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.
I use a solder-station with regulated temperature, I call low temp to ~350°C
Yes, I did it right, in parallel to the sandwich (mmmhhh sandwichs), may be I screwed it up trying to connect the batteries without completely assembly, and could do some short-circuit… maybe, but don’t really know. I chose 1Ω because I only have 1Ω and 0.1Ω, and I red that with 0.56Ω it wasn’t stable… so I wanted a little bit more current until new driver arrives.
got some stuff from DX today including sst-50 driver. It fits in my modified pill (I did have to squash the coil a bit), well...it sort of fits...the battery board sits on the bottom lip. see below. kind of hard to see because the color of the board.
But, I didn't even test w/ it because I think it will have higher current and heat. I'll save it for something else...
If you do try to use it, be careful that you don't crush it with the battery tube. Mine won't do that but if I could get another 1/2 turn on the tube it would.
In theory... you can short-circuit the driver with an ammeter (instead of the LED, you put the ammeter) to know the output current.
I didn't do it yet because I can't use my power supply for now, and with batteries isn't comfortable to do the connections...
Higher the resistor lower the current. If you want more current you have to use lower resistor. The goal is reduce the resistance of the sandwich resistors, wich is 80milliohm in my case.
It was stable with 0.56ohm, but my measurment wasn't so accurate, the current very depends on the cells, multimeters, leads etc, and that was the problem in my case only.
not afraid. I would estimate I removed about 20% of the mass from the pill, but it screws into the reflector, which screws into the head, and the threads are fairly tight (lots of contact) so I think it will be fine. I have a U2 emitter on the way, and once that is in there I'll use arctic silver ceramique on the threads in the head.
I also added that copper shim, but I don't think you need to.
It really depends on how you'll use it though. I used it on high for 10 minutes last night and it was so cold outside that the head hardly warmed up at all...
I used a mill bit in my drill press to bore it but a spade bit would work. it is pretty soft (probably not alloyed) aluminum.
OK, I couldn't resist and I used my computer's PSU to do the trick. I short-circuited the SST-50 driver with an ammeter, and the result is: 4.30Amps (standard driver).
Very nice for this flashlight, and for every XM-L with good heatsink.
May be one driver can vary a little bit from another, but I bet they all are near 4.3A.
hmmm, might be valuable to calculate efficiency of both.
still, I'll use the manafont since I've already hacked it up. the SST-50 could be unstacked and resoldered w/ wires, if there was some odd host that required that...
did you check the current on the other modes? I higher mid would be ideal - 3A for long runs or hot weather, etc.
I forgot to specify, I measured it with 12v in (I red somewhere that it works fine with 12v), so with 2xLi batteries it could be 200mA lower; it's still good, but you can recalibrate if you want more current by adding parallel resistors on the bottom side of the top board.
I was going to measure output with 2x18650... and accidentally dropped the driver from less than 1m high (not big deal right?) it hit the FET from the top board, and then it smoked ¬¬ (the PHD45N03LTA chip).
Crap... I have to buy another driver
sorry to hear that. at least the price isn't as bad as the wait.
I don't suppose anyone who bought this light has any beamshots and/or lux readings vs. the HD2010 (single, not triple) or an XML in a Maglite LED reflector at similar drive current?
I replaced the original (non working) driver with Manafont driver like viffer750 did... BUT I don't know why but this driver gives too much current or something, because I burned the original T6 led, plus TWO xml-U2 1C!! crap, this flashlight is expensive for me! xD
When I shortcircuit the driver with an ammeter, it pulls 4.4A or something like that... I don't understand why they keep burning.
Any recommendation? Now I'm waiting for 4x XML U2 1C to burn do some testing