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Lifetime17

Lifetime17

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Hi,
yes glad you solve your issue it don't take much to overheat a solder joint on these . A happy ending

Rich:)
 





barthchris

barthchris

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Thanks!

This SXD V3 driver is awsome! I love the size and I love how I can feed it with 3 cells. I do need to find an extension tube for a MX900 host but I've tested it with a 3s lipo and it works great, totally stable throughout the cycle.

I probably preaching to the choir here but this may help someone. When soldering there is not much thermal mass with these small drivers, so you need to get in and out quickly. Prep and tin both your wires ends and solder pad/hole to make sure they will fit quickly while soldering, extra flux will help also. Definitely, try to use a good quality thin, rosin core leaded solder, either 60/40 or 63/37, yes they still make and sell it, Kester is a great brand. The lead-free stuff will work but takes more heat, doesn't flow as well as leaded, and IMO its much less forgiving, especially for someone who doesn't solder often.
 
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Lifetime17

Lifetime17

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hi Kester 63/37 in a 1 lb. roll is all i use for my builds good choice pal . Oh maybe instead of 3 cells in a XM900 did you ever think of a 2 D cell mag lite build Thats some serious mass for a heat sink.. And it can take 2-32650's these are giants compared to 26650's

Rich:)
 
Pman

Pman

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You know what's kind of funny, I had Ehg make me a simple sink for both a 2D Mag and a 2C Mag and the 2C is actually a little bit bigger I think. Still sitting by on call awaiting a build. Great that you got so many on sale. I was thinking maybe it was just that particular store that had them that cheap. Gave a couple friends on here. Awaiting 2 s-mini drivers so I can build a 520nm for GSS as a gift and to repair a blown Sci-if that the owner had put the batteries in the wrong way. Diode appears to be good still. It's too bad others who complained about their units haven't come forth to actually get theirs repaired as Grainde and I offered. As a reminder to everyone that was specifically for them only although Grainde does have a few new builds for sale I think in the Kryton groove.

On another note this out of stock driver issue is getting really bad:( I hope you still had those drivers to send me as I didn't check my email until a few hours ago. I can't finish fixing the guys Sci-if laser without them. I sure hope he gets his act together and sends you the hundreds that you are waiting for. Not sure who else I'll be able to get adjustable ones from.
 
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barthchris

barthchris

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Just letting you guys know that I've been driving the SDX V3 4.5A with four lipo cells or 16.8V fresh off the charger. I noticed DTR said they could handle 17V max so I took the plunge since I have 20-30 4s lipo packs sitting around. They are high capacity, high C packs so there is very little voltage drop under this relatively low load.

I don't have a LPM but I haven't noticed a difference with heat buildup or runtime.

This may or may not open up new host configurations. I know Id much rather run 18650's vs 26650's since I have a ton of the former. Does anyone know of a host that can be used/adapted with four 18650's in series?
 
Alaskan

Alaskan

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barthchris said:
Does anyone know of a host that can be used/adapted with four 18650's in series?
Click to expand...

I know of the Fenix TK75 flashlight which could be modified for use as a host which uses four 18650 batteries in series-parallel for 8.4 VDC when fully charged, and you can stack extra tubes to keep adding more batteries in parallel keeping the voltage the same. This gives incredible capacity when adding battery extensions, with 3500 mA capacity 18650 batteries, four batteries gives 7000 mA @ 8.2 VDC, another pack and you are up to 14,000 mA. My flashlight has four packs/extension tubes for a total of 28,000 mA or 28 ampere hours of capacity which I had modified by Harold/Ehgemus to hold a knife edge of four diodes, as can be seen in my avatar slide show being held by him.

