This is a mod sent in by Yitah W. In his
own words:
Purple Haze Solitaire
Hooked on phonics? Try hooked on LED flashlight
mods. I was pretty happy with the 5mm Nichia in the solitaire,
but wanted MORE POWER. The single 5 mm LED in the solitaire
is brighter than my Photon II, and with cheaper batteries,
but it's also bigger and probably has less battery life.
Elsewhere in the mods someone put two 5mm
LED's in a Solitaire, and I started thinking. If two is
good, 3 is better! I did a quick test fit with three 5mm
LED's in the head of my solitaire and decided it could
be done. How to power it is another question. I know I
can fit a few more of those button cells in the body,
so after disassembling an A23 battery, I have a stack
ot 8 button cells. Testing current draw on three 5mm LED's
in series shows that 4 button cells is about right. This
is 18 volts, but as someone else noted, the internal resistance
keeps the current down, I measure about 40 ma.
I didn't want to screw around with the existing
solitaire, so on a trip to Home Depot I snagged another
one for $4.99 or so. I was going to get a plain silver
one but settle on purple. In hindsight the silver one
would have had a certain advantage I'll discuss later.
I get home and open up the flashlight. Hmmm,
Maglite's Quality Control must be slacking. 1) the O-ring
on the head split as soon as I took off the head and 2)
the bulb in the tailcap was broken. I thought about going
back to HoDe to swap, but decided to deal with it later,
besides, I won't be needing the extra bulb!
Three 5mm LED's are a very tight fit and
won't leave space for the reflector. I will have to use
pressure from the lens on the LEDs to press the "switch"
in the body. The new reflector design is really a pain
to get out of the head, but if you take an Exacto and
push back each of the fingers, you can press out the lens
and reflector with the back of a pen.
Batteries first. I wrap 4 of the button
cells in some tape so they can't short out. Then I test
fit. Turns out that an A23 battery and 4 of the button
cells is NOT quite long enough. I stretch out the spring
in the tailcap but it's still too short. I still have
the metal buttons that were in the A23 that I took apart.
I tape it to the positive end and I'm in business. Power's
ready, time for the bulbs.
Ran out of the 20 degree Nichias I got from
whitelightled.com, so I'm using some 5mm Chinese LED's
I got from Fleabay. These are 15 degree spots with a bluish
tinge, but they're as easily as bright, though with a
tighter beam. With some calipers I realized that the LED's
are significantly longer than the reflector. If I want
the switch mechanism to function normally, I have to get
this back to about the same height - out comes the dremel.
The sintered cutting disk makes short work of the LED
epoxy, but as I indicate in my single LED Solitaire modification,
it takes some dexterity and patience. 15 minutes and a
lot of epoxy dust later, I have the LED's ready.
I do some sketches on paper to figure out
how to lay out the leads. Putting LED's in series is trivial,
but putting them in series so that two opposing leads
come out the center with no vertical clearance on the
sides takes a minute to figure out. Snip, bend, solder
and I'm in business. I wrap the three LED's together with
a piece of silverized mylar tape for a little extra reflectivity
and I'm set. It's a little big. Off comes the tape, out
comes the dremel, and I take just 1/4-1/2 mm from the
sides of the three LEDs . Now we're cooking with gas.
This thing is BRIGHT and the overdriven LED's put spots
on my eyes. Testing it, I'd say the coverage is not as
wide as the single Nichia solitaire, but the beam seems
to be easily twice as bright when I shine it down the
basement stairs. VERY noticable increase in "Throw"
Playing with this over the next day or so,
I notice several issues:
1) Plastic lens is kinda popping out - it
doesn't like the pressure that the led's are putting on
it. The lens is a little smaller than the inside of the
head and the O-ring allows it to flex enough so that the
edge of the lens is visible. Not good.
2) No O-Ring on the head makes it turn on
and off too easily.
3) Some current leakage exists - shorting
out to side of the case? Sometimes not all 3 LED's are
lit.
4) Difficult to turn off consistently and
sometimes looks like current is leaking through a couple
of the LEDs (they're on super dim) This might be related
to #1 above.
Solutions?
1) remove o-ring from front of lens and
cut a new lens which is SLIGHTLY larger. This fits in
the recess where the O-Ring was and eliminates the issue.
2) Turns out that o-ring I removed in step
1 fits where the other o-ring was.
3) Hmmmmmmm. One of the leads is close to
the side, so I cut it and resolder so the lead is further
away. I then line up the three LED's and put a little
super glue on it to tack the three together.
4) I take some sewing thread and make a
boss on the back of the wires by wrapping it around the
leads then soaking it with a drop of super glue. After
it dries, it definitely serves to push firmly on the "off
switch" in the body.
Looks like everything works fine now. Here's
the fun part. I bought some luminescent paint from www.glowinc.com
and I paint this on the sides and center. After only a
couple of seconds on, the paint is more than charged up
enough to glow brightly . One thing though - the solvent
from the paint WILL attack the plastic parts inside the
Maglite. Let it dry completely outside the flashlight.
The inside of the solitaire head is purple,
and I kinda wish I'd gotten the silver so that there'd
be some light reflected out instead of trapped inside
the head. My choices are to either polish up the inside
or, more likely, put some of that silverized mylar tape
inside. I settle for some mylar tape.
Showing it off to various friends, inevitably
someone tests it out by shining it in their eyes, at which
point they're blinded. When it's turned off, there's a
strong green glow that's thrown from the head, enough
to read by! I'll have to take some pix of this for a later
update.
More fun to follow - just need more time.
Wondering how many LEDs I can fit in a 2xAA Minimag. I'm
thinking 7 would be a good start.........to be continued?
picture shows the 3 LED unit to the right
of the "Half" battery and the 12 volt remote
battery.
