Had a really frustrating morning trying to make a 22mm FET+7135 driver with zener mod, using the components from a BLF-A6 driver, a 22mm wight board from Oshpark, a zener diode and a 220 Ohm resistor. I will not go into details but in the process of troubleshooting I must have soldered and desoldered (by hand) at least 30 almost invisible parts to the board. And it never worked. And it was part of a nice mod that I can not do now
To cheer myself up I skipped the project and went on to another mod that to my surprise became a total succes. The host is an ultra lightweight 4.5 dollar AA zoomie: Ultrafire AT-007, one of my favorite cheapies because of the compact build but still good lens and optical path.
*The led is a dedomed XP-G2 S3 3D on a Noctigon. I sanded the Noctigon to 1mm thickness to get the focus right, it is clamped with the stock plastic thingy (that I made black with a marker) over the hollow pill (I love hollow pills :partying_face: ), bit of Arctic Silver on the edge of the board for better contact to the rim of the pill.
*The driver is a 15mm diameter Bistro driver, I transferred the components of a Banggood Bistro-driver to a 15mm Oshpark FET+1 board (I believe a design by Warhawk), and it works flawlessly. After the failure this morning that came as a total surprise.
*The tail spring was bypassed, the pressed-in switch-tab received an extra solder blob on the side for extra tight fit and improved electrical contact with the body.
And it works, and does not even get incredibly hot too fast, even on max setting.
Numbers on highest setting and purple Efest 14500:
–3.75 A current and quite constant for the first minute. This is measured with a clamp meter around a thick copper loop, the light without tail.
–450lm flood at start, 422lm at 30 seconds, the high setting appears pretty stable, at least for a useful minute or so . So just 7% drop, did I mention that like hollow pills?
–33kcd throw after 30 seconds, measured at 7 meter. Nice for a just 18mm diameter lens.
-and a good tint, this led dedomed gives the best dedomed tint around IMO.
So although meant as a freak light with too much power in a flimsy host, it just works and is a great EDC, and anything with bistro is pleasant to use . And if throw/gram is a quality for a flashlight, this light scores 0.89 kcd/g (without battery, with battery it is 0.58 kcd/g). Beat that!
Edit: just checked and unexpected by me my Brinyte B158 with dedomed S4 2B has better kcd/g, with battery it is 1.07kcd/g LOL