danefex
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- Joined
- Aug 30, 2010
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Greetings folks.....! Here's a review of the Jayrob modded (flipped backwards) 1.9A maglite laser gun that I've decided to call the DTJRFX.
Before I continue I want to sincerely thank Jayrob and DTR for making this possible. Actually it almost wasn't possible, at least not at first or the way I wanted it to be. The story goes like this. Somewhere about 3 months ago I came across this litegrip gun handle by sureshot made for maglites.
After I saw a picture & video of what this grip was made for, I immediately thought 'laser gun yesss!!'. This is of course thanks to builders like DTR and Jayrob, specifically for this powerful maglite laser!
Right away I thought to myself, I had to have one - there was no question about it. The only problem was I didn't like the way it looked with the maglite centered over the grip handle, it didn't look very 'gunlike'. It had to be this way though because maglites are forward clicky's and that's just the way the handle was made by sureshot to 'fire' the flashlight :thinking: I couldn't have it, it had to be different. I thought about it for a few minutes & took the flashlight components and reversed them to see how that worked.
It looked way better to me with the handle hitting the switch at the rear of the maglite. Now it looked like a gun, the only problem was making it work like one. :thinking:
Here's the deal
I got in touch with Jayrob and passed this idea by him to see if there was a way to reverse engineer a maglite so the switch was towards the rear rather than the front. At first Jay was hesitant, pretty much telling me there wasn't. Then after a few hours, a few more messages and even some drawings - low and behold Jay came up with a way to make it work! I've said it before and I'll say it again, I truly feel privileged to know a guy like Jayrob. I have nothing but respect for this man!!
The build
There were 2 parts to completing this project, one of which I couldn't have done without Jay's help. The more difficult 1st part IMO was just that, having the maglite body switched backwards so the clicky was in the back rather than the front. Jay has a thread on how this was done here.
The 2nd part was simple, which was just assembling the components. This involved mounting a preset (1.9A) FlexmodP3 driver to a massive heatsink that fills the entire head of the maglite, soldering a wire from the battery contact board to the driver & soldering 3 wires to the diode. (case pin used) After that it was getting some 32600 batteries and putting it all together. A 1.9A maglite laser gun! I'll let the pictures & video tell the rest.
Pictures
.
.
.
.
Now something interesting happened to the way this laser functions since the time it was built and the time I am writing this. One of the batteries was shorted out and damaged recently when I was traveling. The TSA apparently saw it in my luggage & had suspicions. I'm guessing they tested it somehow & blew it out - because it's siding was burnt off in one of my bags. I had no notice from them about this or any inspection, but the battery was near dead & burnt out. I taped it up & charged it in a protected environment in case it blows up because it's unstable. After 2 full days it only puts out 3V instead of 3.7 (4Vpeak). Because of the voltage input indifference, the driver doesn't have enough push to send 1.9A to the diode. This lack of voltage causes the driver to discharge before reaching 1.9A and consequently delivering a nanosecond partial charge to the diode. The result from this is obvious in the videos, because no matter how fast you're moving your arms around our pulling the trigger - you're always firing a perfectly, equally timed single nanosecond laser pulse. THAT is what makes firing this thing so unique and addictive :beer:
Anyways, until my replacement batteries show up I can only use the laser in low power mode. This came from an accident but has now yielded 2 preferable outcomes. (1)The laser was only high power mode, but now can be used at low power mode. Now I can demo the laser to people indoors without worrying about blinding anyone I'm not shooting. (2) Because of the voltage shortage to the driver, the laser fires in single pulse mode. What this means is no matter how slowly or quickly the trigger is pulled, each shot fired is a short pulse that geniunely resembles a laser blast. This is not firing short incriments of a beam from quick trigger action, just one short perfect laser pulse everytime. Have a look... :beer:
After making & submitting that video, I was told that it was missing the pew pewing. They were right, but I also thought of this originally but wasn't going to worry about crossing that bridge until I got to it. The next day I went out and got this...
Within a half an hour I took the toy gun apart to gut it's soundboard & circuits to install in my laser
I'm only using electrical tape right now because I haven't drilled out the host & the surefire grip yet for a permanent install. For now I'm mounting the soundboard trigger directly behind the surefire trigger with double sided tape for (1) height adjustment to accurately time the soundboard PEW when the laser fires, and (2) so it sticks.
I also drilled out a lens cover to the size of the button on the trigger to cover it because I needed the additional space between fully pressing it in & shooting.
Here's the soundboard & battery going in the 'extra space' Jay had from his original design.
Again, the electrical tape is temporary just to hold and test these components.
And here's the result...
Again I want to thank Jayrob, DTR and litegrip and this forum for making one of my childhood dreams a reality. I finally own a laser gun, capable of shooting in low and high power modes - and I just cannot put the thing down. Thanks for reading :beer:
UPDATED 2 DAYS AFTER POSTING:
I ended up not throwing away the other toy laser guns & decided to see what I could do with them instead, take a look
UPDATED AGAIN 2 MONTHS AFTER POSTING, 07/09/11:
Just a follow up folks, I just wanted to update what I did with the toy laser guns from the original project. Here's the short story... Since the maglite project I've been working more with the toy guns trying to make them into monopulsing laser guns. For 2 months I've been working on building a circuit with a very respected member on this forum (a million thanks HIMNL9) and redesigning the guns to make this possible. After testing and installing the IC into these laser guns they are finally where I want them to be! Monopulse firing laser guns, meaning no matter how fast or slow you squeeze the trigger - the laser will fire one short perfect pulse each time! Have a look
:beer:
Before I continue I want to sincerely thank Jayrob and DTR for making this possible. Actually it almost wasn't possible, at least not at first or the way I wanted it to be. The story goes like this. Somewhere about 3 months ago I came across this litegrip gun handle by sureshot made for maglites.
After I saw a picture & video of what this grip was made for, I immediately thought 'laser gun yesss!!'. This is of course thanks to builders like DTR and Jayrob, specifically for this powerful maglite laser!
Right away I thought to myself, I had to have one - there was no question about it. The only problem was I didn't like the way it looked with the maglite centered over the grip handle, it didn't look very 'gunlike'. It had to be this way though because maglites are forward clicky's and that's just the way the handle was made by sureshot to 'fire' the flashlight :thinking: I couldn't have it, it had to be different. I thought about it for a few minutes & took the flashlight components and reversed them to see how that worked.
It looked way better to me with the handle hitting the switch at the rear of the maglite. Now it looked like a gun, the only problem was making it work like one. :thinking:
Here's the deal
I got in touch with Jayrob and passed this idea by him to see if there was a way to reverse engineer a maglite so the switch was towards the rear rather than the front. At first Jay was hesitant, pretty much telling me there wasn't. Then after a few hours, a few more messages and even some drawings - low and behold Jay came up with a way to make it work! I've said it before and I'll say it again, I truly feel privileged to know a guy like Jayrob. I have nothing but respect for this man!!
The build
There were 2 parts to completing this project, one of which I couldn't have done without Jay's help. The more difficult 1st part IMO was just that, having the maglite body switched backwards so the clicky was in the back rather than the front. Jay has a thread on how this was done here.
The 2nd part was simple, which was just assembling the components. This involved mounting a preset (1.9A) FlexmodP3 driver to a massive heatsink that fills the entire head of the maglite, soldering a wire from the battery contact board to the driver & soldering 3 wires to the diode. (case pin used) After that it was getting some 32600 batteries and putting it all together. A 1.9A maglite laser gun! I'll let the pictures & video tell the rest.
Pictures
.
.
.
.
Now something interesting happened to the way this laser functions since the time it was built and the time I am writing this. One of the batteries was shorted out and damaged recently when I was traveling. The TSA apparently saw it in my luggage & had suspicions. I'm guessing they tested it somehow & blew it out - because it's siding was burnt off in one of my bags. I had no notice from them about this or any inspection, but the battery was near dead & burnt out. I taped it up & charged it in a protected environment in case it blows up because it's unstable. After 2 full days it only puts out 3V instead of 3.7 (4Vpeak). Because of the voltage input indifference, the driver doesn't have enough push to send 1.9A to the diode. This lack of voltage causes the driver to discharge before reaching 1.9A and consequently delivering a nanosecond partial charge to the diode. The result from this is obvious in the videos, because no matter how fast you're moving your arms around our pulling the trigger - you're always firing a perfectly, equally timed single nanosecond laser pulse. THAT is what makes firing this thing so unique and addictive :beer:
Anyways, until my replacement batteries show up I can only use the laser in low power mode. This came from an accident but has now yielded 2 preferable outcomes. (1)The laser was only high power mode, but now can be used at low power mode. Now I can demo the laser to people indoors without worrying about blinding anyone I'm not shooting. (2) Because of the voltage shortage to the driver, the laser fires in single pulse mode. What this means is no matter how slowly or quickly the trigger is pulled, each shot fired is a short pulse that geniunely resembles a laser blast. This is not firing short incriments of a beam from quick trigger action, just one short perfect laser pulse everytime. Have a look... :beer:
After making & submitting that video, I was told that it was missing the pew pewing. They were right, but I also thought of this originally but wasn't going to worry about crossing that bridge until I got to it. The next day I went out and got this...
Within a half an hour I took the toy gun apart to gut it's soundboard & circuits to install in my laser
I'm only using electrical tape right now because I haven't drilled out the host & the surefire grip yet for a permanent install. For now I'm mounting the soundboard trigger directly behind the surefire trigger with double sided tape for (1) height adjustment to accurately time the soundboard PEW when the laser fires, and (2) so it sticks.
I also drilled out a lens cover to the size of the button on the trigger to cover it because I needed the additional space between fully pressing it in & shooting.
Here's the soundboard & battery going in the 'extra space' Jay had from his original design.
Again, the electrical tape is temporary just to hold and test these components.
And here's the result...
Again I want to thank Jayrob, DTR and litegrip and this forum for making one of my childhood dreams a reality. I finally own a laser gun, capable of shooting in low and high power modes - and I just cannot put the thing down. Thanks for reading :beer:
UPDATED 2 DAYS AFTER POSTING:
I ended up not throwing away the other toy laser guns & decided to see what I could do with them instead, take a look
UPDATED AGAIN 2 MONTHS AFTER POSTING, 07/09/11:
Just a follow up folks, I just wanted to update what I did with the toy laser guns from the original project. Here's the short story... Since the maglite project I've been working more with the toy guns trying to make them into monopulsing laser guns. For 2 months I've been working on building a circuit with a very respected member on this forum (a million thanks HIMNL9) and redesigning the guns to make this possible. After testing and installing the IC into these laser guns they are finally where I want them to be!
Monopulse firing laser guns, meaning no matter how fast or slow you squeeze the trigger - the laser will fire one short perfect pulse each time! Have a look :beer:
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