Is the dome of the led supposed to get HOT !!! the one in my mag gets very hot too hot to touch in fact..
I suppose. Everything nearby gets hot! It's natural that the heat spreads to the dome even if it is not heated directly. Since the heat generates from under the dome there is virtually 0 chance of being cool to touch.
ok cool although i've got smoke coming out of it now :-(
Driver probably. If not run away till the smoke gets dispersed properly and don't breathe in the process of running away.
Good advice, don't be standing there when the Maglite turns into a pipe bomb. What batteries are in it?
Tenergy c batt x 3
I suggest you take that apart and figure out what is going wrong and where before you fire it up again.
Yup looks like it :-/ that's the micro switch in the door thats failing around £100 from Audi for the whole unit, so just trying to source parts to fix !!
Ok just had the driver out and it looks fine, But on further inspection of the led it looks like its the actual wore soldered to the emitter that's burning !!
I've used the wire that came with the driver so now i have to try and source some decent wire over here, any suggestion !!!
Charles
Sorry what do you mean, are you referring to the driver ?
You really want to use the thickest wire you can for these relatively high currents.
The problem with the thin wire they tend to supply with drivers is that it has rather high resitance.
With 3A going through the wire it will act like a little electric heater...obviously not what you want :P
Hi guy the heat sink works fine i don't think it would be possible to make a bigger one as this one sits just above the switch.
Piers i think you have hit the nail on the head mate the wire i have used is crap !! Unfortunately it's all i have and i don't have a computer parts box all of mine still work ( gotta love apple macs)
So where can i get some decent cable in the UK ? I don't really know where to start the only thinker stuff i have is far to thick and would be far to thick to solder to the emitter..
can i use a bit of cat 5 for this ??
Excellent i've got a tone of that lying around :-)
thanks for all your help i'll keep you all posted with the results...
my eyes 