I sometimes use 9 guys. A simple math is that each swap cost $10, which is $90/day. Even one person, this is about $3000 a year. Not to mention, customers often pay by hour and get antzy with swaps. Forget the swap, ain’t going to to happen. Way easier to just build lights that run 10 hours or more.
I measured my light, xpl v6 at 700ma, came out 373 lumens in relational output to the tk30 and Hp11. All my other lights come in at 270 to 310 lumens. 240 for warm.
Richard at Mtnelectronics said explicitly that the Dr. Jones driver would not work, and he was not interested in programming a useful drive level. Obviously, the Dr driver should work. However it is a question of how inefficient it is at 530 ma.
All my lights since 2014 are 2s18650 on a dial buck Puck, using the avid heat sink, thermal on a computer style heat sink. 4000 candela 9h15 minutes. I get 600 lumens, as I often wear a comparable wristlight 300+300 lumens. I supplement with a 110,000 lumen metal halide. Unfortunately, the corded light is limited and can’t see texture, and half of what is needed.
The buck Puck design beats any light sold. I could have easily built a 3 cell light (1 18650 cell in the front), but didn’t want the headache of an extra cell per man to charge… But I finally got around to different design. 21700 in front, with 2 ports: optional rear pack and vdd pwm (motor dimmer). As an edc, 350/700/1000 ma as an edc (31mm smo, which I love). Built in 1amp charger and cellphone out charger. Option to attach a rear 21700 w/motor dimmer. 9 volt snap is what this prototype uses. The switch can double as the port. I haven’t got the dimmer in the mail, but don’t have much faith that these boards will be suitable and not waste energy as heat. Building my own 555 pwm cost me $30. I only have one… Going from buckpuck to amc7135 (2x21700) , I lose about 1.5 hours to 2 hours , compared to a 3s18650 cell setup. Fortunately, the 2s21700 2 amc7135 gets 12 hours. Edc portion is 85 gram, plus strap and 21700. Probably will put the charger in the detachable rear, next time to shed 20 grams or so…. I will wait more time, to test what I have first….
If the external pwm dimmer gets too hot, I might try the Dr Jones driver. I would program my own, if somebody simply had one directory with all the tested software. This route looks like a lot of incompatibility dead ends.
It may be my imagination, but I like the lg 21700s better than the Samsung. Gut feeling so far.
I directly soldered wires to the amc7135s, soldered and thermal epoxy to copper and mounted to aluminum. Not sure if I could access the chip vdd for pwm, if I bought on a board. The good thing is that I don’t cook my amc7135s like my convoys.