UPDATE III Mhanlen has verified the 7 day run time. The bad news was the fact that my lumen estimation was way off. Starting at around 1.5 lumen on a fresh alkaline, NOT the five or so I estimated… Big thanks to Mhanlen and I will get to modding the next round of lights with the lower uH inductors to try and get more brightness with hopefully a not to much shorter run time…
UPDATE II After the replaced inductor below allowed the light to run over 20 hours on a NiMh, I hit the wally world to replenish my supply of RayOVac AAA’s. I ran this light and an unmodified one on two new AAA’s that both read 1.607V at the start.
I started the test 09-24-2015 at 1930 hours Mountain time. The stock light was down to .894V and minimally useable light the next day at 2200 hours. The modified light was at 1.403V at this time and showed no significant dimming (it was already about 1/3 the brightness of stock after the mod, maybe 5 lumen).
I let the modified light run, taking daily voltage readings, but otherwise leaving it on.
MODIFIED LIGHT READINGS BELOW
09-24-2015 1930hrs Test start 1.607V
09-25-2015 1930hrs 1.413V
09-25-2015 2200hrs 1.403V Stock light down to unusable level, Stock light turned off.
09-26-2015 1930hrs 1.362V
09-27-2015 1930hrs 1.321V
09-28-2015 1930hrs 1.283V
09-29-2015 1930hrs 1.225V
09-30-2015 1930hrs 1.123V Down to about 1 lumen, same as a Nitecore TUBE on low
10-01-2015 1930hrs 0.951V End of useable light for my likes.
10-02-2015 1930hrs 0.618V VERY dim, but could still be a marker in a dark area
10-03-2015 1130hrs 0.498V Battery recovering as measured, still producing light!
After a few hours of recovery, the battery was able to produce a couple of lumen for about 10 minutes before fading again to a nice sub lumen glow…
I am floored by the performance here. I wish I could remember what my decision was on buying the 270uH inductors. I am thinking around 200uH would be a bit brighter, and not too much less on run time…. But as is, this is a few lumen that will be there when you need it…. I filled the pill with Black RTV gasket maker, low odor kind… I am thinking a little aluminum cap for covering the LED and this thing is my bulletproof light.
This sort of brings me full circle, back to the idea of the infinity light. I spent less than $10 and got a light that will provide light in a dark place for over a week solid, but for about two weeks worth of nights in reality, longer on a lithium primary of course…
UPDATE Replaced the stock inductor with a 270uh and now runs over 20 hours on RayOVac NiMh, still running. Previously would run about 7hrs on this same battery. After 20 hours it is still showing 1.264V on the NiMh…
On the review I did of the MANKER BONEY and in post #15 I had dropped the light several times and it had finally quit…
It has been a while, but I finally cracked into the pill and actually found out what quit and repaired it…
Initially, I had tried to pry the boards from the pill, but could not… So I took one of those fine Xacto saws and just cut the aluminum pill in two places and separated it…
It is no wonder I could not pull the pill apart, one leg of the LED is soldered on the same pad as the spring…. It looks like if you de-soldered the spring and could pry it at the same time, you would be able to pop the bottom (spring side) board out, as the only other contact there is a negative wire with some slack in it. I did not know this and lack the extra two hands for this, so my cutting was sufficient and I did not (sheer dumb luck) cut any components.
If you are going to do this, it seems the safest place to cut with a reference is when you look at the pill from the front and cut between the N and K in Manker, and then 180 degrees from there. I put red arrows to indicate the aproximate position for the cuts, you have to go a little into the boards to get through the entire pill. Then use a fine screwdriver to pry the pill apart.
The exam begins… a huge 24 gauge wire is the only other item soldered to the bottom board, and has some slack in it.
Joule thief components, well done little inductor and other items…
THE FAULT!!!, as the wire is most likely the heaviest component, it makes sense that it detached itself during drop testing. No issue, just touched it with a soldering iron that had some solder and reattached it to the blob of solder on the board… Quick test, IT WORKS… MWAHAHAHAHA….
Keeping it packed with RTV should prevent this in the future. I only had the gasket maker type, but it worked. Bad photo, I know.
I wrapped it in electrical tape for a couple of hours after I wiped off the ooze out of RTV and it is now ready for install.
Now you can repair your Manker Boney if it should fail on you…
Those Xacto saws are great for little things like this…
I will let you know how that goes… The run time is significantly shorter on the RayoVac NiMH rechargeable AAA’s I purchased. I put it on one night and went to bed. Got up seven hours later and it was off…
