While waiting for your 5A diode, you could set it for 3 Amp and do some measures to see how well the driver is handling that load: Voltage and Amps in, volts and amps to the LED.
The efficiency will tell you how much power is lost (heat) in the driver and if it is likely to be able to handle more current without smoking it.
I had stacked 2 x R200 and 1 x R100 resistors earlier, on the 1st driver, and from this post:
So, I think I can just go back and get those numbers with that driver, and it’s close enough to the 3 amps you were suggesting?
… if you got the Voltage and Amps on the input (battery/power supply), and the voltage & amps on the output/ LED at the same time, then Watts out/watts in will give efficiency.
I didn’t see all those numbers for the 2.8A test. Power lost in the driver will go somewhere; it will turn to heat.
In other words, LowLumen isn’t worried about exactly what current you are using. It’s a matter of collecting all that data he mentioned. Once you have that at 3A, 2.8A, or whatever, we’ll know power in and power out. The difference will represent losses in the driver (as heat), exactly as LowLumen stated.
Understand that guys :)…
It will give some idea of how likely you are to smoke it by pushing it harder too. Try to be as accurate as possible with the measures. If you are using a clamp meter on the LED current, try looping the wire through the clamp twice & /2 on the reading for better accuracy.
….well, I like efficient drivers too :bigsmile:
Sorry son, didn’t mean to be pedantic. 
:bigsmile: :bigsmile:
Hi, Here's the In vs. Out info:
| Vin | Iin | Pin (watts) | Vout | Iout (x 2) | |
| 3 | 0.63 | 1.89 | 2.84 | 0.8 | |
| 3.2 | 1.15 | 3.68 | 2.93 | 1.86 | |
| 3.4 | 1.81 | 6.154 | 3.02 | 3.15 | |
| 3.6 | 2.25 | 8.1 | 3.06 | 3.99 | |
| 3.8 | 2.73 | 10.374 | 3.09 | 4.96 | |
| 4 | 3.26 | 13.04 | 3.11 | 6.02 | |
| 4.2 | 3.63 | 15.246 | 3.12 | 6.7 | |
| 4.4 | 3.88 | 17.072 | 3.12 | 7.18 |
Vin/Iin were what was displayed by the bench supply.
The table above was done as suggested, with one of the emitter leads looped through the clamp meter twice.
Vout/Iout were measured using the clamp meter (again, looped twice) and a voltmeter attached to the emitter leads.
EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to mention that this was the 1st driver, the one where I stacked R200, R200, and R300 resistors.
EDIT 2: Emitter was an XM-L, on Noctigon, sitting on a (maybe) 1/4" copper plate with thermal paste.
BTW, there have been multiple mentions of the FET. Which component is the FET? Is it the 2 of them that are marked “AOEC”?
EDIT: It looks like the new diodes (plus a bunch more of resistors) will get here today via USPS.
I was thinking about this driver, and my question above, and realized that we, or more precisely, I, have not identified all of the components on this driver yet.
Referencing the pics at Anyone worked with either of these drivers from Lightmalls?
- We know the R200 is apparently the 0.2 ohm sense resistor.
- I think the SS34 is schottky diode.
- What is that “LEDA 1322” chip?
- What are the “A0EC” or “AOEC” chips?
- What is the “151”?
- What is the “W8”?
- What is the “S4”?
Anyone?
I think a closer look at some of what’s already been posted may address this but…
SS34 is the schottky diode (identified in simple [asynchronous] buck diagrams)
LEDA 1322 is a QX9922 buck controller, see my earlier post. Buck circuits all have some sort of control hardware to open and close the switch you see in any simple diagram (MOSFET in real life). The QX9922 is only present to handle the buck section, modes are handled with another chip which controls the QX9922 through a PWM signal.
AOEC/A0EC/whatever is the FET (MOSFET) - there are two but it’s not clear to me that both of them are actually part of the buck circuit. Other drivers also have a weird two-FET arrangment, see my post in comfychair’s New version DRY driver info thread goes here. Post #32.
151 is a resistor, 150-Ohms I suppose unless I’m crazy again (LowLumen will hopefully correct me in that case).
W8 is a zener diode - this is used along with a resistor to give a fairly regulated low voltage (5.1v probably?) for the QX9922 and the modes chip.
S4 is another diode. It’s probably a reverse polarity protection diode (protects the driver).
If you aren’t going to rebuild the damaged driver, please fully strip it of components and attempt to take clear pictures of the traces. Scraping the resist off of the whole thing in order to expose the copper is a valid thing to do.
If you are going to use it then you certainly can’t do that, but if you got really motivated you could check and see whether the wiring is similar to what I describe in post #32 of the new-dry-driver info thread.
wight,
Thanks for collecting and summarizing that info.
My situation is that I am hoping to keep working with the 2 copies of the driver that I have.
I already re-soldered the couple of components that got “blown away” by my super heat gun trip, and that driver is working again, and in fact, I put an R100 stacked on the R200 and I’ve seen 4+ amps at the emitter when I was just messing around with it. That was the one where I thought I saw a puff of smoke, but I haven’t gotten the nerve to try that again yet. I consider that driver (the one with the R100 in parallel with the R200 my main “guinea pig”, and the other one with the R200, R200, and R100 in parallel my “baseline”.
The new schottky diodes just got here this afternoon, so I’m going to try to replace the SS34 on the guinea pig driver with the new diode and see if it works. If it does still work, I’ll see what happens if I up the Vin/Iin.
