> to ensure ground between the copper pill and ground ring on the driver?
Someone a while back suggested this for aluminum pills,
and I’ve found it helps a lot:
Take a tiny little bit of copper wire
Heat it to soften it, hammer it flat, then bend it so it fits over the edge of the driver, contacting the ground rings on both sides.
Solder one end onto the ground ring on the inside-toward-the-LED
wrap it around the edge of the board (the insulating/fiberglass stuff that will mostly contact the pill when pressed in)
solder the other end onto the ground ring on the outside-toward-the-spring
Made thin, when you press the driver into place, it will make sure your driver is grounded to the pill.
You can put a dab of solder over that to bridge to the pill, but so far I haven’t needed to do that.
The driver worked for maybe a minute on and off. It may have been effected by some shorts as I was having some issues with that. The piggybacked driver was squashed up against the heat sink. I will need to order a SRK FET driver that is set up for huge wattage and that will sort out most of the problems.
I've done several MCPCB's sanded/filed down the same way, all the way into the pads. What I usually do is angle file the edge of the PCMCB's at the pads, so I create a little gap on the edge. I don't think I ever had a problem soldering the +/- pads then, but, things can go wrong for sure. I go really careful with tinning the pads though, and keep the wire from going near the edge. Then I carefully inspect it with a high powered magnifier, and of course continuity test.
Living on the edge... Sometimes Richard accomodates us a little too much .
I see the MTN-MAXlp HP driver is available. My problem with these buck drivers has been finding a 2x18650 host to make use of these. Does anyone have a suggestion?
Wow! They appear to be legit top contenders. I got excellent results in a 3 different DD FET driver based lights I tested them in. Don't have the detail results with me, but I got it recorded. In 1-2 lights, they were the highest amps results I've gotten, and I got a ton of variety of low resistance cells tested against: HG2, SAM 25R, HE2, HE4, AWT, VCT5, EFEST 26650 3500, EFEST 35A 18650, etc.
The only reason I got them was because a few months ago Vinh told me that he had a few and that they were a VTC5 beater in the single emitter direct drive lights.
Well, they beat the HG2's. So when I buy more high amp cells, these are the ones I'll buy. Didn't test the capacity yet on the OPUS BT-3100, but Samsung's have been pretty good. My pair of SONY VTC5's never performed well - could be because of the age. Back when I bought them, don't think fakes were on the market yet. Think'n from high use, charge cycles, etc. Also my EFEST 35A's usually get beat by HE2's or 25R's, but maybe for the same reasons.
I’d like to thank Richard for a helping hand. My eyes and arthritis make micro projects a bear. Richard helped me finally put two solid copper silver plated P60 dropins together. Both are triple XP-L HI leds. One dropin uses Qlite Rev.a 3.04 amps 17mm board with a 16mm 12-7135 4.5 amp slave board. The other uses a 17mm FET driver set for 5 modes and memory. He did all the soldering. Both host using the excellent Toffy switch.
I tested 6 I bought from Richard on my opus—-They all tested in the 2900—–2950 range @ 1amp—I made a matched trio from the 6 capacity/resistance—my first run in a Supbeam K40 down to about 3.4v—on recharge they were all exact 3.41v on start and charged up to within 20mah of each other at full charge— In my testing they definitely hold their own against all contenders
I’ve build my first new version C8 and I’m dissapointed… For proper focus, the reflector has to drop lower over the LED which requires a thinner LED spacer or modification of the standard one. This causes the bezel not to properly tighten down - lens / reflector is loose…
I haven’t noticed the body warming up significantly quicker with the integrated pill? Feels very much the same as before to me. I’m doubting the effectiveness of the integrated pill, taking in mind the new trade offs related to LED focusing. By the way, I’m running an XP-L Hi V3 at +–5.5 amps at the tail.
I’m absolutely for the more efficient heat transfer with the integrated pill, but I prefer the non-integrated pill for modification’s sake…
One of my best modable hosts has died.
This really is sad… I’m not going to have a good week…
PS: To get the above fixed, I’ll have to find something in the line of a 0.5-1.0mm thick [20mm wide] copper / alluminium spacer that should go between the pill & MCPCB. Not nice. I don’t want to fiddle with a thicker o-rings on the lens, it will start to look funny as the space increases between the bezel & lens.
I had the same problem with a convoy M2 and apparently it was just my unit. I soldered another 20mm noctigon under the existing mcpcb and it fixed the fitment and focusing issue. However it was too much height increase and now there is a gap in the bezel about 0.5MM, just a cosmetic detail so I left it that way.
Oh and I noticed the M2 focused better without the centering ring (the reflector sits over the mcpcb), perhaps you could try this with your C8.
Hi Will. Thanks for the advice… Having the reflector directly on the MCPCB is too much. I’m going to look into some custom copper spacers… I know Richard is selling 2mm AR lenses for the C8, which I believe is a bit thicker than the standard lens. This might also help.
I was not fond of the thicker o-ring idea, but maybe that could just be an easy solution. Anybody knows of a trusted seller where one can buy a wide range of silicone o-rings?
Thanks Will. Are you using the standard centering ring? The UCL lens is thicker than that of Richard, but twice the price, very good lens though. At least there’s a few options to solve the issue…
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They work great in the UF-1405. That's been my main test bench.