It should do, I just use normal rosin? Solder from maplin, I just realised your in Ireland, do you have one near by? Failing that, any electrical suppliers will carry the bits you need. For stuff like this, I prefer to go local tbh, just so I can have a butcher’s at what I’m getting.
Ok thanks.
I have one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/T1-Bulk-Portasol-Technic-Gas-Soldering-Iron-fitted-with-2-4mm-Tip-/220968332901?pt=UK_Home_Garden_PowerTools_SM&hash=item3372bd2e65
My electric soldering iron broke and went in the bin.
All good advice, its one of them, get the bits to make the job easy and you’ll be successful, try to hodge, you’ll struggle and maybe not be successful. Those helping hands are good, let me find a link to show you what I mean……
http://item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemId=350684147438&index=0&nav=SEARCH&nid=25582586884
This kind of thing, I also have a little clamp on vise that I fasten to the dining table.
That looks like Edward scissor hands 
here’s a shot of my ghetto rigged helping hands, along with a driver w/ a some chips added
The helping hands thing is from harborfreight (~$3?) and it moved to easily when using it, so I cut the end off an empty propane bottle, hot glued that to a 5lb weight, then hot glued the helping hands to the bottle S) I also used heavy copper wire to add length to the arms.
That’s a nice setup.
thanks. it saves a lot of aggravation!
I expect you can find something similar locally for less than shipping, but for reference (and of course, you can spend a lot more, and get a lot more)
http://www.harborfreight.com/catalogsearch/result?q=helping+hands
Thanks for the link. I’ll have a look locally and see if i can find anything. I should have a few weeks before the chips arrive.
Cheers
Matt
My AMC 7135 chips arrived today, so i got to work on my Shadow SL3. I soldered 11 chips in. I left the 12th one for now as i’d had enough for one night, and the last one has the negative cable attached, so might have been too fiddly for this time of night.
The result :bigsmile: 9 Amp SL3
J) I need to get me one of these….
Yeah, it’s a beast. It should just about hit 10Amps with the 12th chip installed. So fiddly though soldering them. Took me hours.
Wow
that’s awesome!
i’m interested in hearing about how long you can run it before it is to hot to handle
I’ll do some testing tomorrow and let you know
Just an update.
I picked up the SL3 this morning, and it was on very dim like moonlight mode or something. Then it would intermittently turn on and off.
Un-screwing the head slightly stopped this for when the light isn’t in use.
Anybody any ideas why this might happen?
EDIT:
My SL3 is working perfectly on high mode, and is Really bright, but flickers on medium and low, and also flickers very dimly when turned off.
Not sure why this might happen?
is this the first time you took the driver out?
I’ve had that happen w/ a bad driver ground - the outer ring of the driver wasn’t digging into the aluminum of the light enough for good contact. maybe on high it is enough current and voltage (plus no pwm) to work.
I’ve also had that happen one other time w/ a driver that was direct drive on high and pwm for modes - it turned out to be a poor solder joint at the emitter itself (no pcb, emitter soldered to copper heatsink with leads on top solder pads).
I had the driver out a couple of times before to look at it.
It’s strange that its flickering even when switched off. The brightness varies slightly as it flickers. When its off, it flickers from about 1 lumen upto maybe 20 lumens intermittantly.
Then when it’s in low or medium, it’s has the same intermittant flickering, just brighter.
High is perfect though.
Cheers
Matt
geez, that’s weird. sounds like that rules out the things I mentioned.
There must be a short somewhere. I always start by checking the work I did last :) Though, maybe the switch is the culprit it could certainly be the weak link w/ 9 amps pumpin through it!
Yeah it’s strange.
My soldering job is far from neat in parts, but it all looks ok without any solder where it shouldn’t be.
I’ve a feeling it might be the switch too, because its as if the switch is letting power through even when it should be off.
I thought the sl3 was an electronic switch? If so, does it even see 9a?