# The Zombie



## OverTheHill (Dec 3, 2004)

Here is my latest light which is a quad XP-G R5 using a Ledil Cute4 optic. Not exactly ground breaking considering everyone has moved on to using XM-Ls now but I wanted a solid performer that I could use for my mid-week training rides of around two hours without a huge battery.




























I eventually decided upon a quad XP-G design using the Cute4 optic and for the first time (for me) a proper driver - a TaskLED b2Flex. With its upgraded spec. it was now capable of pushing the XP-Gs to their rated max. of 1500mA although I would probably be running them somewhere around 1000mA to achieve my target runtime of 2 hours+ from a 4-cell battery.

I bought a Myford ML7 lathe last year and have been dabbling with it somewhat and made a couple of small, single XP-G headlights but nothing really serious. I had never used my 4-jaw chuck and inspired by yetibetty's latest Nosey design, I started to consider what I could achieve.

Another design I really liked was Troutie's latest Darkness Dominator, which I think is one of the best looking lights on the market bar none. I realised that in the 4-jaw chuck I could achieve a similar shape but without the obvious enhancements that the DD has.

Cutting a long story short, I basically formed the tear-drop shape and bored out front and back. One mistake I did make was to make the faceplate after instead of bolting it on to the lump beforehand and then cutting the shape, but hey, you live and you learn. 










And finally, why The Zombie?

Well due to my machining ineptitude this light came back from the dead so many times, it just had to be!

I would also like to give a special mention to my good friend and inspiration yetibetty without whose help and expertise this light may never have seen the dark of night. :thumbsup:

*Specification*

LEDs: Quad XP-G board - LED-Shop by LED-TECH.de
Optic: Ledil Cute4 (17 degree) - LED-Shop by LED-TECH.de
Driver: b2Flex - TaskLED
Switch: Apem ISR3SAD200 - Farnell United Kingdom
Power connector: 2.5mm DC Socket - Maplin Electronics
Status LED: 2mA 3mm HE Red - Maplin Electronics
Handlebar bracket: Exposure QR - Exposure Lights


----------



## yetibetty (Dec 24, 2007)

Nice to see its finally alive, a job well done.


----------



## savagemann (Jan 14, 2008)

Nice work!!
Looks great.

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk


----------



## Vancbiker (May 25, 2005)

OverTheHill said:


> Here is my latest light which is a quad XP-G R5 using a Ledil Cute4 optic. Not exactly ground breaking considering everyone has moved on to using XM-Ls now


Nice use of offset turning! Proof that one doesn't need CNC for complex shapes.

You're not the last to use XPGs. I finally started machining again on a bar light that I started on about a year ago. It's going to be a 6 up XPG with CUTE3 optics.


----------



## Road_Runner (Mar 31, 2009)

That looks very, very good. :thumbsup:

Are you going to anodise it?


----------



## OverTheHill (Dec 3, 2004)

Thanks for the compliments guys.

Road_Runner:



> Are you going to anodise it?


I guess that would be the icing on the cake but this hobby is nutty enough (time and cost-wise) without getting into that as well 

I quite like the polished finish anyway but I have to admit the anodising thread is very entertaining though! All kudos to those guys that can pull it off. :thumbsup:


----------



## stu-flo (Oct 30, 2011)

Great looking light. Just shows what can be achieved on a manual lathe. 
That's the way we had to do it in my apprenticeship. 
Love the old school way. Really makes you think outside the box on how to machine what you want. 
Just built a light weight six up xpg and just finishing building a couple of 6 ups but fully sealed. 
Ps I've got a few engineering bits for sale on eBay. 1 lathe finishes on wed lunchtime. Also rotary table and loads of other bits people on here would prob be interested in just don't know where to put it on here. Basically toolmaking and injection molding company closing down. ;(


----------



## Vancbiker (May 25, 2005)

stu-flo said:


> Ps I've got a few engineering bits for sale on eBay. 1 lathe finishes on wed lunchtime. Also rotary table and loads of other bits people on here would prob be interested in just don't know where to put it on here. Basically toolmaking and injection molding company closing down. ;(


Give us a link or item number to reference so we know if we are looking at your items specifically.


