What did you mod today?

thanks for the suggestion, ill keep that in mind next time.

Direct drive only is usually a short to the negative lead, bypassing the driver and going direct drive. This is typically because the reflector is touching the negative lead or the negative lead is shorting on the MCPCB. I like to use Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive to glue the MCPCB in place so it can’t twist. If you’ll check the negative lead path, it could be shorting on the side of the pill at the driver, or pinched/cut at the emitter shelf or the edge of the MCPCB. Given your lights symptoms I’d be tracing the negative lead. Fix that and if it still acts up, well then it’s time to dig deeper. :wink:

Thanks DB Custom,

I have tested the light with the reflector and bezel off, the still high mode only, so don’t think its shorting on the reflector/bezel

maybe I should try with a new Negative wire, don’t think I have any spare right now though.

Thanks CRX, will try! :beer:

I have built Jaxman E2L with Nichia 219C sm503-D240-L1-R9050 and LD-B4 9Amp 17mm constant current LED flashlight driver. The biggest challenge was to solder everything on MCPCB, especially a small transistor. Also I had to sand the MCPCB to get it to fit in the light. After first try I checked MCPCB with multimeter and there was a short, so I sanded it “upwards” (so top black layer is folded towards leds) and it helped. The hole in the shelf was also drilled to fit more wires. Everything togheter produces a beautiful tint. According to this review it should make around 2400 lumens at 9 amps and 2000 lumens at 7 amps. At 7A (2000 lumens) stepdown occurs after 70 seconds in room temperature. It’s a bit dimmer than D4, but at least output can be sustained for over a minute and even longer outside in lower ambient temperature. There are beam shots and skin (?) shots in the album.

Very cool build g_damian,
did you do any thermal sinking to driver?
and good find on the MCPCB conductive layer and sanding it back.
I got some LED4P stuff for the single Luxeon V on 9A in S2+ build

Thank you :slight_smile:
I’ve used “B” version of the driver, so the mosfet is on MCPCB, not on the driver board. According to the data sheet, additional thermal sinking in that case is not necessary.

I’m also going to build Luxeon in S2+, also with thermal enhancement kit.

OK, I did get the “A” and thermal kit too. Selected the NTC for the driver, luckily that tiny thing is already on the Luxeon V MCPCB. 3 colors of tails too. Need to check the brightmess, had no idea what to select when ordering.

I ordered 9 amps version, too. Check in this review, 9 amps is max and makes 2400 lm:

EDIT: if you meant tailcap current, here they are:

I did mean tail caps. I got Orange, blue and gold. I went 150uA on all. I wanted kinda dim but I messed up.
I have the orange ILC-0 in my Luxeon V S2+ LD-4A 9A w/ thermal kit. Orange at 150uA is just a little too dim. Thanks for the color/current list. It will help dial them all in.
After seeing yours I went to building mine tonight. I like the light but I think the external NTC is a bit too low at highest setting but turned off the light gets too hot. My ext ntc is on the Luxeon V MCPCB and I soldered the MCPCB directly to the brass pill. I think I am going to take it apart again to put some MX4 thermal paste on the pill threads to body too. Overall it was a pretty neat build with all his parts.
Anyway, I will make another post with pics and more details of my 9A single emitter Cell Sucker.

Got the resistor sorted in the tail LEDs. After 5 tries, I was getting good at it. Ended with a 7.5 kΩ. I like it. will be hardly visible in daylight look good at night but not be annoying on the nightstand. Real hard to get pics to make it look as I see it.

Light is done,
Grey S2+, SMO, AR glass, Luxeon V 4000K 70CRI LED On L4P 4040 16mm DTP MCPCB soldered directly to brass pill, 20AWG on spings and LED. LED4P LD-A4 9Amp driver and LD-A4 Thermal Enhancement Kit squashed in there. Orange ILC-0 lighted tail SW with 7.5 kΩ resistor. Pulls initial 8.4A on my DMM with fresh HG2 from a Single Emitter.

OP reflector currently installed.

Best I can do to represent the tail LED indoors or night.

Beam shot with SMO, if the Pic hurts your eyes you see it in person.

Now has OP reflector installed.

^ That is a very nice build and at least on the picture it looks like a beauty of a beam!
I’m considering (almost) the same build (with a BLF-A6 driver and selfmade tail-led ring), how do you like the light as it is now?

vwpieces, good work, nice light, hope that mine build will be as good as yours :slight_smile: (still waiting for s2+ host).

