I am doing this light for a member of the forum. He wanted a 3AA Mini-Maglite that would be brighter than the LED ones. He sent me a new and very hard to find, 3AA LED Mini-Mag. I modded it into a little monster.
The light came new in the package. Beside it is a 8x7135 2.8A driver and an XM-L T6 3C led on a 16mm star.
The reason I like doing the LED version is that there is more depth in the head, so I can still make a heat sink and fit the driver in. Here is the heat sink. It's the normal copper filled with copper shot and solder and it has a wrap of 0.010" thick copper sheet, to make it tighter in the head. This method does not involve boring the head.
Here is the head, the driver and the copper base plate that will be the negative contact to the body. The driver is 17mm and that will not fit in the head, so I had to sand around the outside to get it to fit it in.
Positive and negative wires soldered on.
Here's how the driver goes up against the heat sink. I will use AA Adhesive in between the driver and heat sink.
Here's how the whole pill goes together. The bottom copper plate fits against the other side of the driver and the copper center post is soldered on. Then there is the plastic isolator and copper positive terminal. AA Adhesive will fill in the gaps on both sides of the driver.
The copper plate is soldered to the outside ring of the driver to complete the negative circuit. The pill is ready.
I decided to use a piece of shrink wrap around the positive post, to keep from having any possible shorting. I think it will work well.
The pill is in place and I am using AA Adhesive again, around the outside of the pill, to make better pill/head contact, for heat transfer.
The 15 degree optic is in place.
Beam Shots. My camera is acting up - again. Oh well, you get the idea. All three shots are at only 1/2 second shutter speed. At 1 second, the light was so bright you could not see anything.
High - measured out to 2500mA
Medium - measured out to 750mA
Low - measured out to 400mA
That's it! All done! This light needs to run on Eneloops. That is what it was tested on. Alkalines would work, but it's too high a voltage and too low of an amperage. The light is considerably dimmer with Alkalines.
This is a WOW light. On high, the head heats up in seconds, on medium it heats up in a couple minutes and low is the setting for overall best long term run time and least heat. This darned thing is Bright!
Now, it goes to it's new home.