----------



## troutie-mtb (Sep 20, 2007)

Good looker there OverTheHill :thumbsup:
Manual machines rock its great fun making swarfe .

And thanks for the compliment re the DD


----------



## stu-flo (Oct 30, 2011)

dont mean to hijack this thread, if i'm allowed to advertise in the forum i'll put a post up.
this is a lathe for sale on ebay from our company.eBay - The UK's Online Marketplace

rotary table for sale. going dirt cheap by the looks of it so far.eBay - The UK's Online Marketplace

i've got loads more stuff inc. honing machine, bridgeport mill, boring head with R8 collet, micrometers, slip gauges, height guages, etc etc. as i said if im allowed to i'll put a post up on here with everything. 
if your after anything in particular message me and i've probably got one somewhere.

again appologise for hijacking this post. very good looking light tho.


----------



## Goldigger (Nov 6, 2009)

Looks good:thumbsup:
Whats the total weight?

Reminds me of trouties 7up..


----------



## OverTheHill (Dec 3, 2004)

148 grammes for the light head including Exposure mounting wedge and bolt.



> Reminds me of trouties 7up


Praise indeed.


----------



## troutie-mtb (Sep 20, 2007)

OverTheHill said:


> 148 grammes for the light head including Exposure mounting wedge and bolt.
> 
> Praise indeed.


Lighter by 2 grams than the seven up too


----------



## emu26 (Jun 23, 2008)

Very nice looking light OTH.

Here I was looking at that lathe pic trying to work what was wrong that it wasn't shaping the blank evenly, and then Vancbiker educates me about lathes. Nice craftsmanship :thumbsup:


----------



## OldMTBfreak (Apr 8, 2006)

I have to admit, I did look at that picture for a while.


----------



## SBJohn (Feb 5, 2010)

OTH
That is a really cool-looking light. I just about burned up the arrow keys looking at the finished light and the billet in the chuck. Finally, I think I get it. Don't want to admit to being weak minded in a public forum but how did you make the bezel? Parted off a piece of the billet? Truly an inspirational light. Thanks for sharing.


----------



## OverTheHill (Dec 3, 2004)

Hopefully this diagram might make it easier for some to envisage how to achieve this shape:










The square is the original section you are machining down. It needs to be large enough so that you can offset the workpiece enough in the 4-jaw chuck to achieve the radius you are looking for. If you look at the picture I originally posted of the workpiece in the lathe it should become clear. EDIT: Just in case it's not obvious, you need to turn the workpiece around in the chuck to machine the radius on the other side.

For anyone attempting this you will need to clamp some counterbalance pieces of something like steel or brass on the offset side of the workpiece (inside the RH chuck jaw in the above pic) to smooth out the rotations of the lathe chuck. PM me if you want further explanations of how to do this.

SBJohn

By bezel I'm assuming you are referring to the faceplate i.e. that which holds the optic in the front. There are two ways you could do this. Three if you count the hard way that I did it! :nono:

1. As you speculated, machine the shape longer than you need and part off the plate to the required thickness. You will need a good parting off tool and technique to achieve a decent finish on the back of the plate. I would recommend boring the optic aperture and drilling the screw holes before parting as well.

2. Cut a suitable thickness plate (2mm in my case) and drill and tap the screw fixing holes and fix the plate. Then do the offset machining with the plate in place. You will need to be very precise with marking out the position for the screw holes prior to machining using this method.

I hope that helps. It would be great if others could start producing interesting shaped lights and shared their techniques here. I would take it as a great compliment if anyone wanted to take any of my ideas and use them in their own design.


----------



## brad72 (Jun 12, 2009)

Light looks fantastic OTH :thumbsup: I love off centre machining. The results always look great. Well done also by the way getting the front plate parted off so well. It is always quite hard especially will alloy to eliminate the machining marks. I assume you used a nice sharp high speed steel parting blade. I have tungsten inserts with a 2mm tungsten for my small lathe but tool steel always give excellent results. 

I have been looking at different shapes playing on CAD but now just need to find some time. I have a DRO for my mill coming and will add a lathe to my back shed soon so should be able to make some more chips.


