From the outside, it's a sleeper, till you look at the lens.
I bought a couple parallel 3-up stars from Illumination Supply. They are bare stars for the Cree XP-G and of course, the Nichia 219 fit right on. I also bought some Carlco Optics from IL. I got both the clear and the frosted.
I started with the stock head and opened it up to 20mm, with a dremel tool. I made a copper heat sink as well. It's much thicker than the normal ones I do, because the stack up on the star and optic is so thin.
I reflowed the 3 Nichias on to the star, using my normal method, with a soldering iron under the star. It worked well.
Here's how thin the stack is. It leaves a lot of room for a heat sink.
Wired up. Remember, these are in parallel.
Everything together and ready to go.
A little insurance for heat transfer to the head.
I am testing with a dummy cell that I made and a Saft cell that was given to me by scaru.
It works!
I will do some beam shots later tonight. It's not a house on fire, but it is bright. Do they make IMR 14500 cells? It would need to be a strong 14500, to really give this any amps. No I didn't check amp draw. I might do that later.
I think a lot of the problem is with the battery. I don't think the Saft battery can give enough amps to the leds. I tried a second battery and the light got brighter for a minute or two.
I think IMR will be needed to run this little light.
Cool how-it’s-made video, O-L. Too bad those 3xAA Mini MagLED lights aren’t being made anymore. I have a feeling 3xAA NiMH would work really well in resistored/DD parallel 3-up light.
So this is obviously direct drive? Adding a driver would theoretically be as easy as using the driver itself to form the base of the pill and adding a copper tower instead of a spring? Though the you couldn't fill it with copper shot for obvious reasons...
Yes, it is direct drive. I prefer direct drive for two reasons. First, I’m old school and a flashlight should turn on and off. Second, is yes, a driver takes up room and that does mean less of, or no heat sink and I know what that brings. (LED heat stroke).
