3, AAA LED Flashlight Host Fix

I found out the hard way that 3 AAA batteries is not going to fly for these diodes, especially with the micro flex drive cranked up all the way. Not enough juice. I came up with a last minute solution that saved the build, and make a kick-ass powerful laser out of that silly little 9 LED host. I reconstructed the 3 AAA holder from a series to a paralell by bridging the connections at the top and bottom, and attaching the single spring from the top, to the bottom so all 3 springs are on the bottom. I also added a pcb that came off a protected 18650. It was meant to be connected the same way, on the bottom where the spring in the cap with the clickity switch contacts. Now it will take 1-3 10440 lithium cells in paralell, and has a protection circuit to prevent overdischarging the batteries. This was actually pretty simple to build, it tool just a few minutes. The end resault was great, it was just as good as if it were powered by a 18650, just doesn't have quite the capacity is all. And it's a really compact unit, in the little 3 AAA host.

What current are pulling from them ? I use similar setup for direct drive, and it works just fine.

http://laserpointerforums.com/f65/minimalistic-445nm-500mw-orange-emos-direct-drive-65772.html

That's a good question, and I don't really know. I believe that the pcb is rated for 3.5A, and it works allright. I had trouble with those in my phaser, though, with the soundboard connected, and using the micro flex drive cranked up as high as I could get it, it kept tripping the overdischarge protection. It's fine for a diode alone, though, pretty much no matter how much I make the driver feed it. And 3 10440 cells is enough to drive these about the same as one 18650, at least as far as I can test it, anyway.

DrSid said:

What current are pulling from them ? I use similar setup for direct drive, and it works just fine.

http://laserpointerforums.com/f65/minimalistic-445nm-500mw-orange-emos-direct-drive-65772.html

Click to expand...

How similar? 3 10440's? The pcb I used is for a 18650 cell, but it fits nicely on the bottom of that 3 AAA holder, and 3.5A seems to be enough.

I mean you said 3AAA did not work for you. But of course, driver will pull more current from them then direct drive. I just wonder how much current it was. Maxed flexdrive should give about 1.5A at output, and about 2.3A at input, IIRC. My laser pulls 0.5A, and it is so so. So I guess it sounds right.

Well, whatever it does require, 3 AAA's in series just didn't cut it, but 3 10440's in paralell did. Actually, just 2 seemed to be allright, but 3 is certainly enough to match one 18650 cell. The AAA's were half as bright (to my eye, anyway), nimh batteries were better, maybe 75%, but only the 3 10440's were as bright as the 18650. I have a 18650 that I rigged to stuff into my own led flashlight, with a switch on it, that was how I realized that the AAA's weren't up to the challenge. This arrangement saved my 3 AAA flashlight as a host build, I made a couple of the adaptors, since I kind of like the way those flashlights fit in my pocket, nice and compact. This would have been out of the question, otherwise, I tried everything else.