I like the light, Killer LED. it Can compete with a triple. I wish the driver external ntc had a little higher temp range. Shuts off in short time on DD. But when its disabled in UI the light Will get too hot. I think the ntc on the emitter MCPCB is too close to the heat source. Even a large hefty light I think will shut off quick with the ntc on the MCPCB, before the body can soak the heat. The LED can take a beating and survive, I tried to kill it with ext ntc off but the driver on board thermal shuts it down completely. :smiley: I have Fet+1 Nichia triples on Bistro that have a better thermal regulation. I haven’t played in the UI too much on CC, I mean it’s a 9A driver and it’s pulling 8.4A DD. I can also lower the variable CC down to 7A and still keep DD. I gotta play more and maybe I will get it dialed in better.

But, in the back of my mind, I am thinking Fet+1 and Cresendo running that Luxeon V in something other than a Convoy S. Maybe a different light build with the Luxeon too. C8? Nothing built here that I can find except Dales D4 using the L.V. I am curious if it can throw, and considering a C8 first. No idea what it would look like sliced if needed in a C8.

You building a single also?
I wish I would be there to see your first reaction on DD.
I bet it kicks the 9A triple’s butt.

Thanks! I didn’t clean parts up as well as I should have. Glad I didn’t install the driver spring till last. Had to file the solder off the driver spring side from the wire through holes so it didn’t short the retaining ring. I also stuck the wires through the holes with some poking out spring side, fluxed and soldered from the spring side. Cut down excess and filed it flat. Those wire holes are really close to the ring on the S2+, be careful.
I have the driver ring tight too. I trimmed the pads to fit the aluminum perfectly and you can still see the blue oozing into the wire holes. Spacer is a good fit.

At least I tried a cold Toluene dedome (did not post about it), and although the dome came off quite ok in half an hour, also quite some phosfor came with it. The dedomed led is usable because straight on top of the die there was enough phosfor leftover, but because of the flip-chip design I do not expect much throw improvement (see EasyB’s experiments/lecture on that).
My best use of the LuxeonV sofar is in a Thorfire VG10 with FET+1 driver, over 2000lm still at 30 seconds, minutes before really overheating and a very pretty beam (the quad LuxeonV D4 was also my build btw, crazy at turbo but very versatile at lower levels).

I’m Sorry about that!
I can’t remember whats in my own light builds a week later. Your VG10 I remember cause I read that last night.

Luxeon on DD is pretty amazing. It gets whiter but the whole spot is whiter. No dark center spot at all.
I have a few VG10 around but they were the bad batch that had the spacers staked under the MCPCB. So the reflectors are too short to use. I have the kiriba copper made special for them and thats all they are good for… Quads. OH, I do have EE X7, 20mm driver, but not sure my 26650 are up to the task (Black L6 Keeps). And a $12 EE X6 on the way. X6 will take some heat.
I have a duplicate S2+ kit from LED4P, just wanna try a different light.

My VG10 is one of the old good ones.
I’m quite fond of the Kaidomain K2 host (link ), and think that the LuxeonV might work nicely in it. I built one with a 90CRI 3000K XM-L2 and I really like it. The reflector is OP though so the hotspot is not as tight as with the VG10.

@vwpieces

For ILC-0 current there are equations on my site:

Current set resistor calculation equations :

Blue,White,Warm white,Pink,Ice blue colors :

R[kOhm]=1/(2*I[mA])

Green color:

R[kOhm]=1/(1.3*I[mA])

Red,Orange colors:

R[kOhm]=1/(0.8*I[mA])

As for LD-x4 temp. threshold, I suppose you know you can change that threshlod to desired level?

There is decription how to do that in datsheet (basically same as with LD-3), but with one difference (which is still not in datasheet,I will update it ASAP): because LD-4 has 30sec timeout fimer while in config. mode(for safety reasons), user must "preheat" flashlight while in normal mode, that means turn the flashlight on max. and wait until it's around desired threshold temperature. After that user should enter into config. mode and pick ext. temp level sub-menu and then custom threshold level. Further procedure is correctly described in datasheet.

With cold Toluene it seems to help a lot if you slice the dome off first as if you are doing the “slice de-dome” technique. This will reduce the time needed for the soak and usually will get you a good clean de-dome without taking any phos. off at all. I haven’t tried the Luxeon emitters yet, they sound very interesting.