Trustfire AK-47 9x XM-L Driver Defect / Repair / Upgrade / Photos

Nice price, and even nicer that the repair was fairly simple.

How big is that animal in person? Looks like the trustfire thrower host (can’t remember the model sorry).

Could you take a current measurement w/ 2 cells?

Dave, I get 5.75a with two cells. Same current as 3 cells. However, unlike my Skyray version, this one works great with 2x26650’s.

Here are the hand-holds in both configurations for you. Also, the cooling fins are more compact on this one than the Skyray, but I doubt it’ll have any negative effects.


AK-47 in 2 x 26650 (Works great with 2 cells, also 5.75a at tail)


Here in full 3 x 26650 configuration (5.75a at tail)

Nice! That looks smaller than the fit40s, is 26650 and 9 * xm-l, either that, or if we ever meet, don’t be offended if I won’t shake hands…… :bigsmile:

OP updated with beam shots.

Nice, thanks for all.

The ak-47’s definitely the thrower of the two. Nice comparison shots. :bigsmile:

Added a few extra photos to the original Post

makes me almost want to sell my Sky ray and pick up the AK

nice post richie.

Is the driver current regulated?

Thanks FM, I had the same thought as well. But I decided since I love the AK so much, I’m going to modify the Skyray LED’s will all new wiring. Likely 22 gauge and see how much output increases. So I’m going to keep it.

I’m not sure if it is or not. But I love the driver in it due to its versatility and have no intensions of replacing it with anything else.

Have you tried running it with C cells?

Yes, it needed 4 x C cells to fill it. Naturally it was much dimmer than with Li-ions, but all modes worked fine. Tail cap current was .80a on high mode.

The Skyray 9x T6 would not light up at all with 4 x C cells.

UPDATE

The AK-47 exhibits an extremely slow pulse of PWM on low and med, slower than what a heart beat would be and none on High mode.

However, the Skyray 9x T6 exhibits a slightly faster PWM pulse on all modes, low, med and high.

The more I use the AK-47, confirms my initial feelings about it being a better light than the Skyray.

Lol faster PWM is better….

Iam not sure how you checked it, but you can quickly place the head to a bit cloth and you will here the noise the higher the noise the higher the PWM frequency. But i can never judge about how good PWM is because I am not one of the sensitive gays guys.
Compare it with a BLFA( and you will here a really high sound compared to the most stock trustfires and so on.

Too sad that 4xC s won’t work… I like that on the TF3T6 so much…

Hey Werner,

Yes, I’m aware of the cloth method and have used it. With the cloth method, AK produces a hardly noticable whine on Low, and Med, but not on high mode. The Skyray produces a clearly audible whine on all modes.

Typically to check PWM, I mount my camera on a tripod and point the light at a wall and count pulses, if any.

By removing the reflector, which requires popping out the driver and removing 2 screws under the reflector and replacing the + and - wires down to the driver with 22 gauge silver wire (same as Old-Lumens uses) on 3 x 26650’s you can increase power to each LED to just over 6 watts+, up from about 5.82w, but my cells static voltage was 4.05 at this point.

Thats taking into account my Trustfire 5000mAh cells don’t dip below 3.8v each under load and assuming an 80% driver efficiency. I’m sure replacing all the 30 gauge wires actually connected to each LED, would increase this number quite a bit more.

Testing the KD driver only using 2 x 26650’s in this light and on high mode, (they don’t work with 3 cells) the stock driver performed better on high mode with the same 2 x 26650’s.

OP updated with additional requested beam shot comparisions.