That is an interesting point about how the light is assembled.
I wonder if a 10mm shim would fit… Math says it would be TIGHT when the bezel is screwed down.
3/8” will likely be a fairly loose fit so that is less than ideal.
Being a machinist without a machine shop is frustrating.
Today I made a wood shim to check dimensions and fit. Seems that 9.8mm is a pretty good size as it forces the lens into the front o-ring a little as you snug up the front bezel on the C8F.
I also did some pricing on having a batch of these made. 1-2 is kind of expensive but 10 isn’t bad at all.
I got my order of some Luxeon V LEDs and A4 drivers.
I have a triple build that had a bad driver and the driver I’m planning to use may or may not ever arrive, so I threw the 6A LD-A4 in there to try it. I really like the firmware.
I really want the LD-B4 for this triple now, but the MOSLED 3535 boards are out of stock… I assume they aren’t coming back, but is there going to be an updated version that will work with the B4 driver?
The A4 drivers are going to be paired with the mounted Luxeon Vs that I ordered, which already have the NTC onboard.
I have not tested it in a M21a but it should fit. Unless I am mistaken, it uses the same reflector as the C8 and I doubt anything else differed significantly in the head. The M21c has a larger head and it would not fit well in that light. I put one in a manta ray 26650 c8. It took some work though but was not bad. It has great runtime though on “reasonable” modes :). Hope that helps.
Would it give 6V and 12V drivers again in future?
Can luxeon IR be soldered on a copper DTP board?
So I used and have been happy with the Dr. Jones H17fx It is a 17mm driver but you can get an adapter ring from MTN or Kaidomain to use it in a light built for a 20mm driver. What I like about it is I can set 2x clicks for turbo and then set a “high” at something much more reasonable. So, for instance, if you want a “normal” 3 mode that you can use most of the time but still have some access to a full power giggles mode, you can do L-M-H (set at like 1,000 lumens) and then 2x clicks for full turbo. I find the programmability of that driver especially helpful for crazy builds like this. With Luxeon V2’s (what I’m using) and a 26650 you can get roughly 1,500 lumens and 2 hours of runtime!
I have only 3 spare mosx 3XP boards with sodlered fet+ntc left, if you want to buy it please let me know before purchase and I'll put them in stock.
MosX boards, after this clearance sale, will no longer be available, reason is there will be no need for them because new driver(s) should have better thermal performance, so there will be no need for external fet, at least for currnents <15Amp, which means all 20mm sized MCPCBs. While external fet works great, assembly is more complicated, more wires, more difficult soldering to MCPCB etc., so I would like to avoid it for small lights (20mm MCPCB size).
Yes, but probably for driver diameters >19mm, I'm not sure about 17mm.
Luxeon IR doesn't have isolated thermal pad, just like Osram IR, so you can solder it to 3030 DTP boards, but this would cause short if you use such board in flashlight.
For flashlights I still have some aluramic 3030 boards which have close-to-DTP performance, but they are isolated, so they can be used in flashlights.
Now I’m more interested in the new drivers. I’ll wait and get a couple of those when they are available.
Will the new drivers still require an external NTC for the thermal regulation to work properly?
I know it’s better but it limits compatibility with standard MCPCBs.
They will use NTC, but you'll have a choice to have them on LED MCPCB, or on driver PCB (that could work good enough with new PCB design, we'll see).
L4P, has anyone ever reported a Ledil Cute optic melting and hazing from too overdriven emitters? I rebuilt an old BLF EE X6 with a triple XPLHI on your MosX mcpcb. Its running an old 70N02 FET driver from an LG HB1 and in about 3 minutes of intermittent turbo runs yielded a destroyed optic.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an optic being destroyed from heat. Have you?
I didn’t grab a current measurement but after the cell recharges I’ll get one. I just can believe an XPL could do this…
@JaredM: my guess is that it overheated for some reason. Maybe one of the leds wasn’t reflowed properly or perhaps there was dirt in the lens.
To melt relatively big optic lens like cute you need some serious power - if we're talking about LEDs light output as source of melting. XP-L HI are not very powerful by today's standards (lm/mm2), so I highly doubt they can melt cute optics. That pretty much can only happen if optics is "dirty" so it absorbs too much energy/light, maybe from remaining flux after soldering, which can evaporate at higher temps and deposit on inner tir surface?
Picture of your soldering work could help to see what's going on.
Other possibility is too hot light case/host , but it must be very very hot to melt PMMA lens (105+C), I doubt EE X6 can become that hot with 3x HI and single battery.
So I measured the current with a full cell and it’s only pulling 12.3A measured with a clamp meter. There is no way a ~4A XPL is creating enough heat for this.
I think you are correct about either vapors from the any flux, IPA, or even the thermal grease must have deposited/reacted with the PMMA and caused a bunch of absorption. I took an old CUTE-3 that had a broken leg and some scratches from my parts bin and installed it later after doing some high-temp “out-gassing” turbo runs and then let it get as hot as I could. It seemed to hold up fine. I’ll have to try again with a new optic… It’s a shame because the one from you had the correct pin height and arrived in pristine condition. Mouser always delivers me imperfect TIRs.
I got my replacement driver and fitted it. All is good now…. except I played around with the lighted tail.
Originally the lighted tail was as dim as it could be. I wanted a little more so I replaced the resistors on the tail. However when connected through the driver it is no brighter at all and in fact had visible pwm.
Do I need to replace the bleeder on the driver as well?
I need more info, which lighted tail did you use?
One of the older ICL-1 modules. I cut away the metal casing and swapped out R1 and R2 from 2k to 620ohm. When power is connected directly it seems good but when connected through the driver it’s dim and with pwm.
Does driver has installed bleeder? Are you sure resistors are 620Ohm, they seem to have too low resistance (maybe 62Ohm)? Please check resistor values with multimeter.