Cree Q5 AA minimag mod

I have a MM that shorted out about 15 years ago. This shortcut molt my switch assembly beyond repair. For some reason I did not throw it away. Since some time now I am reading on this forum and was looking for Mag upgrades and stuff. This is when I got the idea to bring the life back in the Old MM with the molten switch

I want to share my minimag AA Cree Q5 mod,

The ingredients:

- AA Mag (I used a 18 year old one so not a LED mm)
- Cree Q5 LED on 14mm base
- Aluminum reflector
- glass lens
- thermal glue
- 3.7V Li-Ion cell
- tail switch
- some wire ant tube i had in the garage.

The pics:



Here you see the modded switch with a rivet as contact:



The LED glued on top with wires soldered



The top with the reflector:



Beam compared with a AAA-MM with standard LED upgrade:





The light is very bright!
I direct drive the Q5 from the 3.7V Li-Ion cell.
From the tail-cap I measure 1.9Amp's on a fresh charged cell and after a while this drops to 1.3Amps.
On the LED I measure 3.5V on a fresh charged cell and after a while this drops to 3.4V
Estimated runtime on a 900mAh cell: 30 minutes

The LED lifetime I estimate to be acceptable. It will be much shorter than when driven at 700mA.

Very cool! Good work.:twothumbs

Nice handiwork, always good to see an older, tried and true Mag brought back to service.

(For anyone else/non-technical folk who want a Q5 MiniMag, the kit is here: http://www.batteryjunction.com/tle-5k2.html , and the tail clicky is here: http://www.batteryjunction.com/tcs-1.html )

I did something very similar, but added a driver, works very well, and I'm still able to use AA, as well as 14500. I've built 4 of these this way, and have used MM+/BB750/GD1000 drivers and work really nicely.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=194179

wildstar87 said:

I did something very similar, but added a driver, works very well, and I'm still able to use AA, as well as 14500. I've built 4 of these this way, and have used MM+/BB750/GD1000 drivers and work really nicely.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=194179

Click to expand...

I have seen your post indeed before i started the MOD, but I wanted a direct drive just to keep it all quite simple but very effective.
THe Q5 is running on about 1.3Amps (normal 700mA) so that is too much and i am aware that the LED will die sooner, but I read it will still last aroud 2000+ hours. so when it dies, i'll just replace it.

Yesterday I did the first longtime run on it.
It's quite amazing how equal the light heats up, the heat is nicely transferred away from the LED.
At any time you can still touch the Q5's base without burning yourself.

The light runs for about 45mins, but after 35mins you feel the light gets less hot, it's still bright, but not as bright as in the beginning.
Battery used: one 3.7V 900mAh Li-Ion cell.