Hello I am brand new to flash light modding and got my first cree flash light a month or so ago. I got an 3800LM CREE XM-L 3T6 LED Extended Flashlight Torch w/ 3x18650 but the 5 modes where driving me crazy. I only ever use low or high. I decided to take it apart to see what driver I needed if I wanted less modes. When I was taking it apart I damaged some of the wires going to the leds because I thought the drop-in on screwed which it did not. Since I have to replace the wires now I really want to replace the driver with a 2 or 3 mode driver with none of that strobe crap. In my search I found only a single driver and it is roughly 3 times what the 5 mode drivers cost. Does anyone know of a decent 2 or 3 mode driver that is either better or cheaper?
This is the DRY driver you will need to make sure that your emitters are wired in series. It’s low, medium, high and turbo. No blinkies it’s sort of direct drive on high so it will be much brighter on Turbo than it is now. I wouldn’t use heavy gauge wire unless you are also going to use copper stars. It might be a little bit much for them on alluminum. But I have use a DRY on a 3T6 and it was great.
If you don’t want that old driver I will gladly take it off your hands. I’m in Michigan as well by the way.
Just a hint, the original driver is really really good. You will not be able to find another so nice driver for the 5$ it costs.
It gives you constant current like a pro with either two or three cells and is easy to mod for higher current.
Not sure what driver you have, I would be glad to see some more pictures from different angles. Looks different…
Howdy if you are going with the standard aluminum stars then just use whatever gauge it has on it right now and that should be fine. If you decide to use copper stars than go with something like 28 gauge. If you want to reflow the emitters that you have onto copper it will cost you $5.25 for three sinkpads from LCK-Led. They deliver fast and in my opinion it’s well worth it and it’s super easy to do as well. If you use the sinkpads you can drive them much harder without having heat sag so your lumens stay higher longer and you don’t have to worry about blowing them. It’s really amazing the difference you get when you use copper stars.
I just ordered 3 of these last week and they are already processed through San Fran.
RMM’s store has the copper pads as well and ships from inside the USA. He’s got XM-L2’s mounted on copper as well if you want to upgrade the emitters as well.
Brock, I’d use 28gauge anyway, regardless of what emitter choice you go with. It’ll improve efficiency even if slightly, and even then you only need tiny wires to control the current of direct-drive
(I installed a DRY driver from IOS in my 3T6 clone and didn’t want to spend the light’s initial cost on copper-sunk XM-L2’s, so I just bought aluminium-mounted ’L2s. Used some tiny wiring that came from my X9 and on direct-drive she’s doing about 3500mA at the tail, which equates to 38,000mW into the driver)
