Review: Sky Ray 9xT6 - The King of HOT Rods?

Hi Werner,

When I tried using the KD 9x driver in both my Skyray and AK-47, it worked with 2 cells but would get screwy once the 3rd cell was put in.

But my question is this; why do the manufacturers wire these lights in 3s3p, is it better due to the very thin gauge wiring they use?
I have been considering rewiring my AK-47 in series and eliminating the 3s3p and using 22g silver wire, but just wondered what you think?

3Sx3P LEDs actually requires thicker wires than 9S since the current in them would be three times as much. Running 9S would might not be as efficient for the driver since it requires a higher voltage boost ratio.

Thanks Texaspyro :wink:

The KD driver is a boost driver so it only works when battery voltage is lower than LED voltage…thats why no one tested this with a positive result in this light. I wanted to hint that longer but I forgot and was reminded as I surfed through KD today…

If you want to test the KD driver than you have to change LED wiring, but thats not so much work as you only have to resolder the parallel wires in series.

The manufacturer do that because it is simpler, 3 LEDs in series can be direct driven with 3 cells and the skyray 9T6 driver is just a controller and a FET, the only thing which confuses me is that the driver is not on 100% duty cycle in high…???

Hi Werner,

I’ll check this out on my Skyray and see what happens :slight_smile:

I am tempted

Question, what would happen if using the KD driver, and I eliminated the parallel wiring, and used the 22g wired all in series? Would the silver wire be able to handle the higher current? Would I loose any driver efficiency?

Series connection requires LESS current and can use smaller wire than a parallel connection.

like texaspyro wrote.
Higher voltage and therefor lower current lead to less energy lost, thats why the power supply lines are normally in high voltage.
If you solder them in series the resulting current through all wires is 3A.

In Stock the tailcapcurrent flows through the wires between driver and LED and a third of that current flows through the LED wires.
If you mod it all wires see the same current from about 3A…

AWG22 is good for that. The stock wire is to small in anyway

You could try making a clay mould of the space you want to fill with metal and see if you have a local sculpture workshop - the one near me can do bronze and copper melting and pouring into a mould. It’ll cost a bit, but probably way less than paying someone at UK prices to machine a chink of copper for you. Machine shops here charge a LOT.

I have my Skyray 9x T6 LED’s about 1/3 rewired in series at this point. I don’t think I’ll complain about the price of these lights in the future. This is a lot of precision work to wire one of these. I’m used to rewiring 1-3 LED’s, but this is my first 9x light. Each 22AWG silver wire has to be custom cut to the proper length, pre-tinned, and care must be taken when soldering each wire to insure it is positioned properly so the reflector centering rings mount correctly. Not a job you want to rush through.

I’ll keep you updated.

I rewired my Skyray 9x T6 in series with 22g silver wire, but one of the contacts on an LED fell off, so I can’t test it until I can get a replacement LED for it. The size of the star is pretty small at 13.73 mm diameter. Figures, it’s always the last one that causes issues…LOL.

I ripped one contact of an LED off as well, just scratch the paint of the conductive line which lead to the ripped contact. You can then solder to the copper path…

Oh that sounds confusing but I hope you get what I mean…

Hey Werner, sure I understand, but wouldn’t soldering to the copper path interfere with the plastic LED centering ring? I’m pretty sure without them or even one of them, the reflector will contact the wires and not work. If you do that, please let me know if it works. Thanks for the heads up.

For me it worked, but I don’t know how much you ripped off, I just scratched 1mm or so next to the pad so that there was enough space to the ring.
On mine the pad felt off while desoldering the stock wire, without any force applied.

These centering rings and the tight fit of the reflector could really be a problem, but wouldn’t it be boring if everything is to easy…

Also I have now some dust on my reflector and don’t know how to clean it, perhaps I order a photo brush or so…

Yep, that’s how mine came off, when desoldering. To de-dust the reflector and lens, I typically use my compressor to remove it. I never touch the reflector for any reason, but the lens is usually an easy job. Sometimes I’ll even rinse the reflector under water, than use my compressed air to dry it off completely. These lights are really nice with a dust free lens and reflector, or any light for that matter.

Hmm this is strange. I just got a nice Extech EX320 DMM and did a tailcap measurement of this light on high with 3 Trustfire “5000” mAh flames. Each battery tested at 4.12v. The highest reading I could get was 3.7A. I’m wondering if my DMM leads are sucky because according to the review, I should be seeing about 6 amps…Right now this means each XM-L is getting like 400mA…

Doing a white wall comparison with my Nitecore TM26 Quadray, which is ANSI FL1 rated at 3500 lumens, they seem about equal in output….The Nitecore might have a slight advantage, but just slight. This really has me confounded.

You can try shorting the tips while measuring tailcapcurrent, I guess the brightness will increase. On this light even slightly voltage loss cause less current.
So exchange your leads through thick wire.

As the LEDs are 3S3P 3A tailcapcurrent means 1A through every LED.

And of course the weakest point is the positive spring add a piece of copper braid and a you will need a pair of sunclasses :wink:

One thing I am not sure of is that the light has hearable Pwm even in high mode, perhaps this can cause false measuring to…?

I haven’t checked out the forum in a long time and figured I’d post some photos of my mods here. I hope the OP doesn’t mind. I got a copper heatsink from some online metals website. It only needed light sanding to drop right into the back of the reflector head. I did have to drill holes for the lead wires though. I replaced the LEDs with neutral white ones and changed the wire to 20 AWG silver coated teflon wire. The tailcap didn’t seem to be making very good contact with some 26650 King Kongs so I soldered some small metal spacers, meant for recharging, onto the switch contact. I also followed Werner’s lead and kaptontaped the underside of the reflector. All in all, it wasn’t very expensive, but if I did it again, I would probably keep the cool white LEDs for brightness. The copper heatsink adds a ton of mass and makes the thing a beefy potential club, but it was a pain in the butt to drill holes into it.

I tried to maintain the same orientation as before to keep it simple.

Initially I thought the driver was dead and ordered a KD driver before reading that it didn’t work properly in parallel. At this point re-wiring sounds like too much of a pain. It turns out the original driver wasn’t broken, but rather the wiring was messed up. I am still very disappointed with the merchant I got this from, but oh well, it made for a good learning experience. I don’t have any beamshots, but the LEDs are NW anyway, so it’s less output than the CW ones.

I have learned a lot from the members of this forum, so if there are any questions about these mods, please feel free to ask and I’ll help if I can. I can also post links for the parts if anyone is interested. I did the mod for the learning experience but all in all it probably isn’t worth it from a practical point of view.

Hey Gen1,

Very nice job! Can you please post the link where you purchased the copper slug from? Also, what is the thickness of the copper and does it come in thinner slugs? Thank you and we look forward to some beamshots.