I love my direct drive Mags.. simple, user friendly, and I rarely use this size light for small jobs so different levels isnt necessary.. NiMH cells are great and wont kill my friends if I hand them the light and dont supervise them...
This was my first SST-90 build, ( I tried a SST-50 first and killed it, seems it wasnt fond of 13.5 amps lol)
This is a plain ole build for the most part, I used a DW low (rebel reflector) heatsink, a SST-90 5700k, and teflon coated 20 gauge wire (IIRC) for this.. we all know how to get this far....
Pretty standard build here with above listed items, once completed I used 3 Tenergy 10,000mah blue bateries and with my clamp meter I got 10.5 amps just at the led.. testing at the tail cap with heavy wire measured 9ish IIRC.. (of course the clamp meter is the way to go here)
While "gluing" the Led to the heatsink I applied to much pressure and managed to get a worm looking air bubble under the dome of the Led, I was depressed to say the least. This made for a not so pretty beam pattern and to top it off it just didnt seem to focus the light down the the pencil beam I had been hoping that it would..
Fast forward a couple of days and I got to thinking, lets just go on and remove the dome and see what happens ( Ive read on here on more than one occasion that it increases the throw). So I did just that, and VOILA! it made the artifacts in my beam disappear and did in fact make the beam become smaller (more throw).
So I got to thinking again.. what if the heatsink would go farther into the mag tube? Surely it would increase the beam tightness and increase the throw.. So the SST-50 heatsink that was sitting being used only as a paper weight became my test subject.. I grabbed the dremel and went to town grinding the lip off of it.. 15 mins later I had a heatsink that would slide all the way into the Mag tube.. It actually goes down and hits the top of the switch/ switch retaining ring..
Add some bourbon to the mix and I was ready to grind the SST-90 heatsink.. I covered my newly dedomed SST-90 with a small peice of packing material and started grinding.. Once I was done I found that at max depth in the Mag tube the led was much lower than I had started out with, If you roll the focus out (unscrew the Mag head) until the led is just a tiny hair below the reflector and you have one hell of a beam! Man does it throw!!! And has enough spill that it has become the perfect light!!
And of course, this wouldnt be right without these =-)
Distance to the dog pen is about 200-220ft (Im no expert so all distances are guestimets at best, I have a dog run line that runs from the back of the shed ((in pic with Miata)) to just inside the wood line and it is around 260 feet, distances based off that)
Distance to the back corner of the field is probable 350ish feet(maybe around 400 from the porch Im standing on)
To the inside of the shed maybe 80ish feet
I wanted full size pics in the thread but couldnt quite get it to work, feel free to tell me how to do it lol
This was my first SST-90 build, ( I tried a SST-50 first and killed it, seems it wasnt fond of 13.5 amps lol)
This is a plain ole build for the most part, I used a DW low (rebel reflector) heatsink, a SST-90 5700k, and teflon coated 20 gauge wire (IIRC) for this.. we all know how to get this far....
Pretty standard build here with above listed items, once completed I used 3 Tenergy 10,000mah blue bateries and with my clamp meter I got 10.5 amps just at the led.. testing at the tail cap with heavy wire measured 9ish IIRC.. (of course the clamp meter is the way to go here)
While "gluing" the Led to the heatsink I applied to much pressure and managed to get a worm looking air bubble under the dome of the Led, I was depressed to say the least. This made for a not so pretty beam pattern and to top it off it just didnt seem to focus the light down the the pencil beam I had been hoping that it would..
Fast forward a couple of days and I got to thinking, lets just go on and remove the dome and see what happens ( Ive read on here on more than one occasion that it increases the throw). So I did just that, and VOILA! it made the artifacts in my beam disappear and did in fact make the beam become smaller (more throw).
So I got to thinking again.. what if the heatsink would go farther into the mag tube? Surely it would increase the beam tightness and increase the throw.. So the SST-50 heatsink that was sitting being used only as a paper weight became my test subject.. I grabbed the dremel and went to town grinding the lip off of it.. 15 mins later I had a heatsink that would slide all the way into the Mag tube.. It actually goes down and hits the top of the switch/ switch retaining ring..
Add some bourbon to the mix and I was ready to grind the SST-90 heatsink.. I covered my newly dedomed SST-90 with a small peice of packing material and started grinding.. Once I was done I found that at max depth in the Mag tube the led was much lower than I had started out with, If you roll the focus out (unscrew the Mag head) until the led is just a tiny hair below the reflector and you have one hell of a beam! Man does it throw!!! And has enough spill that it has become the perfect light!!
And of course, this wouldnt be right without these =-)
Distance to the dog pen is about 200-220ft (Im no expert so all distances are guestimets at best, I have a dog run line that runs from the back of the shed ((in pic with Miata)) to just inside the wood line and it is around 260 feet, distances based off that)
Distance to the back corner of the field is probable 350ish feet(maybe around 400 from the porch Im standing on)
To the inside of the shed maybe 80ish feet
I wanted full size pics in the thread but couldnt quite get it to work, feel free to tell me how to do it lol
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. (Even though I don't have a low pressure chamber lol)
