DEAL ENDED - DX XM-LT6 900-Lumen 5-Mode White LED Flashlight - Titanium Color (2x18650) - $29.99 (Normally $41.30)

Received manafont driver (linked above) from Chicago X today - thanks!. Excellent packaging and quick shipping, hooray!

The base can be trimmed to fit the pill. The vertical board can be very minimally trimmed to an interference fit.

The coil (transformer?) is an obstacle. The pill must be bored ~1/8" and still the coil has to be pushed down and toward the center. I'm taking a break from that to keep from getting hasty.

Height might be an issue. It is so close that I can't say for sure until I'm done boring.

I'll probably have to plastidip the board/coil to ensure it doesn't short to the pill.

Driver fits. The height is ok by about the thickness of a penny.

measured current to emitter - 4.3A, 1.8A, 0.4A

OUTSTANDING

Done for the day, I don't want to push my luck.

http://www.manafont.com/product_info.php/flashlight-component-triple-t6-cree-circuit-board-driver-p-7973

note: if you shave the contact board slightly more on the side opposite the coil, you'll have to bore just a little less...

Anyway - 4 < 4.3? not according to match's tests.

Also, his readings were taken 10seconds after power on, and brightness during those ten seconds is my primary goal.

This will be a fair weather search light in my boat and will rarely run even 10 seconds at a time. You're not supposed to use 'headlights'...they obscure the lights that indicate your boat's heading to other boats. I just do short bursts to make sure there isn't some obstacle in my path (floating log) and to search for a spot on a distant shore.

BUT, since I'm undoubtedly not heat sinked as well it might be true in practice w/ the D1, especially beyond 10 seconds.

In any case, I prefer to err slightly higher than lower. I'm not concerned about emitter longevity, I always have a backup and...I'm sure I'll be swapping the emitter to U2, and then whatever is available next :)

Awesome stuff.

I'm glad everything fit (barely) and worked out.

SST-50 Driver from DX will never fit, it's way too big and can't be modded. It just doesn't fit! :(

Please dthrckt post a pic of the pill with the new driver if you can.

it is within the realm of possibility to fit the DX sst-50 driver into this light. I figured out how just in case I had to -- but it ain't easy, and you'd have to be dirt poor to do all that work instead of spending $6 on one that can be fitted in 1/10 the time.

I will post detailed pics of copper collar shim and pill/driver mod, probably next saturday. I'm waiting for potting compound delivery.

Fun Geek Fact: the locations of gorann, fx-32 and dthrckt form a triangle whose sides total ~20,000 miles/32,000kms in length

I don't think you'll be able to screw the handle in if the pill gets more than about 2mm longer. Not sure how you'd make battery contact.

If you hacksaw the pill ~10mm below the threads, you could use a piece of 1" copper pipe connector that fits around what is left to replace the part cut off. There's a gap between the two of about 0.02" to be filled w/ copper sheet - they'd fit so tight you'd have to pound the fitting onto the pill/sheet with a hammer.

It would look like less material, but would actually be heavier. The dx sst-50 driver battery board would be almost an exact fit (to U.S. pipe size anyway). The height might be an issue (~1-2mm?) but I think the driver could be squashed enough to be fine.

The copper would cost ~2x the price of the manafont driver, but you'd have some left over...for the next hack job LOL

I did some new measurments on my modified driver, and now I used newer, better cells with lower internal resistance than earlier, and calibrated my DMM resistance to the tailcap resistance. Now I got "only" 1.69A with almost full cells. Earlier I measured 3.2A led current, and calculated from this, the efficiency of the modified driver is around 80%. Not too good, not too bad.

calculation:

voltage of the cells under load = 2x 3.95V = 7.9V

1.69A x 7.9V= 13.35W this is the input wattage

estimated output wattage on the led:

3.2A x 3.35V = 10.72W

efficiency: 10.72W/13.35W= 80.3%

Okay, I will try the driver with higher output current.

I'd say why bother, but I'd rather you go ahead and then maybe you'll discover some improvement to the manafont driver for us

I'd love a 5 mode driver with 4.2, 3, 2.5, 1, .25A and temp controlled step down

whiskey taste - beer budget

I don't want to spend more money ... :)

Overall brightness was 8% less than BC40 with stock driver, now 15% more. The led current is around 3.6A now, and the consumption is acceptable. This is a good compromise solution.

earlier I made a runtime graph: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/5736#node-6739

only for 1 minutes at 4.3A, this is a good boost mode and you will get -I don't know exactly- 15% more brightness than at 3.6A, but after some minutes, because of the increased led temperature, the brightness will be as low as mine at 3.6A, so this is enough for me. ;)



and a new graph, UF D1 with modded driver VS Jetbeam BC40 (relative) overall brightness


after 7 mins, the UF head reached 35°C, BC40 43°C


great post!

how about those head temps - awesome cheap host!

it doesn't look like you need to spend any more money...actually, if you use more than 1 minute then the 4.3A is NOT the way to go

are you taking manual readings and plotting or do you have a meter with light output?

I'd like to get set up to do that. I'm sure a USB thermometer is cheap. I think I saw one on DX. I could check it's accuracy w/ my multimeter.

I want to test temperature before and after stripping anodizing.

I think ~3.5A is best for the way most people would use this, but for me....BOOST!

manual reading, not a big work

no, with the modified stock driver

stock driver - manafont driver

on the manafont driver, I've shaved the board the coil sits on, squished the coil to the center and as close to the board as I could. I also shaved the base until just a hair line of the metal ring on the top side is left.

On the battery contact side, I soldered to stock spring on and soldered on a copper ring, to make better contact with pill, but also as a retainer, since boring the pill removed the stock shoulder for keeping the driver in place.

stock driver sitting in modified pill next to manafont driver

manafont driver after plastidip, which was done to insulate it from the pill. you can also see that I've added 'circuit writer' (silver in adhesive) around the edge of the driver to restore the connection between the tiny bit of brass left on the top side of the bottom board with the negative contact on the bottom.

Here's the shim I made for heat sinking the pill to the collar/body. It is a copper pipe fitting with 30 gauge sheet between it and the collar. I fit it to the pill by wrapping the pill with desoldering wick, putting the shim over it, heating the whole thing with a torch then flowing plumbing solder into the desoldering wick. The solder won't stick to aluminum, so I could just pull the pill out of the shim afterwards. I sanded it just a bit because there was too much friction between pill and collar...eventually I would have stripped the threads. I had to pound it into the collar with a hammer - it isn't coming out unless it gets cut out.

The second pic is to show there's still a lot of contact after sanding...

and here is Foxy, watching 'Call of the Wild' on hulu while I ignore her to work in the shop she kept looking behind the center speaker, as if she'd find a husky there

very similar drivers, would be good to know what kind of mosfet sits on the manafont board

All major components are sanded down to deter identification.

dthrckt - great mod !

thanks!

oh wow, I didn't notice that, glad I didn't peel the plastidip, only to find that out lol

I used a 0.33ohm resistor, so you should use a lower one, maybe a 0.22ohm.

I tried with a 1Ω resistor (soldered with low temp) and now it doesn’t work. Y also changed the cables, and I inserted very thick ones so there must be the problem. With a Manafont driver it should be fixed.

Where did you solder the resistor? I hope you soldered paralel to the "sandwich" resistors wich is beside the coil. And 1ohm is too high, it has almost no effect.