Nice work on the 5050 board TA! I really like the option of using current reducing resistors (well cooled!) individually for each led, that will be needed if you want to use a simple FET driver and XHP50’s. But I am concerned about the clearance that resistors will have under the reflector, you only have the thickness of the edge of the led center pieces.
The resistors come in .6mm thicknesses which should be fine for most centering rings. They are generally around .8mm+ thick from what I have seen. Although you could also jump it with wire or solder bridge it as well, doesn’t really matter.
Now the centering ring clearance is a bit of an issue but the mounting holes don’t leave a lot of room for alternative options.
The pads at 9 and 3 o’clock should be ok clearance wise but 12 and 6 are another story.
You should be able to use centering rings on the 9 and 3 pads and then screw the reflector down to hold everything in place and it should be perfectly fine without a centering ring on the other 2 LED’s. I have done this in lights before when I ran out of centering rings and it worked perfectly.
Or we have to cut the centering rings a bit to fit the other 2 LEDs.
Can’t it be made that for using the normal driver no resistors need to be used?
So for the harder mods cut traces and add resistors
Technically yes but cutting traces on an mcpcb is a bit harder then a normal pcb since the cut trace can short to the mcpcb itself. If this was a factory produced item by thorfire then that would be a good reason to do that.
Since it is not and this will only be used by modders anyone that can reflow an LED, can also add the jumpers to the mcpcb at the same time is the way I look at it.
Agree on that, cutting traces on a MCPCB is very risky, soldering a thin wire over the jumper pads while you are reflowing anyway is easy and risk-free.
Cutting traces on a MCPCB is quite hard and you could ruin your board very easy. But maybe we could rearrange the 3 resistor pads so that we get a few more mm to work with.
It would not look as nice but maybee give you the mm clearence that you need for centering rings.
Not a bad idea. The 12 o’clock LED could gain enough space most likely but the 6 o’clock in screwed. It’s not possible to gain enough space on that one for a centering ring without vastly reducing the trace thickness to the ground ring.
I will play with it and see what I can come up with.
Here is a slightly updated version with more room for the 12 o’clock LED centering ring. The 6 o’clock LED is out of luck, the trace would have to be reduced more then it would be worth to move the resistors far enough away for it to matter. 3 centering rings is more then enough to keep everything centered and working properly though.
It sadly did take a hit in the looks department though, looks like I beat it with the ugly stick. lol
Do the screw holes need to be perpendicular to the wire holes? I think not because the wires go through one big hole in the shelf. So you can rotate the screw holes 10 degrees clockwise and get the jumper pads of the 6 o clock led further to the left.
No wait, I missed that there’s cavities in the reflector for the screw heads, they can’t be moved relative to the leds :person_facepalming:
Correct, the screw holes are fixed, they have to be between the LED’s in order to line up properly.
You could make the screw-hole facing side of the 6 o’clock LED permanently connected with either the positive or negative trace. It would act as LED #1, and the others could be connected either in parallel or series still from there. Removing those resistor pads entirely will mean that centering rings will work on all four LED’s then. That’s important to some of us for purely aesthetic reasons. :innocent:
EDIT: Oh Wait. I see, you’ve already done that with the 9 o’clock LED pad, and you can’t do it with both. Sorry. :person_facepalming:
I played a little with the traces.
Good outside the box thinking. Still not enough room for a centering ring but heavily trimmed it might fit. Here is a version like this:
Thanks to both of you for working on this for us! :+1:
Interested for sure
Dam i am not really good with anykind of photo/paint software. Could you please remove all parts inside the red circle? Then put the 6 o´clock Led in its right place but rotate it 90degre. I have something in mind but i have to see it to check if it would work.
Like this? I didn’t want to move all the traces only to put them back but this should get the idea.
Its ok now i can play a little.
Have to get my mind from the today delivered light (https://de.aliexpress.com/item/Dual-Cree-XM-l-U2-Led-Torch-2-x-Cree-XM-L-U2-2-U2-5/1987840494.html). I will upload a few pictures in a new thread when my cam is reloaded. A few very big noooooooo goes. A 3mm deep hole underneath the ledboard (from the drillbit tip). Scratches all over the host. A dent in the battery tube. Sratched lens retaining rings. Some kind of residu on the reflectors. ultra cheap plastic lens instead of the offered glass lens. And can someone tell me how many bond wires i should see when i look at a cree xm-l u2 led?
Do not get me wrong this host was bought to mod it anyways. But some things (like the cavity below the ledboard) are a really bad start.