Modded: Small Sun ZY-T13 3.2 Amps or Sunwayman T40CS Clone

I managed to mess it up. It turned out I was to optimistic regarding my soldering skills.

When I soldered the resistor and assembled all back, it shined for a second and than nothing.

Than I desoldered the resistor, and nothing again. I dont know what went wrong but these resistors are to tiny for me to solder on them (on the pics they seemed bigger), I lack skill and adequate equipment :o

I also had problems with spring (+) touching the retaining ring (-)

Just a note on batteries. It seems this light will suck cell drys without much of any warning, so protected cells are preferable.

Yeah, you mean undervltage protection probably, so that would not be trustfire flames, because they only seldom have(working) undervoltage protection….

Is this some kind of regulated driver?

Constant current regulated. Genuine Flamefires do have undervoltage protection.

And whats the difference in comparison too, say, SkyRay STL-V2 driver regarding this matter
I think that one also doesnt have unbdervoltage protection or nothing, and its also constant current regulated.

If I dont succed in repairing the driver I broke Ill try to ask someone from manafont for spare driver.

The stl’s do have undervoltage protection.

Well I liked mine so much for the price I just got done ordering another one. You can’t beat this light for the price. The best budget light going for the money in my opinion.

Does anyone have an MXDL turbohead light or ebay equivalent to compare to this one? Thanks.

Op hows this flashlight going? Any issues after you modded it?

awesome mod. does it throw as far as a stl v2/v6 now?

Can someone tell us how can we solder the three legs of trimpot

You’re using it as a variable resistor, so connect the center lead to either of the other leads and just use those two connections. I’m a little weary of using a trimpot for this application though. What kind of trimpot, what power rating/current, etc… Trimpots aren’t generally made to handle much current.

Has anyone simply swapped out the driver for proper output? The side switch is nice
but i’ll throw it overboard to save the LED

OK, great instructions!
I received the light today and IMO it is a very good light for the price paid.

I ordered some 0.68Ohm resistors, I hope they are “close enough”. 2 or 3W, they were one or the other…

One question though:
Which way should I solder it, blue or red?

I looked at the board from the back using a strong light and both resistors seem to be soldered in parallel, anyway I soldered the trimpot at each side of the R200 resistor.

EDIT, PLEASE READ:

I noticed that the resistor values from your board are 150 and 200 mine were 220 and 220, IMHO your light has more amps driving the stock led than mine had in stock form, check the current at the tailcap, I think the resistor you got will overdrive the led.

CheapThrills STOP!

I just noticed that the resistor values on your board are different from mine! Please measure the current at the tailcap from the stock board and report back before you mod anything!

I think you are going to overdrive the led with that resistor!

Looking closer at the board in your light it looks different from the board in my light, mine has 2 additional electronic components near the resistors and yours does not (one look like a diode to me, the other I have no clue!) I would recommend to NOT MOD IT until someone more knowledgeable in electronics takes a look at your board and chimes in.

Hi!

Sorry, pic is just for reference from another thread. AFAIK it is not even the same driver.

I have the light at me now but I have not yet even disassembled yet since I´m still waiting for resistors.
So, no worries yet :wink:

Anyway, the way “blue” would be the preferred?
(will post pics later from actual driver)

AAAAAAAAHHH! just as this thread is resurrected,my zy-t13 died,put both batteries into protection and does so to other batteries too.Don't have time to diagnose,but this sucks I really like this light.If anyone knows of a decent 8.4v low PWM driver@3 amps or so,I'm open to suggestions.I don't really care about the side switch at this point.

Had some time so I took some measurements.
Supplied the driver from a power supply, read supply current from power supply display.
Measured LED current with a current probe connected to an oscilloscope.
There’s some wiggle-room to my results since the LED star wasn’t mounted on anything,
I only always quickly powered on, took my readings and powered off.
But the LED will have heated up a bit.

The 0.22Ohm resistors on my driver board are in parallel, resulting in a combined resistance of 0.11Ohm (=110 mOhm)
The resistors are in the input-current path of the driver.
Input power is a fairly constant ~7.5W
Output current to the LED is a fairly constant 2.05A
(2.1A at 6V VBat to 2.01A at 8.4V VBat)
Calculated efficiency is ~80%

I made some calculations for resistor values but they turned out to be a bit off, maybe because of temp influence.
I had calculated that I’d need ~370mOhm in parallel (—> 85mOhm resulting resistance) to get to 2.5A

All I had available were 1 Ohm resistors, so I soldered 2 of them in parallel (—> 500mOhm added in parallel, resulting resistance 90mOhm)
And those actually gave me 2.5A at the LED.

Then I added another 1 Ohm resistor in parallel (—> 333 mOhm added in parallel, resulting resistance 83 mOhm)
With those values I got 2.73A at the LED.

I stopped there.
Based on the measurement results I calculated that if you want ~3A through the LED you’ll need to add ~227 mOhm in parallel to the existing 2x220 mOhm resistors. The overall resistance then would be ~75 mOhm.

The 2x 220 mOhm (=0.22 Ohm = R22 listed on the components) on my driver board are 0805 SMD components,
in case you want to buy the same size for easy piggy-back.

Quick summary:
table(table#posts).
||LED current|Total R|R that needs to be added in parallel|
||[A]|Ohm|Ohm|
|original|2.05|0.11|N/A|
|tested|2.5|0.09|0.5|
|tested|2.73|0.083|0.333|
|calc.|3|0.075|0.227|

-S