Hey, Brother, congratulations! This is good news…may they follow through with the rest of their agreement.
_Just a word of encouragement, and to take an opportunity to point out “the good_” -
Throughout the MT09r fiasco, your calm demeanor, your measured and encouraging responses, and mostly by your willingness to actually step in and with some effort do what you could to bring “peace” into a difficult situation, has all brought “redemption” to a frustrating problem within our community.
I have personally benefited from your willingness and expertise - a beautiful, HIGH functioning light :).
But more than that, it has been a joy to watch your professionalism, your peaceful demeanor and responses, and your willingness to be “present” in the midst of the strife. THANK YOU!
May you have a blessed Sabbath rest, and I’m praying your somewhat up-in-the-air financial situation will soon be resolved.
Thanks for all the kind words, this project was a lesson in perseverance for awhile but in retrospect I am glad I was able to be a part of it.
It worked out in my favor as well, it has allowed me to fill in the gaps in my income and keep the bills paid during some particularly slow months.
Also thanks to the generosity of a few members I have been able to get a laptop for my Mom and a pretty nice desktop put together for myself (still could use one more computer for the family, I did a watt meter test on my old system recently and was shocked to see it pulls a whopping 240watts just sitting idle! no wounder the room gets to hot, looking for something newer with the modern power features and a bit more processing power).
After a few months of working on these projects from the time I woke up to the time I went back to bed with maybe a break to eat tossed in I plan to catch up on some neglected items around the house now, my truck needs a new water pump being one example.
Then I plan to take a little time to unwind before starting any other big projects. I have a few possibilities floating around right now, just not sure which ones I am going to pursue. I am sure I will be kicking something new around in a few weeks.
Oh and of course I will be working on fixing the spheres as well naturally. Still waiting for the lights to show up, I figure a few more weeks for that and then I can start finding a fix in earnest.
I am still a big fan of the boost drivers and can’t wait to see them come to life. I just have not had time to work on them for several months and Schoki is waiting for components. He is the real designer for the boost drivers, I am just helping prototype them. I have big plans for a good boost driver when it happens.
For production lights / drivers there is a big trade off between complexity, reliability, cost and features that must be considered that does not apply to hand made custom drivers. Particularly when you are trying to get a manufacture to use it in a mass produced light. The rules change a lot.
So each light I work with in the future will be individually figured out but the FET drivers are a much easier option to talk the manufacture into in most cases. Plus they are much simpler and less chances for them to screw it up.
For example even the MT09R drivers here that I have made over 100 of myself with hardly any issues, HL has been having issues even getting them right (mostly just prototyping issues / bad solder joints thus far but issues none the less). So it is easy to see why I am so hesitant to encourage China manufactures to use even more complicated drivers.
I prioritize Reliability > Features
So if an FET driver gives 90-95% of the performance compared to a buck driver but with much much less chance of an issue, then I am going to go with the FET.
Lexel’s hand made buck drivers are great, he hand builds and tests them to make sure they work properly and I encourage him to keep working on them. Del’s driver design that they are based on is quite good. To be honest if I needed a buck driver for a project I would most likely just order it from Lexel.
I am sure I will use a buck driver on a light at some point and most likely will work with Lexel for it since he has worked with them more then me at this point. I want to see what the china manufactures I am looking at working with are capable of with some simpler designs first though.
Always best to start with simple things and work your way up.
Which reminds me, it is possible I could get some TA drivers mass produced in the coming months at a much more reasonable price point.
I would to see a TA small batch light. Something like Hanko, Barrel or Okluma produces but with an eye to performance not just fine machining and exotic materials.
I would be on board 100%. I got started with handmade custom LED lights 15 years ago, with the (now legendary) names like McGizmo (CPF) and Mr. Bulk (class-defining Lion Cub and Chameleon). Those were incredible performers in the day and I credit TA's skillsets and accomplishments as proof there is a potential for this to be a reality...
I have considered a limited production light like this many times. The exotic materials were never my thing, I have always been a form follows function and bang for the buck kind of guy. Which has been an issue since the start up costs for such a venture made it impractical to even consider.
Recently though with some relationships I have been forming overseas, this is becoming more and more of an option. Although still a ways down the road. I would want to try a few simpler projects first before jumping into a big monster to see what kind of capabilities they have.
^ Very glad to hear because I am very happy with the result - I really like my MT09R “TA Specials”. (I haven’t been able to take any beamshots yet that do them justice, but I really like those 4000K and 3000K leds).
Oh, for anyone else that took advantage of this MT09R/TA opportunity and is looking for a pouch/holster… I found that the FLYYE PH-M004 1000D from hkequipment fits nicely (there’s probably other places to get them).
I cant stop posting about how much i like my haikelite mt09r… it is modded by TA, TA driver, upgrade led, byspass spring… i have many big flashlights like a fenix rc40 6* xhp 70.2… this light can compete with my fenix rc40.
This light is only 3 xhp70.2 and putting out 21k turn on and almost 19,000 lumen @ 30 seconds…
This light is driven very hard, and powerful… ramping mode is cool too…
I bypassed all the driver springs for the lights I built except one IIRC. So I am sure it was me that did it. Took me a lot of trial and error to figure out how to make a bypass that would stand up to long term use.
The buck driver has significantly higher resistance / drop out voltage then an FET driver and will never match the peak numbers of the FET in a setup like this.
It will also only maintain regulation in the lower modes, at the high modes it will be a matter of minutes before it drops out of regulation. Not that this is bad, just a different way of doing things.
The buck driver is good for lower brightness levels of say 50% or lower where it can regulate for a worthwhile amount of time and the efficiency will be better then the FET.
Unless the X9R uses a 4S battery pack, and 6V LEDs, which will give completely regulated brightness, even at 100%.
I really hope that is the case. It is the same setup the MT07S and the MT03 uses, which give regulated brightness over all modes if the lights are kept cool.
Otherwise, as you said, brightness will not be regulated for lower modes.
I do wonder why Haikelite didn’t use a buck driver with the MT09R. Especially if they had used a 4S battery pack in both versions, that would have been trivial to do, although a 46mm buck driver would not have been cheap.
Yes, a 12V input to 6V output would be a good option, although it would still need to provide ~40A of current which is a tall task, although not impossible.
It is much more efficient to go with a 12V LED with half the amps.
Ideal would be a ~18-24V input to 12v output. That would only need around 20A output which is much more feasible.
This is the issue with buck drivers for most lights, the currents are just too high for a reasonably priced buck driver to give the performance we desire. Which limits them to lower output modes. Which is great, this is a very practical option for many use cases.
It is all about tradeoff’s and figuring out what fits each light / use case.
