Bringing the Keygos 7T6 to the level it should have been

As you know, I was quite disappointed with my Keygos 7T6 (being less bright than TR-J12 etc.)

So, I decided to mod it with the KD 7 LED driver and requested it with the same modes & high PWM as bose301 did for his TR-J12 driver. KD engineers did their job and the driver is now available for anyone to purchase: New driver with nice modes and high PWM.

However, the driver is NOT a direct replacement for Keygos 7T6 because of different diameter (new on left, original on right):

It's also significantly longer than the original:

The original driver sits inside the pill / reflector assembly, but there's no room for the new driver:

So, I studied the construction of the head a bit, comparing to the TR-J12, and decided to mount the driver to the head instead.

First I needed to find a retaining ring. Didn't have anything to match the head threads, except the body tube. Hmm.. It has quite long threads.. Let's use that!

Here's what was left of the body tube. Well enough for the middle joint (extension to body tube):

Ok. Now I had a suitable ring. The inner diameter of it was less than 1mm larger than the outer diameter of the driver. Some solder will fill the gap.. (Ugly, but works..)

Here's the driver and ring installed inside the head. The body tube, when screwed in, will press the driver even better to it's position. Note also the no-spring, but a blob of solder design in the middle.

The only problem left was that the original 2 cell tube was now too short (and 3rd cell extension too long), so I had to create a ~50mm dummy cell. So I took some round wood, a screw, and some tape. And there it was: A suitable dummy cell. :)

So put that in and "holy cow!" - It works:

And it's BRIGHT. Here's a ceiling bounce figures, showing the five modes and comparison to other well-known lights:

If we assume TR-J12 to be 2200lm OTF, this is now about 3000lm OTF. 8)

Tailcap current with two Keygos 26650 cells are 5.0A, 3.75A, 2.6A, 1.2A & 0.2A, there are no blinky modes, and the PWM is totally unnoticeable.


After all, I'm happy with the results: Now the Keygos works like it should.

Nice job. Way to figure it out.

Nice mod! Now I can make my own dummy cells

Good thinking about that thread!
And congrats on getting the light to works like you want it to. Way to go the

10 out of 10 for creativity.

Hey The

Absolutely wonderful job! I think quite a few here will following in your steps.

Old thread but thats a creative mod

I thought after swapping into KD driver it should give 5000+ lumens at full power? :stuck_out_tongue: