How to put a Luxeon Star into a Maglite Flashlight

Remove the flashlight head.
Remove the flashlight bulb.
Break out the glass on the bulb, feed a wire through the center and solder it into the end. This is the positive wire lead. Solder another wire to the outside of the bulb. Put the bulb back into the holder.
Take the heat sink you purchased from me, and set the Luxeon Star base (LXHL-MW1D, or LXHL=LW6C) on the sink, and measure where the bolt holes will be. Drill the holes. Use 1/2" long 4-40 bolts, and bolt the LS on. Drill another hole or two more holes for the positive and negative wires. Press the heat sink into the flashlight, having passed the wires through the two holes for the wires. Paying attention to the '+' and '-' signs on the LS, solder the wires onto the LS.
If you use a 3 D cell Maglite, use at least 1 ohm resistance, and it should be a 1 watt resistor. If you use a two D cell, and a 1 watt Luxeon Star, you need a boost regulator. If you use the 5 watt and a two D cell, you need to use my CR123 battery adapter or 3-To-D adapter, and a 5 watt 2.2 ohm, or 5 watt .5 ohm resistor. The 2.2 ohms will give less light and longer battery life. The .5 ohms will give greatest brightness. Or if you want to live on the edge, go direct drive (not recomended, but it will be intensely bright). You can also use a 5 D cell Mag, and a 5 watt, or a 6D Mag, and at least a .5 ohm resistor.
To mount the LXHL-NX05 optics, you will need to make your own optics holder. On the reflector, there is a line above the tube part. Cut right there. File the cut nice and smooth for appearance. (The reflector can be put back in). Now, cut the tube part 1/2" long. File a slight groove in one end. File the other end smooth. This is your optics holder. Epoxy it onto the LS, with the end that has the groove facing out. The groove is to be small, so the notch on the NX05 optics will set into it. Use a very small amount of epoxy, and epoxy the holder onto the LS, and then extremely carefully epoxy the optics onto the holder, taking great care not to get any epoxy on the lens or the inside of the lens. You may figure out a better way to do this part.
If you use the 30mm optics, it will set on the Luxeon Star, and the head will hold the optics in place.
Put the reflector back into the head, and screw the head back on, and you are done.

I will add photos, and possibly add more descriptions. I did this in haste, so it may need some tweaking. I wanted to get this done as I have a lot of requests by people on how to use the Luxeon Star kits for this modification of a Maglite flashlight.

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Last updated: 05-06-2002