I got this rii e21 today (a balder SE 2 clone) and I’m looking to bump up the output a little. Right now it pulls around 2.6A, I’d like to get it up to 3 otherwise I’ll probably put a qlite in it. I’ve already swapped in a Noctigon and went up to 22AWG silicone wire (the guy I got it from had swapped to a HCRI XM-L2) as well as put a proper spring on the driver and deleted the funky factory setup that screwed down into the front of the battery tube (and copper braided that spring, plus the tail as well)
Can anyone tells if there’s any resistors I could jumper or anything else?
Probably not, unless it has some identification printed on it.
Even then, not much chance of anything useful like a schematic or a Datasheet…
These “no-name” drivers make Nanjg tons of money.
Normally the driver is just a support circuit for whatever “MCU” you’re using. The central chip looks like a PIC12F683. Can you transcribe the marks on the other large chip, as well as the marks on the 5-leg “NC3-something” chip at the top of the pic?
I’m guessing either it or the other FET-looking chip, labelled “AAU6” (??) will be switched by one of the PIC output lines…
This obviously needs more study.
One thing I must point out, just in case:
Looking at your LED+ wire, it seems (from this picture) to be the victim of what we used to call a “cold solder joint”. I’m guessing you heated up the solder & just stuck the end of the wire in the puddle… Notice how the solder doesn’t seem to flow up into the strands of wire? That’s not good. It won’t help your If, but at some point a bump or drop will likely jar it loose. I throw mine on the ground regularly, just to freak people out, so I’m very sensitive to that sort of thing. Yes, I just finished repairing several broken solder joints on my EDC! Very embarrassing!!
Welcome to the wonderful world of reverse-engineering Chinese EE designs!
Not trying to tell you what to do or not do, but from a purely cost-benefit basis, the upgrade you’re looking to make (2.6A -> 3A) isn’t going to change the perceived brightness of your torch enough to notice w/o measuring it.
You already have a damned-fine flashlight, if you decide to leave it as-is. The modes, OTOH, may not please anyone on Earth including the designer!!!
So if “brighter” is your design goal, I predict you will be disappointed; but if you want different modes, this driver is doomed anyway… Unless you want to get into writing PIC programs!
[/engineering]
(That’s my lot in life over my door-side torch. Not quite “enough”, but “close enough” to make it a “wanna-have” upgrade. I’m trying to talk myself into modding it to cull the stupid blinkies, but it’s so “close enough”, it’s waaay on the back burner!)
I cleaned it (the driver leads and several other do-dads with bad factory solder joints) up before reassembling. This was the first time I’ve ever reflowed an emitter off one MCPCB and then onto another (using the stove method) this was just to test I didn’t cook the LED on the bench so I only quickly heated the blobs enough to stick which is when I took a minute to take this pic (as bad as it is its the one out of 8 shots that was clearest lol). So that’s all taken care of now.
Thanks guys, I’ll get those numbers and consider not even bothering with it and just switching to a Qlite flashed by MntElectronics. I really like the light and done necessarily need more light, what I’d really like is a real low and to not have the group change flash on low, I hate that. I was worried how to mount a 17mm driver in a 22mm hole but they made it really easy on this one!
+1 for an LD-29
Compare with the Fasttech one, this is the exact same layout.
With buck or boost driver the sense resistor is between ground and LED[-] and it’s usually physically large and of small value.
I looked at an LD-29 in my driver-box, the sense resistor is beside the black cable and reads “R025”, this equals 0,025 Ohm or 25mOhm. “LO25” has the same meaning as “R025”.
In this post I did some calculations for the similar LD-2C and in the thread you find some information and links for resistor modding. Just don’t short the resistor, it will get kind of direct drive and odds are pretty good you fry the driver and/or the LED.
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