The original driver PCB is 19mm, so the new 17mm PCB wouldn’t sit nicely on the driver shelf.
I drilled out the retaining ring slightly to allow room for the driver’s components and soldered the driver to the cell’s side.
The result ain’t pretty, but no one can tell while the light is running!
Moving the driver means less space for a cell. A 65mm flat-top HG2 cell now extends 3mm past the tail end of a “long” D80 tube. This setup works fine, but a “short” tube or protected cell will not.
With Bistro UI (my favorite!) and no more PWM, this D80 will get lots more use now!
I have a stack of drivers taken out of Lucky Sun D80 lights. Every single one is 17mm. I don’t understand your 19mm dilemma. I was on the testing team on those BLF Special Edition D80’s, every sample, every light I bought, all 17mm drivers.
Amazing. I don’t know why I’m suprised, they changed stuff on Krono for a year before they finally shipped the BLF SE light. But geesh, a jump from a 17mm driver to a 19mm is a big deal! I double checked mine after I said that just to make sure I wasn’t remembering wrong (I have a knack for that) but I’ve got A17DD-S08 drivers in several and an LD-2 in one. All 17’s. And the stack I have in my kit, all 17’s. Blows me away.
Edit: Ok, pull the spring off that driver, put a bit of a solder blob on it, should work……
Send me the 20mm driver and I’ll piggyback an FET driver inside it, you’ll be able to put it right back inside same as before and it’ll look stock, but perform much better.
I can even put that particular driver inside, or build you a new FET+1 with Bistro.
19 mm here as well, but did not have any issues fitting 17 mm drivers.
Also managed to get rid of the beam rings and get decent focus (but not centering), on the one refitted with an XP-L Hi. Used a 0.9 mm gasket meant for an XM emitter with a 7 mm aperture reflector. (Think these are the ones: https://www.fasttech.com/products/1616/10001923/1581402 )
Unreal. I have 5 drivers here that are still completely intact (I rob resistors and brass buttons and stuff then throw em away) only 2 of these 5 are of similar size.
1 is 16.9mm
1 is 17.5mm
1 is 17.7mm
1 is 17.8mm
1 is 18.8mm and this one I absolutely know is from a newer BLF SE because I marked it when I took it out of blueb8llz light.
Today I built myself a Jax C8 mini with LD-2D 6Volt driver, XHP50 and two 18350s. It took some improvisation to get the 20mm driver with 13mm height into the 17mm pill with 6mm deep cavern! And I still had to get the two 18650s inside.
Finally everything is inside, the torch works and it pulls 2.6 Amperes
To be honest my replacement drivers overlap the shelf my very little, but I do not see them falling in. For electrical contact, the overlap with the retaining ring is important, and that is more generous.
Spent a solid day doing some small stuff with the bulk focused on a D01 mod. Reinforced positive contact ring, bypassed springs and traces, mounted a FET driver onto the stock driver, sanded the copper heatsink and the maxtoch mcpcb to 1500. All that is left is to solder the leads to the mcpcb and the switch wires to the driver.
Speaking of switch wires… Is there a particular orientation to connect them to the sides of the OTC on the FET driver or does it not matter?
You could do with a simple led-tester, saves you some time I use this one, it even works with 3 leds in series because it is powered by a 9V alkaline. It comes with small alligator clips that are very handy, I just swapped the momentary switch for a small clicky switch to be able to use both hands.
Thank you for the kind word, I saw the tester in one of your videos and it seems prctical.
I was too confident in my skills so I waste some time but eh, that’s how you learn things !
The second time I checked them with my DMM, one by one and everything was ok.
I guess one solder joint was not good because orientation were the same before/after…
Bored the driver bay of a Convoy L2 out to take a 22mm MtnMax Buck driver, threaded the bay and made a new threaded brass retaining ring, de-domed an XP-G2 S2 0D emitter on a 20mm Noctigon and used Simon’s new XP centering ring. With a 26650-18650 adapter and 2 Efest 18350’s it makes 2.53A at the tail (about 5A to the emitter) for 306.5Kcd and 1107.25M throw. Nice!