I am impressed, i am running on 3 NiMH, in theory about 650ish lumens, since i am just getting into the LED scene i have no Lithium batteries or charger yet, but i look forward to being even more impressed with close to 900 lumens. It has a dent in the tailcap piece which i think is more cosmetic then problematic, the anodizing in that area is flawless, so i can only assume it happened before anodization (i’ll post a pic in a little bit if i can get it to show up in a photograph)
A few questions, the pill comes out easily, i can pry it out with my finger nails. Is this a problem, should i add something like thermal grease, or will it do fine as is? Its not rattling loose, but its not very tight.
I tried using a multimeter to determine the amps the light is using, it says 0.7 which cannot be right, it is more then twice as bright as my “200” lumen light. What kind of wires/setup did Foy and the other reviewers use to measure amps?
When switching modes, it usually goes high-low-med-high-low etc, but if i leave it for more then 5 secs in high it goes high-low-med-high-high, is this normal?
Just touch the positive lead to the tail cap threads on the flashlight body and the negative lead to the base of the battery or the metal negative center of the AA magazine. Light should come on and current draw displayed on DMM.
I'm sorry if this is a dumb question but does your DMM have 10A plug and/or setting? I ask because one of my DMM's will measure only up to 200mA. I've seen some that only go to .700 and when you said .7, I just wondered. If so, that DMM won't work.
I still got 0.86 on high, so i tested the batteries not in the holder, just on my desk in series touching each other, same result, so i tried a diff brand of batteries, and got 1.02 amps, but both brand batteries can put out over 3 till exhaustion
I'm not quite sure if I understood correctly what you did there, but you shouldn't measure amperage directly at the batteries because you are shorting them that way.
What kind of batteries do you use? Maybe they have a high internal resistance and can't deliver a higher current.
A lot of people around here (including me) make their own thicker leads from whatever thick wire they can get ahold of. I bought some 12AWG wire from my local radio shack along with banana plugs to fit my meter. It made a huge difference in my readings. I know you won't see the full 2.8 amps using AA's in this light, but you should see a higher number than you're getting now I believe.
Instead of using the tailcap, i used a multimeter to connect the negative battery terminal to the flashlight body making the led light up.
I didn’t use 12 gauge wire, but i did use several layers of speaker wire, then I tried taking the pill out of the light and doing the same thing, but using wires instead of the light body to conduct the energy. I still got 0.86 amps. I also tried no holder, but the results were the same, meaning the holder is not the hangup so far.
I used 2 different battery brands that according to tests on the other forum can deliver over 3 amps, and i made sure all batteries were fully charged with a smart charger.
I used Rayovac Hybrid and Duracell 2650 mAh batteries. If anyone else has this light (or any xm-l with the 105c driver should work) and either of these batteries and could do this test i’d be very interested to see if you get the same results.
Try this: When measuring tailcap current with your dmm, point the light somewhere so you can see the output. Then use one of the dmm probes to make a connection between the flashlight body and the battery contact (and bypass the dmm). If the light gets brighter then, either your dmm or your wires make the current drop.
I tried a few things to interesting effect, i took apart my old laptop battery which uses 6 x 18650 wired in parallel, i got 2.45amps to the led, which made the pill noticeably warm up in a few seconds. I expected 2.8 amps since thats what the driver is supposed to pull, i left the batteries in parallel since they are spot welded and i still occasionally use the laptop, but they are down to 40% capacity, so what i need are some newer 18650 or 26650 batteries to see what current i get. Should i have got 2.8 amps since there are 6 in parallel? Why would AA batteries that can put out loads of current not be able to go above 1.02 amp duracell and 0.86 amp rayovac, tested on a bench without a battery holder?
Here are the graphs from CPF for the AA batteries i have tried
That doesn’t sound like a healthy 8x7135 driver. It should pull ~2.8A. Healthy NiMH cells (and even older used cells) are capable of delivering 2.5-3A. If you are getting the same .86A reading from the pill outside of the light, using doubled-up speaker wire for measurement probes I’m leaning more towards a defective driver/pill assembly.
You have pretty much isolated the LED & driver from the rest of the light, so we can rule out host connections and resistance
It uses a NANJG driver, memory engages after 1 second of the light being ON. If you use it thinking it engages after time being off it may appear that memory isn’t working…
Now you’ve got me stumped a little. I would not expect the pill to pull 2.45A like that. The difference shouldn’t be that great. How old are your AA cells… whats their condition? My understanding is NiMH cells can develop increased internal resistances as they age.
The Rayovacs are 6 years old, the duracells I bought last year. I tried the multimeter in a closed loop with no led on the rayovacs and got 3.45amps. I then recharged them before testing further. I’ve been looking at recommendations for cheap lithium batteries and charger and have not found anything yet in my under $40 for both price range (2 batteries), but i hoped the laptop batteries would pull the 2.8 amps so i could put to rest the issue of flashlight problems, and once i buy the batteries and charger the cause of low AA output wouldn’t matter.
Those laptop cells might have become too weak to fully power it. Also, your AA cells might sag too much. For example: 4 AA Eneloops in series drop from 6V with no load to just under 4V at a load of 3A.
Now you only have 3 AAs, older cells, no eneloops.. might be that they sag below the proper forward voltage necessary for 2.8A. Get some decent 18650 or 26650 cell.
2.45A on a good 18650/26650 cell (any other light to test it?) could mean that one of the AMCs doesnt work.
