I’d stick with parallel and the AMC 7235 driver. The wiring really isn’t all that hard. Do it like I did in the link from post #18. That’s the easiest system.
PS: when twisting the ends of the wires together, don’t use your fingers. Use a small needle nose pliers, and twist them as tight as you can, then tin the ends. That way, they won’t fall apart when you add heat.
That’s my idea for now. Maybe later I’ll swap in a buck driver.
I know the basics, but thanks for the advice nonetheless. Maybe it’ll help someone else too sooner or later.
No problem. I was thinking about poor Hank and his shaky hands. 
Thanks, suggestions appreciated.
“Getting old isn’t for sissies,” Mom used to say, and “consider the alternative.”
Speaking of twisting the wires together so they don’t fall apart
Yeah, that’s next. I’m convinced it’s the right way.
But still wishing:
— anyone know of the tiny little copper crimp connectors I see used in electronics? They hold the wires firmly together and stray wires could then be trimmed, leaving the crimp connector just the right size to solder down to the pads — and it would not let go of the wires if the thing has to be reheated
— and, any source of two different temperature electrical solders, so the wires can be soldered where twisted using higher temp solder, then put in place with a lower temp solder?
I’ve done the 2-temp thing a lot with silver brazing of little brass and bronze sculpture things in the past, jewelers have those, but they’re for red-hot-metal brazing, not electrical.
If you twist the wires together with pliers before soldering they will not fall apart. If you follow that thread through you will see that I had to remove those emitters and reflow new ones. The wires desolder off their pads exactly as they were when I installed them, and I merely reconnected them again once the new emitters were reflowed.
Well, I made the effort with three Luxeons to do the triple wiring. Conclusion — for me, it was way too easy to dedome and de-phosphor the color Luxeons, trying to work in close quarters with a lot of wires and heat. I’ll wait until I can 3D-print some kind of shapes to keep things arranged and protected — some sort of mask to keep anything from getting too close to or touching the emitters, which was — shaky — trouble.
Back to the driver question where the thread was meant to be going.
What the matter with their shipping?
Canada Post on strike or something like that, they say. And offer expedited shipping only, which is triple the cost of the triple itself. :money_mouth_face:
I was considering ordering XP-E Photo Reds from ledsupply or rapidled and swapping them on Noctigon 3XP (Aren’t Cree purchasing red dies from Lumileds anyway?), but since this light is more like a small vanity project I’m willing to wait for some time just to get a look on Luxeon LEDs and aluminium DTP Sinkpad MCPCBs.
For the driver I decided to use Nanjig 105c first, then either build or order a small buck driver. It’d be interesting to compare runtimes.
A buck driver would be nice. The only problem is that you need at least three cells to run a triple in series.
I wasn’t planning on running them in series.
The smallest boost drivers are 20mm, and I’m not aware of any tube-style slim host where you can fit 20mm driver.
Okay. A a lower current 17mm buck driver run in parallel then, but why not just go with an AMC 7135 driver.
I’ve been thinking about this question myself. I’ve been wondering which would be more efficient with the lower volts forward of these red leds. Doesnt the linear driver have to burn off the extra voltage?
I’ve never worried about it too much. If it needs to burn off some voltage, let it. The driver doesn’t seem to care. I’ve built 7135 lights that use two CR123s and never had any problems.
I think it could be painful to just see all this watts burned away on 7135s.