Can anyone help me out and tell me what I need to get (besides the M6) in order to duplicate what DBCstm did with his M6? MTN has the M6 for a decent price. I’m about to ship out overseas, so I’d like to get as much as possible in one go.
I’m not new to swinging a soldering iron and electronics, but I’m really new to modding flashlights. I did a search for modded M6s and there were only two really good threads. One seemed to get to just over 4000L with resistor work, DBCstm got to ~4900L replacing the driver and a whole lotta other stuff. I’d be happy with just over 4000L and a moonlight mode, so I figure I need to do more than just bridge or add a few resistors.
BTW - I’m about to pull the trigger on this: https://www.fasttech.com/products/1611612 It’s a “SingFire 3405”.
It looks seriously underpowered and a decent candidate for a Noctigon XM-L2 U2 swap. I like the handle - it looks like a mini BST or somesuch - and the heatsinking looks okay, plus it has what looks like a charging port. Or am I throwing my money away? It’s about $18 shipped.
As of now I have a TK-75 stock (for now) that should be here on Monday, a clone C8 from Amazon, and a MM15vn 6000L super-flooder. Would the M6 be worthwhile?
For just a few bucks more than you’ll have in parts you can get a prebuilt M6 from member here RMM at his web store Mtnelectronice.com.
Otherwise this is what the driver needs done (this is an SRK but it’s the same thing you do to the M6)
What your looking at is a BLF17DD driver piggybacked onto the host driver, host driver stripped of all components except the FET and LED pads, a 110uF cap added between LED+ and ground and upgraded wire. The XM-L2’s are on Noctigon’s (sinkPads would work too). The firmware I’m running is a modded version of the momentary STAR FW with components take from Dr Jones momentary version and Werners UI.
Note for a little more money (~$15 more) you may be able to get a driver board from OSHPark that is a direct fit and doesn’t need the BLF17dd piggybacked but I’m not sure if its ready yet.
Note2* not trying to turn you off of the idea of DIY, we love to see more people get into it, but you’ve picked a pretty ambitious project to jump in to, maybe start out a little lower to get the hang of it.
Do you want to build/program the driver yourself or buy a prefabbed one?
Unfortunately MTN is showing sold out until the 19th of May, and I’m getting stationed overseas and leave on the 21st, else I would have bought the pre-modded one already! :bigsmile:
But thank you for the explanation. I’d like to build the driver but not program it, but I’m not against the idea of a prefabbed one.
The driver you’ll need to buy (preprogrammed) to piggyback yourself is the ADV-MOM-STAR-QLITE from mtn but it looks like that may be out as well…
Edit: you are aware you won’t get the full ~5000Lm output on regular 18650’s, you have to use high drain 18650’s such as the samsung 20R’s or sony VTC5’s right? Your regular NCR18650B’s will run it but not anywhere near full power.
Good idea O-L, I already offered to send him the pre-programmed driver for exactly that reason, have to support my brothers any way I can and that seemed like an awesome way.
