This forum has a bad influence on me.
First I started buying flashlights after reading reviews, because I needed another good flashlight (although I managed to keep this somewhat under control). Then I stumbled upon a thread about lanyards and paracord, followed by another thread about someone's collection of Chinese budget knives. Of course I had to order some paracord and a few SRM knives.
It wasn't long before I had ordered a DMM and a lux meter. Soon I had also managed to order some V2 drivers from KD (the 3040 mA and 1520 mA versions). Now of course I needed to buy a soldering iron, solder wire & paste, safety glasses, tweezers and other tools needed for soldering so I could use the new drivers. :bigsmile:
Anyway, back on topic. Tonight I soldered for the first time ever. :shock:
I performed a driver swap on my Small Sun ZY-C10-S. The original driver was a bit weak compared to what others had measured on their lights as I only managed to measure ~43 kcd (calculated from 8m) with my lux meter. So I desoldered the old driver and replaced it with a KD 1520 mA driver.
I was a bit afraid that I would @#ยค% it up. I had already desoldered the old driver so I started with soldering the mode selectors on the new driver. I ended up going with high-med and no memory since I use the Small Sun ZY-C10-S as a thrower.
I have no idea how the heck I managed to solder the S2 bridge that neatly, considering it was the first time soldering something (not counting desoldering the LED wires from the old driver).
Next I had to solder the LED wires to the driver. I didn't bother putting new wires, I just reused the original wires.
Finally I needed to connect the outer ring to the aluminum pill, which was a pita. I managed to get a blob of solder from the driver to connect to the pill (the 18650 presses the driver to the pill so the blob of solder makes contact with the pill). I wish I had read Match's post about how to get solder to stick to aluminum. I will probably fix this at a later time.
After having soldered all the necessary things I assembled the light and inserted a 18650, to my surprise the light worked when turning it on. :p
I tried measuring it with the new driver and got ~55 kcd (calculated from 8m) compared to the 43 kcd I got with the original driver. :party: