[ti-force]

Well, I've been carrying a Quark 123-2 R2 Tactical for quite a while now, and I've just fallen in love with these lights, so I decided to buy a Quark 123-2 with the newer R5 emitter. Only problem is, the one i purchased had the Regular UI which isn't really my preferred UI, so I started thinking about modifying the light somehow. You know how flashaholics start to think, it's all over then.

Anyway, I ordered some of the Shiningbeam 1.4A drivers, and then I let the modifying commence. As usual, I thought I'd share some pictures with anyone who's interested:




First things first, I opened the head up and removed the emitter/MCPCB combo. This is what it looks like under there:





This is what the driver assembly in the Regular UI Quark looks like:







Driver removed. It looks like a little smiley face.:





I decided to use the bottom board of the Quark driver as the contact point for battery negative and battery positive, so I had to separate the two boards:







Then I soldered and glued the Shiningbeam board on top of the bottom Quark board. I also added an additional 7135 chip; The devil made me do it haha... :


Before additional 7135:



After additional 7135:





Glued the driver in:





Put some Arctic Silver 5 under the MCPCB for better thermal transfer and soldered everything back together:






The head is completely re-assembled. I even straightened out the emitter before re-assembly. It was slightly off center, now it's perfectly centered





Now I have a new EDC favorite. This light can be ran on 2xCR123 primaries or 1x17670. I'll probably run it on an AW 17670 most of the time because efficiency is greater with the 3.7v of a single Li-ion cell than the roughly 5v of 2x Lithium Primaries. If anyone is wondering why, it's because these drivers burn off any additional voltage above emitter vf (voltage forward). For example, if the emitter has a vf of 3v, an If (current forward) of 1.7A or 1700mA, and you have an input voltage of 5v, then the driver must dissipate 2v as waste heat. If we take 2v and multiply this by 1.7 (If) then we get 2 x 1.7 = 3.4 watts of waste heat. That's pretty significant. I measured the vf of my emitter, and it's 3.08v, so this light should run in regulation until the battery is depleted.

I wish I had another R5 head that wasn't modified so I could take some comparison beam shots, but I don't right now. Maybe I'll buy another R5 light soon, so I can take some comparison shots. Until then, I've taken comparison shots using a Quark 123-2 R2, Quark 123-2 R2 neutral white emitter and Quark 123-2 Turbo R5


All pictures were taken with the same camera settings in manual mode and the Pine tree is about 23 feet from each light. I had to take the pictures with the lights in front of the camera because the camera wouldn't zoom out enough to capture all of the spill.


Control Shot:





Side by side:

















*UPDATE* I now have another Quark 123-2 Tactical with an XP-G R5 emitter, so I decided to take comparison beam shots. Something I noticed immediately, is that my Shiningbeam Quark appears to have one of the XP-G R5's that has a wider hot spot. This has been discussed before in another thread, but now I've witnessed it first hand. Also, I made a gif so it's easier to see the difference.

[Admin]

Спасибо за подробное техническое руководство. Анимированные .gif картинки очень удобны, возьмем на заметку. В России, идея создания подобных анимированных сравнительных тестов еще не прижилась, но будем стремиться.

[ti-force]

 Сообщение от Admin :

Спасибо за подробное техническое руководство. Анимированные .gif картинки очень удобны, возьмем на заметку. В России, идея создания подобных анимированных сравнительных тестов еще не прижилась, но будем стремиться.

You're welcome. I hope others find this useful. Also, I added more gif images to show the difference in beam profile, plus the Fenix TK10 and TK11 are pretty common so others might get a better idea of the beam profile of these lights.

[Hocum]

Why Quark???
It's have 10 years guarantee...

[ti-force]

 Сообщение от Hocum :

Why Quark???
It's have 10 years guarantee...

I purchased the light used/not new for a low price. The light was Regular UI, and I prefer the Tactical UI, so chances were great that the light would sit, and not be put to use, so I modified it. I also recently purchased Quark Turbo heads that have been damaged by high voltage, (which would not be covered under warranty) and I opened those heads up to swap the emitter.