Thanks for the info pd, they will be my first 26650”s also as at present I just have lots of 18650”s but would like to run the S70 & Cometa on 26650”s for the extra capacity (run time).
Unfortunately I am in the UK & think postage will probably kill the deal although I will have a look.
From what I can see good quality 26650”s are quite dear in the UK, probably the equivalent of around 14-18 dollars a cell !
EDIT:
Just checked shipping & the cheapest is over $50 dollars so it is a no go.
Also, who knows how to do a resistor mod? Just throw on an extra sense resistor, or is there a way to dial it in with less guess-work? This driver has two R091 resistors in parallel and an extra empty slot.
An update to the current readings: The first time I measured the highest mode was with my clamp meter on Panasonic BD’s at 4.1v, and I got 5.5amps. I just remeasured with the same meter on fully-charged Samsung 30Q’s, and got a max of 4amps. So something happened.
1. The driver is very inconsistent (unlikely)
2. I somehow mis-read the meter the first time (still pretty unlikely)
3. When I opened it up, re-wired, and shaved the LED, I messed something up (probable)
I just thought I would post this now in case other people start getting 4amp readings instead of 5.5amps.
Then I took the driver out and simply dropped a blob of solder on some empty pads, bypassing the stock sense resistors, and remeasured with the same cells:
Now these are tail numbers on a buck driver, so the emitter isn’t seeing exactly that, but I would guess the emitter is probably getting about 8amps.
If you do this you will want to use top-rated batteries because the buck driver will pull even more as the cells go down. I’m also going to pot the driver because I am sure it is going to get very very hot in there.
Could you take some pictures of the mods you did? I’m hopefully going to get this light and would like to be able to do these mods. Maybe some before and after pictures as well if possible. Thanks!
Yes, please take pictures of the mods, I have a ton of things to learn and pictures always help
Also, any chance you could make some before / after beamshots? With such a big increase of amp draw, turbo should show some difference… Although I suppose it will hard to know what’s from this mod and what’s from the shave.
Well I already potted the driver, so I can’t really get good pictures if it anymore, but I can maybe draw a picture of what to do, it’s very simple.
I only have the original beamshots I took of the stock light. I can take the modded light to the same place and do a new beamshot, but we don’t have snow anymore so that will skew it.
Sorry, before/after stuff didn’t cross my mind because I don’t normally do beamshots at all.
What and how did you pot driver? Did you heat sink the FETs? Glop some thermal epoxy on? Inquiring minds need to know, how the pro’s heat sink buck driver’s?