Probably heavier wires and a spring mod will help. You could also take a pic of the driver there might be something that you can do there like jump a resistor.
Oh and yep. They all have a screw in the center, some have a second screw as well.
Chances are these are already wired in parallel but you can check that as well. If there is anything like 4S3P going on you can change that around to 3S4P and that will give you a boost. If you can take a picture of how they have it wired that will help too.
Hmmm I haven’t seen that driver before but it looks like you should be able to jump the 476. If it was me I would solder a small piece of copper wire directly over that resistor from one end to the other. But then I also have a bag full of dead drivers! I don’t have the knowledge to say exactly if it will work or not. Someone else might be able to help. Like I said, I would give it a shot but I’m not sure you want to take the chance and end up with a dead driver. If you do try it, you can always test it first with just a short burst. I know this is cheesy but I tape three batteries together with wires on the positive and negative and touch them to the driver after I do a resistor mod. Just for a second and longer if nothing bad happens. If you screw the body on and hit the button you might not have time to turn it off before you get the dreaded burnt smell of death.
As for the reflector make sure the O ring is out of the way and if you have an ice pick or something like that you can tap on the reflector from the bottom, this will usually knock it loose.
Ok it looks like you have four wires comming up to emitters that are positive and from each of those four they are branching off to two more emitters. So it’s 4P3S You can go to 6P2S and you should still be safe.
That would meant that the positive comes up and is connected directly to Six emitters on their positive and then from each of them to it’s own separate emitter also positive. Then do the same with the negative.
I’m not very good at explaining this so if you don’t get it let me know and I’ll try and draw you a diagram.
Before I mod this…what batteries would best suit it?
To really put out the lumens after modding…are my protected 3400mAh 18650 pannies ok…or should I jump up tp 26650s?
If so…they need to be protected cuz light is in series…correct?
Anyhow, I reckon i need to buy a matching set of 3. Wish I could find the new KeepPower protected 5200mAh 26650s somewhere…or, is there a better battery for this application?
These aren’t protected but so far have showed the lowest internal resistance and the highest capacity. http://www.illumn.com/batteries-chargers-and-powerpax-carriers/26650-keeppower-5200mah-imr26650-high-discharge-flat-top.html They are replacing every other 26650 I have. Run your light on medium and monitor the volts until it starts climbing too high or shuts off. I’m finding a lot of big multi cell drivers cutting off at around 3.1-3.4 volts per cell. With a low voltage protection built in you’ll know the amp draw at shut off. If no low voltage protection I’d use at least one protected cell.
I have that same driver in a TR-9T6. It was a pain to pull it out too because they just shoved it in burs and all and it basically was locked in place by the retaining ring threads.
I didn't want to soup mine up much as I didn't want to pull the emitters to put them on copper. So I just put a 70N02 FET in that empty FET bay. It increased tail current up to 6 amps. So about 2 amps per emitter (3S3P). Heats up real fast.
Some day I will properly mod the light. Just wanted a modest boost for now and that did the trick for mine.
True, you wouldn’t want to use sony 30amps or heavy gauge wire either. Thin wires and king kongs would work. At least I’m pretty darn sure it would. I would give it a shot but then again I’m not too worried about frying a few XML’s.
I know it would work with noctigons and good thermal epoxy. Might be iffy though if there isn’t good paste under there.
Overcurrent will melt the bond wires, but too much voltage will zap the dies even at low current. I have done 5 XREs in parallel driven from 2 series 18650s and it lived (and was stupid bright) but only with no-name Chinese laptop pulls... I tried it with INR 15Qs and all 5 LEDs died instantly without even giving the faintest flash beforehand. ZAP!