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TS10 emitter swap between brass and aluminum? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by DimmedNeon to c/flashlight

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Is 3000k in the standard aluminum body possible? Is it possible to then put the standard aluminum TS10's emitters to the brass body?

I like 3000k as a night/bathroom lamp, but brass is quite heavy. It would be great to have 3000k in the standard aluminum body.

The pic shows the furthest I dared to go, which is still just the beginning:)

My limitations are:

I'm a noob. Never did an emitter swap. Never disassembled a flashlight. Limited experience with a soldering iron from a summer job 15 years ago.
I don't have a reflow pads nor a hot air gun.
I only have a soldering iron, so the 4 wires are probably the maximum I can manage. I'm afraid of that too, though.
IDK how to disassemble the electronics out of the metal head. Is the only way to remove the driver and the emitter PCB to remove the screw and then desolder the 3 wires? Or is the screw enough without any soldering necessary? Did any of you disassemble the TS10 yet?

...

Thank you folks for this amazing community, an oasis of peacefulness. You are such chill friendly folks:) Long time occasional lurker.

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[–] MasterNate 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You could just desolder the wires and pull the led board (MCPCB) out of each light the solder the whole board into the light you want.

The trickiest part is soldering the small wires, if you have fairly steady hands and a soldering iron you can do it.

Here is the MCPCB removed from the light

Here they are going back in

I actually changed the emitters to colored ones. But you don't need to actually change the emitters, just pull the boards and switch them.

[–] DimmedNeon 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for such a detailed answer! I see on your reddit profile you shared a bunch of very useful posts with detailed photos of TS10 bezel removal and MCPCB removal Should be a breeze after studying that.

[–] MasterNate 5 points 1 year ago

My pleasure, the bezel can be a serious pain. Hope it goes easy for you. Feel free to reach out should you have questions.

[–] toadiesss 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Late to the party but having ordered the new copper ts10 and already owning brass, my first thought was why not only swap the head? Brass head on aluminium body would look interesting.

[–] DimmedNeon 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good question. Two reasons.

Weight.
Not wanting to run the risk of galvanic corrosion between brass and aluminum. My chemistry knowledge is virtually nil, so maybe this is nonsense. But TS10s are nice enough that I don't want to even risk ruining them by doing something that doesn't bring enough value. (Ruining them by trying the MCPCB swap, though, that's a different story 😀 )

[–] toadiesss 2 points 1 year ago

Yes you did say weight initially but I figured most of it was in the body! And I guess in time there is a risk of that (I was thinking brass/copper from my own collection as they are compatible)