal would to drill a hole at the perimeter at an angle which would intercept the original hole, that way the LED wires could pop out in the pedistal, and you could use a 16mm (IIRC) opening for the reflector to fit over the heatsink pedistal.

Bending the connectors I was just careful to give the bend a radius. The side of the conenctor you solder on, the pins are offset, I flipped the connector so the pins were offset to the bottom side, then I bent the pin upwards, moving my pliers about halfway though the bend to give a radius. Then the wire gets soldered in the U shaped area between the body, the flat part of the pin, and the bent up part of the pin, making sure there is a nice fillet between the wire and the back, and the wire in the bottom. Slide the heatsink over it, then mask it with kapton, and add the JB weld for strengthening.

I am still impressed by you converting the 2p FM host into a 2s light so you could use the H6flex. Good job.

CKOD said:

The optic definitely isnt coming out of this one though, decided to remove the legs from the holder and re-seat the holder deeper, and even with just a dab of epoxy on each leg, it still ripped a lot of the reflective plating off of the reflector.

Click to expand...

Ouch.

Thanks for the build info. I didn't notice at first the new holes drilled in the heat sink for the wiring. The small size of your light and multi-level is a nice balance. A ton of light when you need it. And very little heat when you don't.:twothumbs

Al Combs said:

Ouch.

Thanks for the build info. I didn't notice at first the new holes drilled in the heat sink for the wiring. The small size of your light and multi-level is a nice balance. A ton of light when you need it. And very little heat when you don't.:twothumbs

Click to expand...

Yeah, I definitely intended this to be a bit more balanced/useable then 4x 18650 FM body I'm getting, though no details on that since I change my mind as to what I'm doing with it so often.

I do need to make some more electronic goodies for this one too. USB charger, and maybe a car power adaptor. I did bring the switch lead out to the battery connector, so in the future if I come up with somethng awesome that involves this being remotely switched, I can do it.