Sorry about the pictures, this light quit working awhile back and Im thinking about trying to mod It to get some light out again. If you want more pics go to ebay and search "15t6" this particular light is a "supernight 18,000 lumens" but it wasn't as bright as a triple xpl s5, comparable throw though.
Originally I was thinking about doing all the LeD's in parallel and running a 4p battery config with modded 26650-18650 spacers to make that possible. Now that I got into it 15P probably isn't viable unless I buy 15 tiny mcpcbs and reflow each led. Not that I'm totally opposed to that....
I have a mtn17DD and a zener modded mtn17dd driver, and if I had to buy other parts I'd be fine with that, what do you guys recommend I do to get 15 xml's kicking out some power? I'd like to see 1,000 lumens out of each led but I doubt it will happen.
There is MORE THAN enough room to piggyback a driver or 5, and plenty of aluminum material in the head with fins to help with heat. honestly don't think any light could be much better for heat dissipation save a copper host.
I was thinking about the mtn zener modded fet driver. It says max input is 18v, and if 4S batteries ever could power 5s3p emitters, that's probably the only option? I don't know if the driver would be able to handle it for very long though? I assume it would, but I don't know.
if I can get away from these other projects I'll try to just swap the drivers and see what happens.
I finally got around to swapping in the zener modded fet driver, the lights came on but it was utterly disappointing. It was bright, sure, super bright, but it wasn't anywhere near the whitewashed living room I was hoping for. I am not sure if it was the FET being maxed out or why it wasn't putting out the light I know it was capable of, but it just wasn't performing.
I ended up removing the driver entirely and bypassing it. I held the light up and bypassed the tailcap with a piece of wire with all 4 cells loaded in the tube in series, and it was A MAZING! Super stupid bright-needed sunglasses- astounding amounts of light!
for about 5 seconds...... something fizzed and the light died, I couldn't get it to come on at all, so I shelved it again for another day.
That 5 seconds of light was crazy though, totally worth blowing all 15 t6 emitters if thats what happened, but I sort of doubt it. I will get into it again another day, thinking about taking the 15t6 emitter pcb out and doing a 2s battery config powering a few mtg2's? The host is too nice to just throw away, there has to be something I can do with it.
Since the leds are 5S3P, your emitters might be ok. I say that with some reservation because they may have overheated even though they were under driven voltage wise. More likely, the tail switch or one of the current carrying springs fried from all the current.
To properly direct drive 5S3P, you need 5 cells in series. The extensions on those types of 26650 lights are gernerally exchangeable. So you may have a light around that you could use to increase the cell count to 5. Of course, you will need to seriously increase the emitter thermal link to the flashlight body. If you have a drill press, you could remove the emitters, drill a hole through each thermal pad and then press in copper wire through the emitter base and flashlight host's emitter deck. You'll have to heat the whole section of the head to reflow the emitters back inplace.
Sure hoping you have an adequate safety protocol in place for using li-ion cells in series at high currents.
The problem with the original setup was the four cells. To run 5s emitters, you need 5s cells. It would have been better using 3s cells and 5P 3s emitters.
