559nm Build in Vintage Flashlight

[ZRaffleticket]

ZRaffleticket! Good to see you're still here, man.

I've been away from the hobby for a while, but am cycling back into it again, seeing what's new, and am planning some new builds. (Every time I leave and come back to this hobby, it gets so much better.) You were the one who inspired me to do my own vintage flashlight builds many years ago (I did several solid copper builds.) Glad to see you're still here and still doing vintage builds.

Damn, that 559 looks pretty in that Ranger. And I love the period nuclear theme. Perfect. I have a gorgeous 3-cell NOS vintage chrome Winchester host that I'm currently looking for that special diode for. The chrome on these old flashlights always looks great with these colors.

Thanks! The vintage builds are nice but admittedly a lot harder without jayrob around since he did so many of them. This one was pretty much deemed a failure and only saw the light of day a few years after it was machined. These modules can handle the scotch tape/ some heat, and don't even ask how the contact board is in there.

Not sure how long you've been out, but we now have cheap cyan diodes and a bunch of new cheap dpss in the green-yellow range. For as sketchy as scotch tape is, it works pretty well for electrically isolating these modules, the heat doesn't affect the performance of these too bad in my experience.

 

[andrewb]

Oh, wow. What happened to jayrob? He was one of the artists here, for sure.

Yeah, I've seen the 473-488 diodes. I have one in my cart from DTR at the moment. I remember when those were unobtanium. 473 is such a pretty color. I have one of the 473 bench lasers, but want to do a vintage handheld now that the diodes are available. That color would go nice against chrome or copper for sure.

Regarding the scotch tape, are you aware of Kapton tape? It's basically a better version of the same idea, specifically for electronics work. Super thin, super tough, and it's high-temp resistant, to 700F+ degrees. Has a ton of uses, one of which is isolation. Definitely worth having a roll in your electronics toolbox.

 

[Sowee7]

Oh, wow. What happened to jayrob? He was one of the artists here, for sure.

Yeah, I've seen the 473-488 diodes. I have one in my cart from DTR at the moment. I remember when those were unobtanium. 473 is such a pretty color. I have one of the 473 bench lasers, but want to do a vintage handheld now that the diodes are available. That color would go nice against chrome or copper for sure.

Regarding the scotch tape, are you aware of Kapton tape? It's basically a better version of the same idea, specifically for electronics work. Super thin, super tough, and it's high-temp resistant, to 700F+ degrees. Has a ton of uses, one of which is isolation. Definitely worth having a roll in your electronics toolbox.

cool, the 473nm bench lasers are actually dpss based on doubled yag/yvo4, the diodes are still extremely rare though

 

[ZRaffleticket]

Yeah the 47xnm diodes came and went fast. Someone has some nichia diodes for sale in that range right now though on the forum. 488s will probably be around for a while, sharp pumped out tons of them.

Pretty sure jayrob checks in every now and again but isn't all that active anymore. Rich (lifetime17) is the go to for most builds right now, I think trinh also still makes them but is having some issues with PayPal.

I have heard of kapton tape and used it way back on the 473nm vintage build to do the same thing. Didn't have any on hand for this one, but I don't think I needed the extra thermal conductivity for these modules, unlike the lasever ones.