I am finding this board interesting. Could someone tell me what the prices are for the boards, I do not have an account.
I am also wondering how much cutting and such is needed on the S2+ and on the Solarforce lights for install. Or, does enough make it around the switch to get a glow?
Are these boards on RBD's Oshpark thread? If not it would be good to get RBD to add a link there in his OP. I'm going to order a few just for the smaller diameter. Thanks.
Long ago I ordered these boards before but they never arrived. A few weeks ago I ordered them again few days ago they arrived.
First try on a Supfire S1, I first took out the stock switch which is a different design, I had to add a ring in between the new switch and silicon cover, had to do that anyway because it was to be white plastic for the red led-light to get through, the tailcap was replaced by a transparant one, the pillar was shortened. The brass switch retaining ring is very thick in the Supfire S1, so I had to ream the inside quite a bit to get it clear from the center pad of the pd68 switch board. The new switch was this one, started with testing some resistor values, ended up with 5.6KOhm on the switch board, 680 Ohm bleeder on the driver. The new design board allowed two leds in parallel :-)
The careful observer will see that in this picture the leds are the wrong way around, they exploded during testing. Actually during testing I blew six of these tiny leds. That will not happen again because now I now know how to do it right.
For the bleeder resistor I drilled a shallow hole in between the batt+ pad and ground ring, so that the resistor was plane with the surface after soldering.
Neat result :-) . I am going to mod this light further (the head is still stock apart from the bleeder R), but this is a nice start. 4V, 6kOhm is 0.65mA, so a 550mA Efest should last about 34 days. I charge it more often than that so that's ok!
Thanks pd68 for the ideas and board, this is a nice little upgrade and a good excuse to fiddle around without having to start on the big hobby-projects that I dread starting, like the DIY contest entry. :sad:
Perhaps as a small improvement, the solder pads for the switch may better not go all the way to the edge but stop a tiny bit from the edge, then there's no chance for them to short against the side of the tail section
I had thought about that the last time I revised one. Ultimately I had never had a problem with them shorting so I left them all the way to the edge. Shouldn’t be too hard to change that though.
Also, the center pad I left the same size as on the 20mm board so it would be easy to fit a normal sized spring. Do you think I should make it smaller? Or was it juat problematic because of the larger retaining ring?
I’m going to order some of these fairly soon, planning to get a 18350 tube light with Nichia 219 with a good moon light mode and this tail light so its easily found.
Djozz, how were the pads size for soldering? They are smaller than on the larger board because I wanted to leave clearance in case the board had to be trimmed. Do you think that was a smart move, or would you have preferred bigger pads?
The pads for the smd thingies were fine for me, I do not think larger pads would make it that much easier. I do have a very fine pointy tip on my solder iron though..
And on second thoughts I think it does help if the center pad for the spring is a bit smaller, it is 11mm now, 10 or even 9mm would be better, most springs are less than 10mm.