KW CSLNM1.TG isn’t gonna last long

Modded a light for the first time tonight with the KW CSLNM1.TG. Brinyte B158 with a 16mm Noctigon and a FET driver. I didn’t bypass the driver or switch spring, and used 22ga wires. I’m disappointed because there is a dark spot on the LED when I first powered it up using a protected cell. So I said screw it and put a Samsung 25R in the light.


:heart_eyes:

Looks great!

The LED seems to be getting angry blue at you :)
Do you have any means of measuring the input current?

I thought the blue color came from the camera, is the LED actually turning blue? you could add resistance or replace the FET with one that has less output.

Blue is the new white! :sunglasses:

Use a regulated driver!

I could except I prefer FET drivers. I don’t feel like stacking chips to get to 5.5A. And the only reason I running a high drain battery is because I plan to burn up the LED due to the dark spot.

mtn electronics and led4power sell drivers that can do high currents.

MTN doesn’t have any that’ll do 5 amps, and I have some from led4power. I prefer unregulated. Almost all my lights except those with red and IR LEDs are DD/FET.

http://www.international.mtnelectronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=67_116&product_id=382
http://www.international.mtnelectronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=67_116&product_id=777
There are also several buck drivers if your flashlight uses more than 1S.

Is there a regulated constant current driver that has Narsil or something similar with ramping?

I first is not a 17mm driver and the last 2 are 7135 drivers. I have plenty of 7135 drivers and could stack the chips if I wanted to. I have a few Led4power high current linear drivers as well. I prefer FET drivers.

If I have the time tonight, I’ll change the wires out for bigger wires, bypass the springs, and drop a Sony in to finish the LED off. It was either bad from the factory or I damaged it flowing it tonthe PCB. Either way, it’s sentenced to death.

Conversely, I prefer fully regulated. Fully regulated means your flashlight will output about the same no matter the state of charge of its cells until low voltage warning. Regulated means driver limits maximum current and power to the emitter, which is desirable in cases like this.

DD/FET really is not cool, it is just simple and unexpensive. If you want to take “direct drive” to whole new dimensions do it with 2S (or more) cells over a 1S emitter, for example. You'll break all tailcap current records, for sure.

^:)

Barkuti, everybody is well aware of your love for regulation and distaste’s of DD. I however prefer not to have regulation. I hunt. Most of my lights are built to be used for hunting. The light is turned on for less than a minute at a time. When I’m trying to spotlight a wild hog at 700 yards, I don’t want to regulate at 5A if I can DD at 5.6A and get a little more throw. For that one minute, I want as much as the LED can handle for the most throw possible.

What are advantages of unregulated driver compared to regulated one?

See above post led4power.

My thinking is probably flawed. I don’t like high current stacked 7135’s as they generate a fair amount of heat. If I’m pushing the LED hard I don’t want the added heat to dissipate. Your drivers are more efficient, but I’m guessing at what the LED will max at. Say I use a 5A regulated driver, but the LED can handle 5.6A. I’m losing some throw. By DD, the current is limited by the LED, springs, etc. so the battery may be able to supply 20A but the restrictions in the circuit will result in the 5.6A. I use my throwing white lights for hunting. Small burst of the light being on to scan for hogs. When I’m taking a shot at a hog the light is usually on for less than a minute. For that 1 minute I want as much light as possible. Plus I like building things and like putting my drivers together and it’s cheaper. I use regulated drivers for my floodier lights, but if it’s for throw for hunting I just prefer DD.

If you have an LED that you don’t want to ever feed more than say, 6A, then a 6A linear regulator is going to burn off the voltage beyond that in order to bring the LED current down, but once the battery voltage drops enough, it essentially becomes direct drive minus some dropout voltage, and some linear drivers have almost no dropout. Current limiting is pretty much a requirement with LEDs that will be overdriven or destroyed if fed ~4.2V, which is most of the current gen of LEDs. It is of course possible to get the balance of components just right with springs, wires, cell selection, to keep from damaging certain low Vf LEDs in DD, but some new LEDs are extremely low Vf, so it’s just not a good situation.

n10sivern, let me say the actual price of regulation is just the sense voltage times current or the square of current times sense resistor, which is a small amount of heat in well designed drivers. If performance is what you aim for I understand your points, though, but please consider you cannot obtain peak performance for long if unregulated, only when battery voltage is about right on spot. To increase this peak performance window you need to first overdrive the emitter.

For such duties I'd build fully regulated, albeit I can understand it needs DIY tuning. In this case I think an LD-29 buck driver fed with 2S cells could do, its stock output is 3A but I think it'll do fine at 5+A. A couple 68mΩ sense resistors over the stock R025 would net ≈5.206A, for example, though personally I'd probably leave it at 4.5A with just an additional R050. When fully regulated current at the emitter never drops so I'd recommend not pushing the current values to peak ones seen on output tests because lack of cooling.

Cheers ^:)

Hoop, I agree. I don’t use high drain batteries with low vF. I used a protected battery that doesn’t have a high discharge rate when I first powered the LED. I saw the dark spot, got mad, and my goal is to now torture that LED up and replace it. I didn’t test the current but I doubt it was over 4A.

Barkuti, I don’t want 2S lights for hunting. Too long to use mounted to a rifle. LD29 is also inefficient. You could add resistors to get to 5A theoretically, but it’ll actually be 4.5A. I don’t worry about cooling as I don’t run the lights for an extended amount of time, which is why I am not worried about peak performance for an extended amount of time. I always have plenty of batteries, and I change them when I notice a drop in performance. In a night, I may use the light intermittently for 20 minutes total when hunting. With hogs, I generally spot with night vision and IR, and switch to white light at a distance once I identify a potential target. I run linear drivers on my IR’s pushing them at 2.28 or 2.66A. I’m working on a water cooled IR that I will try to push 4A just for the hell of it. I build my lights for a specific purpose, and I don’t use them outside that purpose. I have lights built specifically for tracking/flood beam, spotting (red and IR), long distance shooting (white), etc. I don’t have or want a do it all light. I also don’t use reflectors much. Most of my lights are aspherics, and my flood lights are DD triples with Ledil optics. What few reflector lights I have are typically used for jsut around the house, with an exception of a DD MTG2 that is running at over 10A. Every time I try to test the current it blows the fuse in the tester. I built it just for giggles. I run regulated drivers when it suits my application, and DD when I feel it is necessary.