Have you seen such drop-in somewhere, even with just 3 x reflector?
I have seen them, but all were about 30$+, so it doesn’t make sense.
This discussion was also here in this thread some sites before….
I have thought long time like you but finally I did the resistor mod and its the same like before just brighter.
Just received my MF replacement driver for the 3T6 and was looking at R2, R5, R7. It has a R200 in the R2 position, a R250 in the R5 position, and a R100 in the R7 position. Now here is the question what resistors do I use to increase the amps to the leds?
It might be somewhere in the thread here but as of yet I can not find it. Any help here would be greatly appreciated!
Adding an R200 or a more conservative R250 would give a decent boost I’d think.
If you can do a pic before and after :)
I have a .22 ohm and .11 ohm resistor. Which one do I put it on?
I’d go with the .22 Ohm. The .11 may be too much for the driver as it gets rather hot already.
I have the same driver, which is also the same driver pictured in flyguy’s post, in the Tr-3T6 I bought off of Amazon this month. I soldered a 0.2ohm in parallel with R5 last night and the tailcap current is 1.95A using 3 Trustfire flames. The batteries weren’t fully charged so I’ll measure again with a fully charged set. Interestingly the flashlight wouldn’t work with 2 cells, flashing and shutting down. It looks like the protection in the batteries is kicking in, maybe a sign of how drained the batteries are. I’ll check that as well once I charge them up.
The current could be over 3A in 2-cell mode with cells not fully charged, which might be enough to trip on some protection circuits.
Edit: I just checked mine with 2 charged cells: 2.72A. Definitely will be over 3A at 3.9V/cell or lower.
I got the manafont driver today and before I have put him in the box with my spare drivers I have made some quick measurement with 3 parallel XML2U2.
Sku 8492 with R100,R200 and R250 parallel.
I made some tailcapcurrent measurements with a adjustable power supply.
voltage….3.5V……4.2V………7.4V….8.4V……11.1V…12.6V
High………2.95A….4.05A……2.15A…1.91A…1.48A…1.33A
Mid………1.18A….1.7A………0.92A…0.82A…0.65A…0.6A
Low………0.2A……0.35A…….0.21A…0.19A…0.17A…0.16A
It seems that this driver could be suitable for a single cell operation… My original 3T6 driver has a lot less current on 4V….
271828
1.33A per emitter . . . hmm . . . so what resistor mods bring that up to what values?
-Garry
I am not modding the driver now because I have no use for it because its too huge…
But the math is easy
Total stock resistance: 1÷(1÷0.1+1÷0.2+1÷0.25)=0.0526 ohm
So the sense Voltage is with estimated stock led current of 4.5A 0.0526ohm*4.5A=0.2367V
Now you can calculate the resistance for the wished current…
0.2367/wishcurrent=total resistance needed
For example:
0.2367A/7.5A=0.032ohm
So I guess if you use 3 parallel R100 resistors you will get 0.033ohm and about 7A…
If you add a single 0.2Ohm resistor you will get about 5.7A…
Think of the fact that tailcapcurrent increases with sinking voltage and that your batteries have to deliver this….
I re-modded my driver, paralleling a second .2 ohm resistor, equivalent to a single 0.1 ohm (I was too lazy to de-solder the first one), and now on 3 fully charged cells, the light is drawing 2.44 amps at the tailcap. My friend also bought the same light off of Amazon and with 3 cells, his draws 1.44 amps at the tailcap. I’m modding his tonight, paralleling a single 0.1 ohm, which should give the same result as mine. Now the medium setting is noticeably brighter than my 501B with the Manafont 3-mode XML drop-in on high.
PS. I bought my TR-3T6 off of Amazon for $31 shipped, but it didn’t come with the extra tube to allow 3 cells, like in the picture. I contacted Amazon and they apologized and gave me two options, return for full refund, or 30% refund. I got the refund ($9.50) and bought a tube off of ebay, which brought my total to around $27. Gotta love Amazon’s great customer service.
Just be careful as there was two models off this light. The three cell version would run on one or two batteries. The light that ran on two batteries had a different driver that may fail if you try and run three batteries.
Thanks. Mine looks to be the same driver pictured in Flyguy’s post above, the newer version of the Manafont driver with three current sensing resistors. I tested mine after the mod, running it long enough until the flashlight was pretty warm, probably longer than I’d ever use it on the highest setting.
I’m not sure which one is which but MF did sell both versions.
Anyone care to comment on what kinds of actual runtimes you’ve been getting on your 3T6 with (3) or (2) 18650 cells? I just changed mine around a little bit so it would run on 5AA and I got a full 30 minutes on high before it steps down. Once it steps down, it wont go to High, strobe, or SOS. It will only run in med or low. If you try to put it in strobe, it just switches back over to low in 3 or 4 seconds.
I took the 5AA out after it stepped down and noticed the following voltages:
0.96V
1.10V
0.97V
1.06V
0.99V
I guess 30 minutes on HIGH is pretty good for 5AA Eneloops!
30 minutes constant brightness from my protected Sanyo 18650zt…
So wait, the original 3T6 is a constant-watt output? And Werner, is that with one, two, or three cells?
Read this thread….