In case anyone is interested how the Trustfire AK-47’s series wiring looks under the reflector, here is a shot of it. Below that is a photo I borrowed from member, FMcamaroZ28, showing his Skyray 9x T6 factory wired in 3s3p.
Funny thing is the Skyray driver would not work in my AK-47. I’m sure the grounds where fine when I installed it, but perhaps the different wiring configurations between both lights make the drivers non-interchangeable, but I’m not fully certain.
AK-47 factory wired in series. Also, the brighter color red wire at upper right side and black wire
are what I also upgraded on my example to 22g silver wire down to the driver.
Skyray 9x T6 factory wired for 3s3p. Photo credited to FMcamaroZ28.
I couldn’t leave well enough alone on this second AK-47. So I opened the reflector and de-soldered the stock positive and negative wires and replaced them both with 22g silver wire down to the stock driver. Replaced the Trustfire +B spring with one of my heavy duty gold plated variety with some copper desoldering braid added to it. When all that was done, I mashed up some thermal conductive pad and inserted the pieces under the electronic driver components on both sides using this stuff from IOS.
Trying it with 3 cells, tail cap amps remained the same, so perhaps there is some regulation going on with 3 cells. But on 2 cells, whether using MNKE or EnerPower’s, tail cap current increased from 4 amps to 4.60 amps on high mode. Using my Trustfire 26650’s, current decreased to 3.75a.
So all of the above, or perhaps simply the two wires I replaced increased the output on 2 cells from 30 watts to 34 watts. Not great, but seems okay for the stock driver.
LOL…the KD driver outpowers the stock driver by triple the amount.
I have returned my defective k47 in exchange for a j18. Manufacturer rated at 8000 lumens but seemed to be only as bright as 3000 plus lumens only. Anyone knows how to make the light produce 8000 lumens as rated. Maybe a change in board or something?
HI Dexter, we live very close to each other…
Maybe can meet up drink tea…haha
Ur ak 47 is not defective. The numbers is printed saying that light theoretically if driven with full power can give out so much lumens.
However, the highest for ak 47 is about 6000 lumens as modded by Richie. J18 is bout 5000 lumen by Tom. All using diff type of batt to get it.
Member TomE has been doing a great job upgrading his J18. This is one thread below, but I’m sure he has a better one. Best to PM him and have him refer you to his upgrade thread.
Leif from Likedigi support, the retailer that supplies Amazon.com with the AK-47’s we’ve been purchasing, contacted me yesterday about a review I sent noting the low power issue the later models have had. I explained this is due to the 3rd sense resistor being omitted from the driver by the manufacturer.
I did tell him I’ve removed the sales link from my review on this forum due to the extremely low output power these lights have. He was very nice to deal with and promises he’ll talk to the manufacturer about this issue and get the output up to where it should be. But until that happens, the Amazon sales link will remain omitted from this review.
If I hear anything else, I’ll be sure to post about it.
Nice find. I should have the new version from Kaidomain late this week, if they aren’t good, I’ll order a couple of these from LightMalls. I noticed in the specs this driver has a 30 volt output. Should be perfect for the already wired in 9s1p like the AK-47.
The stock driver with 3 sense resistors intact , runs at 5.74a at the tailcap with 3 x Trustfire 5000mAh cells. It grossed 64 watts. I’m pretty sure that was well past 3500 lumens and is very bright. Would easily outshine a Trustfire TR-J12 or J18.
The same stock driver but with only 2 resistors, which seems to be the way they are shipping, unless the Manafont version is better, runs at about 3.5a at the tailcap with 3 x Trustfire 5000mAh cells for about 38 gross watts. I’d say in this reduced output capacity, the 38 watts is about equal to the output of a Skyray King, about 2400 lumens.
Just got my newly designed KD 9x T6 drivers today. After soldering a +B spring onto one of them, tossed it into the light. A bit disappointed at the output on high mode with this new design at 5.50 amps. Using fully charged MNKE 3 x 26650’s, and assuming voltage won’t sag below 3.8 volts per cell, that’s a gross output of 62 watts. Quite a bit off from the original driver design at 8.14 amps or 90 watts.
On two cells, tail cap current on high was 5.0 amps or 38 watts.
Still, this is a huge amount of light and perhaps the driver will last longer not nearly heating up as much. I also added a bunch of the thermal foam goop they include between the driver boards, so I’m really not concerned about heat on this one to much. So I don’t think I’m going to have this one encapsulated, unless I purchase the old-style driver from the other retailer.
Anyway, I finally have a super powerful 9x T6 light with 3 wonderful modes, High-Med-Low and none of those worthless blinky modes. Aside from the lower output, it works perfectly in an AK-47 stock wired in 9S1P.
