I’ve been looking for a driver to mod an older XR-E based light I have, I want to put something more powerful into it. It’s a 2x18650 light and that limits driver choice a bit, what limits it even more is that the driver has to fit into a 17mm pill!
Any ideas on a driver which will do 3 amps (or close) to drive an XM-L2 or XP-L etc.?
I’d spotted that one, but it was “Out of Stock”… plus being a custom built part it’s a bit pricy, especially as I’m trying to resurrect and old budget light.
The light I’m playing with is a SacredFire NF-009, which as far as I can tell is the same body as a WF-500 but with a much deeper reflector, and a pill which screws into the body (hence the small diameter driver).
How about this one? http://www.mtnelectronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=67_115&product_id=395 @ 2.4A
Now that looks like a good option, or at least as close to my goals as I’m going to get right now.
And it looks moddable too according to these threads:
Thanks.
I ordered the LD4B and it arrived in due course. The next thing that happened was that I read the specs that said “Drives LEDs up 6.6V”, an XHP50 has a voltage of 6V and will take up to 3 amps.
Guess who’s plans have changed.
You might be alright with that setup. XHP50 seems to run at about exactly 6.6 volts at 3 amps according to djozz’s chart. Haven’t tested it myself. Buck drivers require a certain amount of voltage overhead though. Not sure you’ll stay in regulation with 2S lipo. Consider a linear driver? Zener modded Qlite, DD fet, or LD-2 perhaps. Fet or LD-2 will have the least resistance in the driver, meaning more voltage to the led.
I’ll be hoping to pull 2.4 amps out of the cells so they should give more than 6.6 volts at least to begin with, no problem. The resting voltage is 8.4v combined, so I have a 1.8 volts margin there.
Of course the LED can handle 3 amps according to the manufacturer and it’ll be on a DTP copper star, so it can handle more than that. On the other hand, the star is going onto a screwed pill that I made from aluminium and I already have the driver. Maybe I should just see how it performs when the LED turns up!
It can handle a good deal more than 3A but the buck driver will drop out of regulation long before 2S cells are depleted. A Zener modded 3A 105C variant (qlite et al) will maintain 3A for longer than a buck driver since it has less overhead requirement.
It would probably drop out of regulation immediately. Alls I know is that an H6Flex driver needs needs at least 1.5v overhead to maintain regulation.