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This mod is provided by Leo W. (Leo's good
with graphics as well as mods!)
***** Leo's Eternalight 'Erglow' Mod ******
I took a regular Model 3 Eternalight Ergo by
Technology Associates and soldered a white LED onto the Ergo's
PCB as shown in the pix. This internal LED makes it a total
of 5 LEDs in this mod, making it similar to an eternalight
XRay, or Elite. The additional LED is activated by pressing
the 'adjust/rate' button on the Ergo. Credit for this technique
goes to Aragorn! The white LED was sanded down nearly to the
reflector cup, so the beam is highly diffused. Next, I painted
some glow paint on the upper part(near the 4 main LEDs) of
one-half of the Ergo's clamshell case. This glowpaint is my
own homebrew of clear nail strengthener and strontium aluminate
glow powder(from Luminous Tech in the UK). The paint serves
2 purposes: as an internal reflector(the black interior of
the Ergo's case absorbs light, thus, wasting it), and as source
of illumination via its afterglow. The following pix shows
the mod overall, plus some inset close-ups of the modified
'sawn-off shotgun' LED:
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[Notice the glowpaint on inside bodyshell. I used lithiums
so the Ergo would float.]
Upon testing it, I found that the white LED did a lousy, lousy
job of charging the glowpaint and wasn't remotely bright enough
as a useful momentary light, so I promptly swapped it out for
a UV LED, sanded down and soldered on the exact same way the
white one formerly was. Here was the happy result I obtained!
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| Other than resizing and sharpening, the photos are entirely
unretouched. The digital camera captures both the UV output
and the glowpaints illumination in a slightly exaggerated manner(ie.
they aren't *quite* as bright as in the pix), but the results
are still *very* visible in low light. That backlight you see
in the pix comes from my computer monitor, so that should give
you an idea of the effectiveness of this mod :) With the UV
LED, the glowpaint needs only about 1 second of UV exposure
to glow brightly, with the glow lasting about a minute at a
high intensity. It then goes into a very dim glow that lasts
for about 10 minutes, visible only in near total darkness. Holding
the UV on longer yields better glow times. If you're thinking
that this would make a good money detector, I'm afraid not.
For some strange reason, all the UV light that leaks out the
main LEDs is either very very low intensity, or has had its
'UV power' diminished significantly. I compared it with a bare
UV of the same type against a ten-dollar note and it couldn't
make out the security mark which the bare one easily showed
up. Heck, the UV light from this mod could barely cause dayglo
items to glow at all! Anyway, I'm just glad it does a heck of
a job charging the glowpaint inside the case :)
****** End Mod ******
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| Many thanks to Leo W. for sharing this mod with FlashlightReviews.com
and its visitors! |
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