KL 4 mod; who can do it, whats the price ?

i need help.
i just got my new KL 4 but the donut spot stinks /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif.
my question: who can do the best mod (more power, more throw, more brightness).
does anyone wants to mod my KL 4. please send me pm or post here. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/help.gif
christian

More power and brightness, probably not but you can get a tighter beam and more throw with several modders around here that can put a 3w luxeon in there for you. CM and Chop come to mind although there are several others that are doing this too.

the KL4 is somewhere driven at 66x mA. Driving at higher current seems will lead to overheat problem when constant-on. Yeah, by the stock KL4 reflector, u may only achieve futher throw by 3W. You may also want to find someone put a DB1000mA 3W in PR-T (HA-Natural), it will more throw.
But mod to 3W, u will lost some lumens.

The donut hole might be the result of a lousy emitter - it might be best to go for a better emitter than driving up the current as this won´t get you less of a donut IMO. CM and Chop are the guys to talk to for sure but if you can handle a soldering iron you might not need to sent it over though.

Klaus

The donut hole will show up with every 5W if it is placed in the focal point of a "perfect" parabolic reflector of similar and relatively small diameter. A 1W or Lux III will not have this hole manifest since the single die is much smaller in "origin" of light size. One method of bluring out the hole is to texture the reflector and diffuse the beam somewhat. Consider the agressive texturing on the KL5 and KL6 for instance. Your particular emitter might be contributing to the problem but I suspect the positioning within the reflector and the amount of texture on the reflector are more likely to blame.

mohr,

Yea, what Don said. I've handled quite a few KL4 when modding them and the funny thing is that the beams (more specifically the hot spot) are almost always different. On some the LED sits higher than it does in others. If you can get it apart, you may want to try some very small washers to space the heatsink from the head about the thickness of a business card or two. This is typically what I do on 5W McLux PR builds to get rid of the doughnut hole, it might work for yours.

BTW, modding the KL4 with a 3W will result in less overall light; however, you will get appreciably more throw while still retaining a very useful amount of sidespill.

If you wanted to mod the KL4 with a 3W, I'd suggest a downboy700 for a 2 cell body or a BadBoy500 or 600 for a 1 cell body. For that matter, you could go with a wizard600 and use it on either body. With the wizard, you'll sacrifice some efficiency and runtime, but you'll gain flexibility.

You could also just do a luxeon swap and use the stock circuit. With the stock circuit, you could run the KL4 on either a single 123 or a li-ion cell.

Has anyone replaced the 5W emitter in a KL4 with a higher binned one? I have a spare V2T and am wondering if I would see a significant improvement in brightness by replacing the stock emitter with that one. Anyone care to comment?

Scott,

Unless you have a X bin 5W, I would not count on your exchange being one of a higher flux! I suspect that many if not most of the KL4's already host W bin 5W's. Many of those "greenies" that were not received well were actually W4 emitters and dang bright to boot. Got to love the lottery! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

That's pretty impressive, Don. Had no idea! :jawdrop:

Yea, the emitters in the KL4's were pretty bright for the most part. I was actually buying them from the people that I modded KL4's for and using them in 5W builds. Even the green ones I've seen only looked green when comparing it to another, cooler binned, LED.