Different topic: I haven’t ohmed it put yet, but I was assuming that they just put the two AOEC/A0ECs in parallel, i.e., the source and drain tied together, kind of like all the 7135s on a 7135-based driver are in parallel. Would that NOT be the case in this driver?
Anyway, so I’ll do that (ohm out the AOEC/A0EC) to see if they’re tied together, then I’m going to try to swap the SS34 out, and then see what happens after that.
Thanks again for your help. This has been interesting, and I’m really hoping that if I can swap out the right parts, I can get to that “small driver” that you mentioned. I guess that to do that, potentially, I/we need to figure out exactly what the AOEC/A0EC is and if they’re paralleled, and if they are maybe I can stack more AOEC/A0ECs, like they stack 7135s??
Sure thing.
Short answer: No stacking & they are not in parallel. It’s visible from the pictures you took. I can tell how it’s not hooked up, I just can’t really tell how it is hooked up.
EDIT: and I’m looking forward to your results with the new diode.
Hi,
Unfortunately, the new diodes were too large, like WAY too large. Maybe twice the length and twice the width of the original one.
So question: If I got another SS34, I don’t understand why I couldn’t stack them on top of the original SS34? I guess that the individual diodes might have slightly different V vs. I curves or something, but wouldn’t current split essentially evenly between/among the paralleled diodes?
PRE-EDIT: NVM - found this: parallel - Is paralleling diodes a bad idea? - Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange
So, it looks like even stacking 2 SS34s would not be a good idea, so I’d have to find another schottky diode that was the same package/form factor as the SS34 but with higher current rating…
While I was down in my “lab” and scratching my head about the new diode, I started doing some ohming around. I didn’t complete the job, it’s just tedious, but (don’t laugh) here’s a pic of what I was able to trace:
The small “BRN” is that component just to the left of the (original) R200 resistor.
The 6-pin chip on the left is the unmarked 6 pin chip.
I wasn’t able to find anything connected to the upper-left pin of the top A0EC/AOEC chip.
I’m not sure where to go with this from here. I kind of think that I’d be ok running this with an R100 stacked on top of the R200, maybe if I put some thermal putty around the driver (recall that I haven’t tried this in an actual light with an actual battery or batteries yet). Maybe it might even be worth risking one driver to try it, even without any heatsinking of the driver? I don’t know…
EDIT: BTW, I posted a spreadsheet with the in vs. out voltage/current earlier:
Was that the info that you all were looking for?
Good job answering your own question. Now you see why we don’t do it
What are the dimensions of SS34? If they fit, and it seems like they would, I’d consider a PowerDi5 package or Powermite3. Take a look over here for some suggestions on PowerDi5, and take a look at post #47 over here to see a Powermite3 diode in place on the common LD-29. Note that PowerDi5 and Powermite3 are the same size.
That’s a great start on the diagram - there’s nothing to laugh at. It’s a horrible, tedious process that few of us love.
The upper left pin your reference almost certainly hooks up to QX9922 I keep saying QX9922, but I mean QX9920! Anyway, it almost certainly hooks up to Pin 1, the one marked with the dimple.
When you talk about resistor values, I’m not really following (eg I refuse to continue doing math ;-)). Let’s simply refer to set currents and cut out the middle man. In terms of whether it would be OK without potting… who knows, why not just pot it and be done? If you are afraid it will fail, “trying it” without potting it won’t help it not fail. It will simply make the driver more likely to fail. I’m not certain what you are referring to when you say thermal putty. Are you talking about ImA4Wheelr’s reversible potting recipe?
Yes, the data you posted earlier was exactly what I was looking for. It showed pretty much what I expected. I don’t see where the driver ever gets past 75% efficient and it quickly dives once you take it past 3A output. At 3.59A it’s 65% efficient. That’s a pretty massive loss in the driver, ~6W. Actually while we’re on the subject… you’d better pot that driver Seriously though, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use the driver at that drive current unless you can get the efficiency up.
When you do your spreadsheet you can simply add a column of Pout/Pin to get efficiency.
Hmm, sorry. Maybe QX9920 doesn’t have a dimple. If not, pin1 is the lower left pin when the text is right side up. In other words it’s right next to the FET pin in question.
I haven’t digested your entire post yet, but I don’t understand something. The PowerDI5 package looks quite different from the SS34. The SS34 has only 2 pins/legs, one on each end of the chip. The PowerDI5 package looks like it has 3 pins, or more like a tab on one end and 2 pings on the other end. So how would a PowerDI5 packaged component replace an SS34?
EDIT: The SS34 looks more like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/271550336169?lpid=82
The dimensions there say:
which sounds about right.
For the diodes in question both pins are the same.
I’m going to check the QX9920 pin 1 connection, but for a replacement for the SS34, how’s about this(http://www.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&itemSeq=154336519&uq=635420073248177733), size-wise and capacity?
That’s an SMA which I think is the right package/size, and it’s 20V or 30V/5 amps, so that should give some head room? Plus, I can get them from Digi-key :)!
Link doesn’t work. Try Digikey’s “shorten URL” function (near the top, chain link icon) or use the Advanced Post Editor when you post the normal link.
That said… as you can see, I ask for help when selecting diodes. That’s why I tried to point you towards one I’d already looked at extensively. The diodes discussed in the thread I linked are certainly available at Digikey. I’m not saying that they are the best or even that I know they’ll work, just that they are the best thing I can suggest to you right now!
You were right. Leda pin 1 goes to upper AOEC top left pin. What else to check b4 I leave?