Recently I was looking for a way to really drive a 4x plunger light I picked up. I know there are a few different solutions but this is what I ended up doing. I started with this driver.
This is also the driver that a few people know from International outdoors and LCK-Led
You can see the resistors that need to be bridged on the top right hand side. There are two stacked R200's just run a line of solder over top of them or removed them and put a wire across. However you want to do it so that they are jumped.
Then you will need to pot this driver pretty well. It's a heat protected driver so unless you do a good job potting it the protection will kick on over and over. I use a combination of JB Weld and silicon carbide. You can find them both cheap on e-bay. For the silicon carbide look up tumbling grit and get the fine grit it's a powder actually. Take the power and put a bunch in a bowl of some kind. I use a small glass bowl. Then pour equal amounts of the two tubes of JB-Weld in. Use more than you think you will need. Now Mix and mix and mix and mix. Eventually the JB-Weld with combine together with the silicon carbide powder until you have something that is close to putty. Now squish this together so that there are no air bubbles and put it on the driver both back and front. Just get it all around the driver really good so it's completely covered. Then let it sit overnight. It will be hard as a rock by morning.
This works good on all kinds of drivers and also can be used for adding heatsinking to all kinds of things. It's basically a cheap thermal epoxy, it is NOT removable once it's in place so keep that in mind. You can also add heat if you are in a hurry. This will make is solid as a rock and shiny too.
Now for wiring the emitters. It's a simple 2S2P and it kicks out the lumens. Make sure you put them on noctigons or sinkpads. Direct copper is a must for this mod. By 2S2P I'm talking about two sets of two emitters. Each set runs off of the driver's positive and negative wires. Forgive my cheesy drawing but hopefully it will help for people who don't understand what 2S2P is. That's two emitters wired in Series running parallel with each other for a total of four emitters.
I would also advice being careful about how heavy of wires you put on this mod. and how much heatsinking you have available. It's really limited only by that. 6 thousand lumens is not hard to hit at all with this mod, even de-domed. It makes for a very cool light. I have done two of them, one de-domed and one with two cool white emitters and two high CRI neutral emitters. Next is going to be four aspheric lenses. The ones from the group buy awhile back. should be interesting to see just how far a 6 thousand lumen 4x aspheric will throw. Also I'm using 3 26650 sony batteries in this.
Which drivers did you receive? The large or small toroid version? I’m looking for an alternative to the 3A ones I got from KD so I don’t have to resistor mod them. I’ve heard of problems with the small toroid versions. Also does yours change modes slowly? Mine has issues with that.
These one have the small toroid and I haven’t had any problems with them as long as I pot them really good. I think pretty much all of these drivers with the heat protection need to be potted really good. Have you tried potting the ones you have?
How many A does this one put out with the sensing resistors shorted?
Mcu hack should be similiar to the other drivers we did, but I have one with 3 modes and it works even in Stock form very good, despite a bit slow modechanging.
Sadly I just added another resistor to up the current a bit and I potted everything(pill, driver, reflector) with Fujik so I don’t want to reopen the light again…
Just read that you will use aspheric lenses than my prediction is that you will see much less lumens than you think.
I really have no idea how many amps I’ll leave that to someone with better equipment than me. I don’t post a lot of my mods anymore for that reason. I always get bugged for exact numbers and I simply don’t know them or trust them even if I did them. I’m really a trial and error modder, when it works it works. Lumens are about the only thing I trust and I don’t really like posting them much either because people will get arguing over them as well. LOL
The putty just looks like grey colored putty the key is really just mixing and mixing and mixing, it dries grey and solid as a rock. On the aspheric, yes the Lumens would not be OTF you loose a ton of lumens with an aspheric. I have done a couple dozen aspheric throwers. This one is going to really be just a fun light and I’m doing it simply because I can. LOL
I have not tired potting yet. The mag builds I have done have very large heatsinks so heat so far hasn’t been an issue. I was just curious if theese drivers could be a substitute to resistor modding for me so I could have a 5A driver out of the package.
