My first attempt at soldering - driver swap

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
1

This forum has a bad influence on me.

First I started buying flashlights after reading reviews, because I needed another good flashlight (although I managed to keep this somewhat under control). Then I stumbled upon a thread about lanyards and paracord, followed by another thread about someone's collection of Chinese budget knives. Of course I had to order some paracord and a few SRM knives.

It wasn't long before I had ordered a DMM and a lux meter. Soon I had also managed to order some V2 drivers from KD (the 3040 mA and 1520 mA versions). Now of course I needed to buy a soldering iron, solder wire & paste, safety glasses, tweezers and other tools needed for soldering so I could use the new drivers. :bigsmile:

Anyway, back on topic. Tonight I soldered for the first time ever. :shock:

I performed a driver swap on my Small Sun ZY-C10-S. The original driver was a bit weak compared to what others had measured on their lights as I only managed to measure ~43 kcd (calculated from 8m) with my lux meter. So I desoldered the old driver and replaced it with a KD 1520 mA driver.

I was a bit afraid that I would @#ยค% it up. I had already desoldered the old driver so I started with soldering the mode selectors on the new driver. I ended up going with high-med and no memory since I use the Small Sun ZY-C10-S as a thrower.

I have no idea how the heck I managed to solder the S2 bridge that neatly, considering it was the first time soldering something (not counting desoldering the LED wires from the old driver).

Next I had to solder the LED wires to the driver. I didn't bother putting new wires, I just reused the original wires.

Finally I needed to connect the outer ring to the aluminum pill, which was a pita. I managed to get a blob of solder from the driver to connect to the pill (the 18650 presses the driver to the pill so the blob of solder makes contact with the pill). I wish I had read Match's post about how to get solder to stick to aluminum. I will probably fix this at a later time.

After having soldered all the necessary things I assembled the light and inserted a 18650, to my surprise the light worked when turning it on. :p

I tried measuring it with the new driver and got ~55 kcd (calculated from 8m) compared to the 43 kcd I got with the original driver. :party:

2

Congratulations and a job well done. Has the bug bitten for modding now?

3

Nice work, dimlux! I'd say you are a natural. You are going to have to change your name to brightlux! :glasses:

4

Great job! Now on to emitter swaps, custom sandwiched drivers, etc. . . :)

-Garry

5

Nice job

6

It was one small blob of solder

But it changed everything

7

Wonderful job you've done and as good as it gets.

8

Congratulations!!! It makes me want to attempt my first driver swap. Have the boards but just havent sat down to get it done.

Congrats again

9

Looks great!

10

You did great and great photos too. Excellent :)

11

Dimlux Great Job! Excellent for a first time soldering.

12

Unfortunately I have to say yes. :p

At the moment I'm waiting for a SOIC 8 pin clip to see if I'll manage to make some custom drivers, already have the USBasp programmer.

13

I hope it all goes well for you. Must be a lot more younger than me or have a higher patience threshhold. Have you done any sort of chip programming before?

14

Hi Dimlux, Tido's program is wonderful. You will love it.

15

The MCU pin 8 seems be connected to the ground which should not be an Attiny13A. Are you going to write your own program for this PIC MCU?

16

I haven't done any type of chip programming before. Hopefully it shouldn't be that hard, lots of information available at flashlightwiki.com.

I ordered some NANJG drivers (models AK-47 and 101-AK IIRC) which should have the Tiny13A chip.

17

AK-47 should employ the Attiny13 which is programable with Tido's code. I am not sure if 101-AK IIRC employs the Attiny13. You have better check whether the pin 4 of the MCU is connected to the ground (negative) and the pin 8 is connected to the diode (positive). There is a small dot at the lower left corner to indicate the pin 1.

18

I looked at the first photo and almost thought that you managed to heat up the board soo much that all the components fell off!

Hehe, jokes aside, I managed to remove my emitter off its pcb when trying to solder a driver to the brass pill, with less than ideal conditions lol... Must have gotten it pretty warm would be my guess.... Fun times! Easy fix though, but just requires additional time and effort.