----------



## yetibetty (Dec 24, 2007)

Just a quick note on offset turning. If you have room left in the chuck then add a counterweight between billet and the innermost jaw.. This will make things a lot safer and stop the lathe shaking itself to bits.

I have an old lump of steel in one of the jaws here as an example. Once again nice work OTH. Look forward to a beam shot.


----------



## OverTheHill (Dec 3, 2004)

brad72



> Light looks fantastic OTH I love off centre machining. The results always look great. Well done also by the way getting the front plate parted off so well. It is always quite hard especially will alloy to eliminate the machining marks. I assume you used a nice sharp high speed steel parting blade. I have tungsten inserts with a 2mm tungsten for my small lathe but tool steel always give excellent results.


I didn't actually use the parting-off option, I used option 3 which was to bolt a plate on after I had machined the shape. This required trying to reset the workpiece in the chuck exactly as I had it before using a dial gauge to relocate the workpiece in the chuck.

It didn't turn out as difficult as I imagined but it was certainly a good introduction into using a dial gauge!

For those that are interested I have annotated my offset diagram.










o is the offset from the centreline of the workpiece to the centreline of the chuck jaws to achieve a radius of r

t is the minimum size of billet you will need to be able to hold it in the 4-jaw chuck to achieve the required offset for a radius of r and a finished shape height of h.


----------



## BrianMc (Jan 5, 2010)

The 'Not square not round' look is handsome, in both this and troutie's 7-up design. Even though I have no lathe I enjoy seeing how it was done. Perseverance through the resurrections sure paid off!

BrianMc


----------



## OverTheHill (Dec 3, 2004)

I went out for a ride last night to see how the new light performed. It was a really nice, even, beam pattern and driving at 1.5A seemed to give just the right amount of flood and throw.

I took this beamshot on a naff old automatic camera with no manual settings.


----------



## OverTheHill (Dec 3, 2004)

As a post script to this thread I thought I would update what has happened since building the light. On my first real ride on the trails with a friend I realised that something wasn't quite right with the light. He was using an older 4 x XP-G light using individual Carclo 10417 optics being driven at 1.2A by a DX driver.

Even with the Zombie at the max of 1.5A it was nowhere near as bright as his light and the beam pattern also seemed off. On returning home I checked the spec sheet and realised that the Cute-4 optic I had was for the XR-E which has a totally different die to the XP-G and as such is incompatible. Searching around I found the best quad available would be the Ledil GT4.

Although the GT4 is the same 35mm diameter as the Cute-4, it is much shallower in depth so rather than machine the Zombie case down I elected to turn up a new cylindrical design.










To cut a long story short, the beam coming out of the new light is much more focussed and brighter than my friend's light even when driven at the same current of 1.2A. I thought I would post up my error in case anyone else out there was considering using the Cute-4 with XP-Gs.


----------



## Vancbiker (May 25, 2005)

This Cutter page shows a CUTE4 SS is available for the XPG...

Cutter Electronics

Use the pull down box to see the options.


----------



## OverTheHill (Dec 3, 2004)

Vancbiker said:


> This Cutter page shows a CUTE4 SS is available for the XPG...
> 
> Cutter Electronics
> 
> Use the pull down box to see the options.


If you look at the options again Vancbiker you will see that the 4-way XP-G option is actually specified as the GT4. Ledil don't actually make a Cute-4 for the XP-G, only the XR-E.


----------



## Vancbiker (May 25, 2005)

OverTheHill said:


> If you look at the options again Vancbiker you will see that the 4-way XP-G option is actually specified as the GT4. Ledil don't actually make a Cute-4 for the XP-G, only the XR-E.


:blush: oops! I just scanned the list and saw the 4up with the cute3 in the pic. Memo to self, read the page!


----------



## OverTheHill (Dec 3, 2004)

Vancbiker said:


> :blush: oops! I just scanned the list and saw the 4up with the cute3 in the pic. Memo to self, read the page!


I must admit I did a double-take myself when first looking at the drop-down list.  Then I noticed it said GT4.


----------

