Ridiculous bright 15*XM-L2 FET 5 cell Flashlight - #262 watt# - DIY driver contact board

I really do not like striping working drivers, to make them contact board for driver mods. Last days, a crazy idea came in mind.
I own a 15!!!xXM-L2 flashlight and I really don’t like the light output since it is very poor for 15 L2s.

(I purchased it from here for 58 bucks including shipping.)

I removed the driver and measured it. The driver is a 4s (16V) boost for 5 xm-ls (around 20V) in series. The leds are connected in three groups of five, and the three groups are in parallel between them.

Using a PCB board purchased from here, I cut it carefully and when a rough circle was shaped, I trimed it.

After that, I built a zener modded fet driver, from a nanjg driver, using RMM’s FET & zener kit.


I opened a bigger hole for 18awg wire

and I used the stock driver spring.

The copper marking are in one side of pcb, and I used them to solder the spring.

The difficult part was to make a contact for the negative voltage in, for the driver. I soldered a small piece of cooper braid, in a way it could touch the flashlight body, as pictured. Then, I soldered the driver and assebled it.

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The plan was to use a 4series setup for the leds, and the remaining 3 leds would be soldered in parallel with one of 4 leds (Richards idea). Unfortunatelly, this flashlight has a unibody mcpcb for all 15 leds, so it would be difficult to complete the original plan.
Using a 5th battery, gave 12,5 amps tailcap and I think it might be higher since I own a 10amps DMM.
Now I need an extension tube, to finish this ridiculous flooder.
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PROJECT FINISHED
Found extension tube

cntrol

low

medium

high

turbo





Bonus shot

Nice job the old way.

For anyone else I would be happy to make you one of these in any size.
https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/BIO3x0nd

Takes me about 15 minutes to whip up and OSHPark is really going fast right now, usually 8-10 days.

We are far away for oshpark…

Nice job and great post. I remember OL going the same old-school route several times and posting similar tutorials online.

CK, thanks for all that you do for the forum. You’ve sure mastered many of the OSHpark solutions and raised the bar for us.

Thank you man, I really appreciate the kind word every now and then. I’ve been extremely busy these last few weeks (busier even that normal) but I’ve been trying my very best to keep up with the community projects as much as my personal / business projects cause I enjoy helping others.

People can be quick to be harsh but very very rarely do I even get a thanks (I think the BLF 17dd driver info thread is testament to that lol, but I just shrug it off). I keep up with the open source stuff cause this is my hobby and I like to enable other people to be able to use the same awesome custom stuff I have access to being able to design it my self, I’m not doing this stuff for money (if I was I’d keep it all proprietary), so again thanks man!

Any time CK. Im sometimes remiss in handing out accolades, and yours are certainly well deserved from everyone here. What many people seem to miss is that we donate our time and efforts to bring joy to everyone reading. You and several others have gone way above and beyond making the forum what it is today. As for custom drivers and source code… its experimental, hand built and will always lend itself to gremlins, fine tuning or heavy recode/reconstruction when necessary. Again, major kudos for your huge efforts and perseverance! :bigsmile:

Upon the highly unlikely chance that I find myself reading a thread at the “dictatorial zealous nazi site” (or was that the lumen shitting grounds?), I usually find great contempt and anger in the outward belligerent attitudes of others with their superiority complex over people less knowledgeable than themselves. ie: beat the crap out of the newbs for trying to learn. This was always prevalent with the mods but now its spilled over to a great deal of the community. Ah well, tis not a place I will ever contribute again. We have none of that here at BLF, and its folks like you that keep it that way.

AND not to detract from zeremefico’s post - there will be many who will read your thread and make use of it whether they comment here or not. Its definitely worth your time to post and is much appreciated.

I like it op. Maybe stuff a copper scrubber into the pill when your done. It works!

Awesome job!!!

Excellent mod good sir…very innovative!

Looks like good work, thanks for posting. The board looks very round. Did you do that by carefully sanding it?

Also, will you post a picture of the unibody MCPCB?

OP UPDATED

That’s a lot of light. No picture of the stock MCPCB?

Unibody thin cheap alluminium.

Excellent job & superb brightness!

Wow! That's awesome. I have one of those to and I had recently sliced and diced the emitter mcpcb to convert to 3S5P. I like your idea of 5S3P DD so much better. Way to go. zeremefico! :)