Husky 800 Lumen worklight mod advice

Flashlight Modding and DIY Parts
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Over in the Home Depot Deal alert thread, there is some information on the 800 lumen LED worklight that may be available for less than $10. I managed to score 4 of these. They are set up to run from mains power (110VAC). Inside the back of the light, the AC power cord comes in, goes to a click switch and then to an AC-DC convertor, which is dumping about 28 VDC into a “Bridgelux” LED.

I would like to mod this light and I’m not sure which direction to take it. I believe that there is room for one or two 18650 cells if I remove the existing AC-DC convertor. After swapping the LED and adding a small USB charge board available from MTN Electronics for $2-5, I can make the light battery powered with a built in charger.

The other option is to use this as a host for a light that would use my Makita Cordless tool 18V battery as a power source. I have several of these batteries and I even bought some spare battery contacts through Home Depot. The Makita tool line includes 2 different lights, an incandescent and an LED version. Both of which I have. When searching for adjectives to describe these lights, I pass right by “amazing” and “intense” and land on “disappointing” and “LAME”. The LED version uses six 5mm emitters for goodness sake!

Is there a driver that would be capable of an 18V input voltage? I see that the XHP-70 can have a forward voltage as high as 12V, so I am at least in the right neighborhood.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I’ll post some more pictures of the parts soon, I’m still figuring out my new Imgur account.

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reserved for pics

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Pretty cool ideas. Looking at your pics in the HD thread, you may have enough room to have the cells, driver, and switch right behind the reflector. Hard to gauge depth from the pics and I already pack my father’s light back up. You have me wanting to get one for me now.

If you go 2S cells and stay single emitter with the stock reflect, a XHP70 or MT-G2 one a copper DTP MCPCB would probably be pretty sweet. DD driver of course.

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I like the Makita pack idea, then all you need is the LEDs and driver. 12V LED would be nice but burning 6V in a linear driver is asking for failure and flames.