Link to an ebay sale, not the lowest price, but the best pictures: Fenix TK75 2015 Edition Search Light CREE XM L2 U2 LED 4000 Lumen | eBay
 
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Photonjunky

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I've just spoken to Jeff, and he says he'll be unavailable until about October 11; we're on our own as far as drivers go until then. My understanding is that there is no immediate solution to the availability problem in sight. Like a lot of others out there, I have diodes that are wanting drivers, and projects that cannot be completed without them. There seem to be foreign sources, but they are time-consuming to deal with, there are issues with quality control (and, I have a preference for supporting U.S.-made products).
In the meantime, I have been tinkering with the driver-equipped NUBM07E I was lucky enough to get before the drivers dried up. I was trying to integrate the diode and driver in as compact a volume as possible, but maintaining a good heat sink for both. Here is what I came up with. This is solid copper bar, one inch in diameter and two inches long, bored to the exact diameter of the 12mm module, and slotted to fit the thickness of the driver. Stacked plates, sheared from pure copper sheeting, and joined with Arctic Silver epoxy, allow a snug fit, and effectively join the heat-sensitive components of the driver to the main heatsink. Running at 2.3 amps, and outputting 2.8 watts, this will run, with no additional heatsinking, for three continuous minutes, going from 20 to 55 degrees C. A single 3500mAh Panasonic 18650 gives about 15 minutes of total run-time. The unit weighs 194.5 grams, exclusive of battery. Comments?

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Accutronitis

Accutronitis

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I'm sure glad i was able to get a X-Drive before sales were suspended, It works perfectly !

 
barthchris

barthchris

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Photonjunky said:
I've just spoken to Jeff, and he says he'll be unavailable until about October 11; we're on our own as far as drivers go until then. My understanding is that there is no immediate solution to the availability problem in sight. Like a lot of others out there, I have diodes that are wanting drivers, and projects that cannot be completed without them. There seem to be foreign sources, but they are time-consuming to deal with, there are issues with quality control (and, I have a preference for supporting U.S.-made products).
In the meantime, I have been tinkering with the driver-equipped NUBM07E I was lucky enough to get before the drivers dried up. I was trying to integrate the diode and driver in as compact a volume as possible, but maintaining a good heat sink for both. Here is what I came up with. This is solid copper bar, one inch in diameter and two inches long, bored to the exact diameter of the 12mm module, and slotted to fit the thickness of the driver. Stacked plates, sheared from pure copper sheeting, and joined with Arctic Silver epoxy, allow a snug fit, and effectively join the heat-sensitive components of the driver to the main heatsink. Running at 2.3 amps, and outputting 2.8 watts, this will run, with no additional heatsinking, for three continuous minutes, going from 20 to 55 degrees C. A single 3500mAh Panasonic 18650 gives about 15 minutes of total run-time. The unit weighs 194.5 grams, exclusive of battery. Comments?







Beautiful job on the way you incorporated the driver heatsink! Ideally, Im sure using a piece of solid copper would probably be better than laminating a bunch of sheets with thermal epoxy but you made use of what you had. I probably would have done the same thing! Im sure it works just fine.


I like how you heatsinked the inductor as well. Ive had 4-5 of the SDX drivers all set to various current levels and the inductor was hot on all of them.

I seem to remember some saying that it wasn't necessary but even if I did a proper job epoxying(thermal) just the 8 pin chip to a more than adequate copper mass, and was keeping voltage/current in the recommended spec I'd still notice the inductor would still be alarmingly hot.

IDK, maybe its OK for the inductor to be that hot but it just didn't seem normal to me. I had no way of measuring temperature but if I put my finger on it I immediately flinched. I often wondered when it would desolder itself!
Click to expand...
 
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Photonjunky

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This was my first attempt at any sort of "build", so, in that sense, I would consider it a prototype (though, a LOT of thought went into it, before cutter touched metal). I suppose if I do another (assuming, of course, that I can get the same SXB driver), I would machine the driver heat sinks out of solid blocks, using the external dimensions of the laminated parts as a reference (therefore, I should get very reproducible results).
Going to a 26650 would extend the total run-time to about 20 minutes (which is the largest battery I can use; there are internal volume constraints in the project this is just a part of...).
 
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