Fixed two lights today ...

1st is the Uniquefire G10 that blew out the driver on a 14500 , It was frustrating to fix for sure ...

The original driver is 15mm Dia , and there was no way to squeez in a 17mm driver , so it needed to be sort of but soldered , that took like about 7 attempts to get right .

Also the tailcap need to be moded so as not to crush the 14500 .. But now I have a nice dedicated 14500 flashlight , if the Soldering job holds ...

I think I used on of those 17 mode 3 level drivers , so currently its Hi - Med - lo . [ or its the 16 mode one / 16 or 17 mode ? ]

2nd Light to be fixed was a Uniquefire AA-S1 [ Osram ] ... [ That my brother purchased ]

It looked like a monkey had pounded in the driver with a hammer , no wonder it didnt work ...

Again the same issue , but this time the original driver was 16mm .. I was just able to file down the Dx Buck Boost driver to fit [ again I hope the solder holds ]

Now I have a 5 mode Osram that runs AA and 14500 .

Oh well , what a way to start the hollidays ...

Nice jobs.

Just as you did, yesterday I fixed a UF C3 SS whose driver I fried with a 14500. I replaced (tried to) the driver with a 0.8-7v customizable boost driver from KD. The driver is going nowhere below 16.5mm by sanding so I put this driver as a layer on the pill. The soldering seems to have worked in the minor gap inbetween but I don't know if it will last longer than a couple of days. With the additional spring and the 2mm PCB thickness now this light is a battery squasher but it is a bright one with 1xAA. There is no way I'm putting a 14500 in it again.

I was looking at those ... Drivers = How about a review ?

Those are NANJG-18s. I posted sort-of a review here some time ago. Still my favourite driver for XR-Es, but don’t use them to drive a low Vf emitter like the XP-G from a Li-Ion.

I just used the defult setting 3.5-3.7 v output and only 1xAA as the input. It reads 1.3Amps on tailcap with a NiMH battery at 1.3v. I tried to change the output by turning the pot but it didn't seem to make much difference. I tried this setup with 2xAA batteries and it was brighter. I never could see 3Amps ar the tail at any settings. I'll try another one to see if this one is somewhat broken.

On the other hand, this driver has the smoothest PWM I've ever seen. I tried hard to see the flicker even at the lowest mode. Could find 5 modes but couldn't see a way to change to other mode groups if there are any.

When this driver is turned on in low-mode, it will give a very short blink after two seconds. After two more seconds, there is a slightly longer blink, followed again by a very short blink two seconds later. If you switch off the light between the second and third blink, the driver changes into the next mode group.

The pot works. Here are my results using a single eneloop and Osram emitter:
http://budgetlightforum.cz.cc/node/1783#comment-27657

Cheers,
Angus