Just received my first SRK with 4 x XML2 emitters. Popped it open and saw this driver. I don´t know anything about this driver. It gives okayish amount of light but I was wondering that would there be an easy fix for more lumens etc. The torch wont heat up even on high.
EDIT: Ok, it heats up. Might be the cold climate earlier than it did not heat up. Used it when we were ice fishing
Modes are HIGH-MED-LOW and hold for strobe. All the modes are pretty close to each other. Low aint low…
If I’m not mistaken that is a great driver, but that pill…… No good. Looks like the only direct heat transfer is from the LEDs directly to the reflector… The shelf is just floating there screwed to the underneath of the reflector.
I actually was wondering the cavity and why there is no pill. That plate aint a pill IMO. How could I improve the heat transfer easily? I dont have any tools to machine anything from copper etc.
It doesn’t seem like there’s an easy way to fix it. You could see if Old Lumens works on commission and send the light o him, otherwise you have a turd on your hands.
From Finland to US is a bit too much of a hassle. I have to try and scavenge some copper and try to do a pill the hard way.
For 24$ it still lights up pretty decently. I just worry that something will pop if I use it a lot. Modding is out of the question hence the pill. Love the form and size though. This is my first SRK -type light.
That is a shame about the lack of any type of led base plate. Might be just as well off using it as is in the cold weather and save up for something a bit nicer, like the SRK that should be coming out of CNQG soon. Not a lot can be done with that one, without some major mods.
Your best bet would be finding a machine shop to make a press-fit pill and press it in. It doesn’t look like there’s any threading or anything for a pill to grab onto.
Something else you could try is buying a circular CPU heat sink and grinding the fins down until it presses into the body of the flashlight, screwing down a disk of copper on top of that, and making that the pill. But then it might not leave a whole lot of room for the driver.
Well you win some then you loose some. It´s not the only torch in the house The CPU heatsink w/ copper might be the best bet. Any words on the driver? Is it good? Easy to mod? If I find a solution on the heatsinking… If not, then I´ll chuck it in the boat for a spare light or something.
There is another Fleabay SRK coming my way. Hope that it has a proper pill. If not then I´ll just have to buy a proper SRK.
The driver is different than the one that can be easily modded. There’s an extra MCU, and though there’s space for a MOSFET, one has not been installed. It leads me to think that the MCU’s are what’s controlling the current and attempting to bypass the resistors, without a MCU taking care of the PWM, will fry the chips.
You might be able to fabricate a pill with copper sheet and scissors. You just need to make it thick enough to reach the that ledge. Not sure how many disks you will need to accomplish that. Depends on if you reuse the aluminum "pill". I would reuse it, but I would put it under the copper disks you cut out. Copper moves heat about two times better than aluminum.
You may be able to get copper sheet from your local hardware stores if they sell copper flashing for roofing.
No,Q2 is MOSFET in SO-8 package,but there is a place for bigger MOSFET Q1 in to-252 package,which is thermally better than SO-8.So you can just add Q1 mosfet+override upper limiting resistors for max. current.
In all of this, look on the bright side……er the not so brightside. Because of the lack of a pill, it is not driven very hard. In other words, it will have GREAT run time. I am serious, It’s like having a car that gets great gas mileage. That can be a plus. Just use it for those occasions, like when you go ice fishing and may need extended run times.
Over on CheapskateLightForums.com everybody mods their lights to use less current to extend the run times.
Would one have to remove Q2 as well if one placed a ‘normal’ FET at Q1? What if one got a tiny heat sink and Arctic Alumina’ed it to the SOP8? Will it still provide a bottleneck to current flow?
FETs usually work fine with multiples in parallel, as long as the load required to control the gates isn't out pf spec for what the MCU can supply - and being a mystery MCU, you'd just have to try it and see. The original SOP8 FET is likely limited by its internals, not heatsinking. Most FETs make very little heat. And the one used here looks to be a clone/copy of a Fairchild Semi 9926A dual-channel FET, the actual manufacturer is unknown and 'compatible' in no way means 'identical', so the on-state resistance and gate characteristics could be totally different than the original Fairchild part.
So who knows - the original FET on its own may be capable of doing over 10A when the limiting resistors are bypassed (just move the red LED+ wire over to the other side of the resistors).
