NEW: Primary Seal Ring DIY Kit

Hi Folks,

As most of you know, I've been installing the Primary Seal Ring in both Ready-Made and Blue-Label lights for the past few months.  Now those of you have have pre-PSR lights can order your own kit if you are feeling crafty. If not, you can return the light for an upgrade. Just to recap, the PSR is a 100% custom made part from Smalley Steel Ring Co., engineered specifically for sealing the Alpha window.

Primary Seal Ring (PSR) and nylon-jaw installation pliers

DIY Upgrade: Pricing is on the sales page of my website :)

I really (really) recommend getting the nylon-jaw pliers if you plan to DIY. See the "note" below. I do not warranty any damage you do to your own light :)

Mail-In Upgrade: The cost to send in a Ready-Made light for upgrade is $20  This covers the ring, the labor to install it, a thorough cleaning of the light, replacement of any o-rings that need it, and return shipping. Blue-Label owners pay only $5 for return shipping. The PSR and installation is provided (free) as part of the Blue-Label "Lifetime Upgrade" program. Membership has it's privileges as they say :)

If you want to send your light, please email me in advance to make arrangements: jason@darksucks.com

PLEASE NOTE: The nylon-jaw pliers are an option when you order a PSR kit. I spent months trying to find the best pliers for the job, in order to make DIY installations easy and reduce the chance you will damage the light during the install.

Doing an install with the bent-nose pliers I use in the video is tricky! The nylon pliers are dead simple.

Each installation deforms the jaws very slightly, because the jaws are nylon and the ring is stainless steel. However, you should get 6+ installations out of a set of jaws...so essentially a lifetime of use. I do sell extra sets of the nylon jaws if you are the kind of person that always likes to have a backup :)

New Retail Product: Stor-A-Cell Battery Carriers

Hi all, I guess you can tell I'm on a bit of a roll here with the new products. As always, my goal is to bring you more awesome and these little battery carriers are just another step in that direction. The carriers are made the the good ol' USA and were originally designed for pilots to keep spare batteries organized in their flight bags.

This is a 15 second exposure. Check out the "moon shine" material!
Most of us just call it Glow in the Dark or GITD :) 

It just so happens they'll do the same job in your junk drawer. They are also great for travel or if your job requires you to have spare batteries on had. Of course they also work with rechargeable batteries, so keep an eye out on the blog because I'll be getting in some Sanyo Eneloop NiMh AAA and AA batteries in the next couple of weeks!

A monkey in your mailbox...

That's a catchy title right? Don't worry, we are talking digital monkeys.

Merry Christmas!

I've signed up with MailChimp to help streamline my workflow. That's a fancy way of saying, my blog will now send you an email if there is a new post and you've signed up for the mailing list. In the past, I've sent out "announcement" type emails separately. If you wanted blog content, then you had to (separately) visit the blog and/or sign up specifically for email updates.

Monkeys love email! Or so I hear. 

I hope this is a positive improvement, and I've merged those lists and now all updates will take the form of blog posts, which will get pushed to your email inbox automatically. Basically this saves me from managing multiple lists and trying to remember where I'm supposed to publish what information. It will also mean those of you on the mailing list will actually get emails from time to time :)

How will we know if it's working? This post (yes this very one) should trigger MailChimp to send you this post in an email at 6:00AM Pacific time tomorrow. You will not get an email if I have not posted any new content during the day. Of course if you have not already signed up on the mailing list you won't be getting any Christmas email from Prometheus Lights! If you feel left out, you can go here and get on the spankin' new mailing list :)

VIDEO: Shop-Made Pneumatic Press

Hi folks, just a quick YouTube video of a pneumatic press I made to provide the correct pressure when setting the thermal adhesive tape I use to mount the LEDs in my lights.

NEW VIDEO: Tools of the Trade - "Spaghetti" Tubing Cutter

Hey folks, I bought this broken tool on eBay and managed to get it working again! Thought I'd share some of the "behind the scenes" stuff that I do to make the Alpha (and running a flashlight business) possible.

Portable Illumination: 100% off the grid (Brunton Solaris USB)

Hi folks,

I've been using a Brunton solar panel to keep my lights charged up when I'm away from the wall. It really makes a rechargeable light into the ultimate illumination tool and travel companion. As long as the sun shines during the day, you can run your light at night. Backup batteries? Bah! The sun is my backup battery. Okay, I carry one or two spares, but I don't need a bag full.

Get rid of: the expense of tons of disposable batteries, the waste of throwing them away, the weight of carrying them, the hassle of finding batteries in foreign countries, worrying about rationing your battery power, the need to rely on the wall or a store being open to make sure you can see when it gets dark...and I promise it will :)

The Solaris kept me and two Alpha's going for 10 days in the Utah back-country

If you haven't seen my blog post about my Utah trip, you can check it out here.

The cool thing about the Solaris is that it's got a USB port...so you can charge any USB device you have, like your phone, tablet, camera, whateva.

Prometheus Lights is now an authorized Brunton dealer so stop by my site and check out my newest product! http://darksucks.com/ByB.html

Can't leave well enough alone

So I bought a new toy...er...tool today: a combination belt/disc sander. Woohoo right? I'm not normally a fan of combo tools. It's like a Swiss army knife: good for some, great for none. In this case, that's just what I was looking for. Nothing hard core, just a little something to help take the edge off. I don't know if you were paying attention but that was a tool pun.

Anyway, those of you that know me, know that I have an obsessive compulsion to modify and customize things. As I was assembling my new sander I spotted a 3L sized V belt on the machine. A deformed and pathetic one at that. Fortunately I remembered I had some high performance 3L Fenner link belt just lying around. No really. That's one of the advantages of being a hoarder. You just have stuff lying around.

If you are wondering, I'm blabbering on about the bright red pulley belt in the photo. Enjoy!

For those that care: a Rikon 1x42 belt + 8" disc sander from Woodcraft. 

Laser cutting LED thermal pads (Epilog Helix)

I have been buying pre-cut thermal pads but this time I decided to make my own. This is the same material I normally use, purchased in a bulk sheet. Cut on an Epilog Legend 45 Watt laser cutter @ Techshop in Menlo Park. Nothing like cutting parts with a beam of light!

Fabricating a stamping jig

WARNING: MACHINING CONTENT

One great thing about having a machine shop is that I can make strange tools like this one. I received my custom maker's mark a few weeks ago and I'm currently preparing my first regular production run. After fooling around with the mark I decided I needed some kind of jig to hold the stamp and the flashlight head in the correct and repeatable position.

Cutting off some aluminum stock I had laying around

I scrounged around my scrap bin and came up with the appropriate piece of material. A bit off topic, but I got this band saw for free a few years ago. It was sitting outside in the weather for two years and was a real wreck. I spent a couple weeks restoring it and now it works great! Here is a link to the project if you are interested.