At the suggestion of Doug P. (Quickbeam on CPF), I took a look at the possibility
of replacing the existing tailcap on the Xenergy with an adapter and a tailswitch. I got
a hold of one of the Xenergy's and determined that a simple boring and tapping of the
existing tailcap allows it to host a Kroll switch. The tail switch allows for momentary or
constant on and the side switch now provides the three light modes: 3 LED's, 6 LED's
and incandescent along with a fourth "Lock-Out" mode. Ergonomically as well as
functionally, this modification is an outstanding improvement on the stock light, in my
opinion:
Below, a before and after detail of the tailcap modification:
Upon further consideration, I couldn't leave this light alone with just a tail switch addition.
By replacing the 2x123 cells with one Copia 3.7 Volt Li-Ion, the 5 mm LED's seemed to
be operating at or near spec. I determined that I could probably put a 1 Watt SE Luxeon
LED in place of the Incandescent bulb. The 3.7 Volt Li-Ion in direct drive (no current regulation),
drives the Luxeon at about 700 mA. This is double the spec but these LED's have been successfully
driven at much higher rates. I needed to come up with a webbed thermal path for passing the head
from the LED to the body of the light. I used Arctic Silver epoxy to bond two strips of copper
braid to the LED slug. This braid was then channeled between the LED's and bonded with more
Arctic Silver to the inside bore of the aluminum body. I used a die grinder to remove portions of
the plastic LED module base and expose contact points in the Al for the copper braid.
Above you can see the LED and its soldered "pin" leads as well as it seated in the base.
Once the epoxy was mixed and spread under and over the copper braid, there was no time
for photos.
The Side Emitter LED's light was managed rather well by the reflector and the reflector was
adjusted in such a manner that the perimeter LED's had little effect on the beam pattern. A
beam shot on a white piece of paper is shown below. At 1 meter, the 1 watt LED provided
a lux reading of 520. From other mods where I used LED's from the same batch, I have been
given the impression that these particular LED's are not high in luminous output. None the less,
the combination of 3 and 6 5 mm LED's and then this SE LED make this a useful light.
