Flashlight Mod using GB Laser Diode

[chimo]

All holes were drilled using a drill press.

How do you drill the holes?

 

[SenKat]

Small drill or drill press. The tricky part is when your solder traces are tiny - is to drill the holes so as to not rip the copper cadding from the board ! If you place your solder paths far enogh apart, you can drill the hole NEXT to the trace, and bend the wire over to teh trace for soldering. Not as neat, but equally effective ! If your traces are wide, a small fast moving drill work work fabuously !

G !

 

[Comidt]

What size drill bit do you use?
Is there a special drill thing for them?

 

[chimo]

I managed to up the current a bit by changing sense resistors. The current is up to 210mA with a single Li-ion.

Comidt, I have a bunch of tiny drill bits - not sure on size. The chuck on my drill press will grab these without the need for an adapter sleeve.

 

[LarryQ]

Any chance on getting to that "Magic" 300-350 Ma range with a component swap??

I'm not too savy with IC selection, but I am building a Laser using 2X Cr-123 batts as soon as my LED flashlight gets here.

Again AWESOME JOB..I nominate your new laser for Laser of the Week/Month!!

LarryQ

 

[chimo]

Thanks Larry. This driver will do up to 800 mA without any component swaps.

The limitation I have is that I want to get the most out of a single Li-ion cell (an 18650).

The driver will easily get to the range 300-500mA range with 2x CR123 primaries. In fact, it is better suited for 2xCR123s than 1x Li-ion. It would laso be great for 4x NiMH.

I have run a test with 2x Li-ions but the IC has to sink a lot of power (~1.2W at 250mA) so duty cycles would have to be reasonable.

Paul

Any chance on getting to that "Magic" 300-350 Ma range with a component swap??

I'm not too savy with IC selection, but I am building a Laser using 2X Cr-123 batts as soon as my LED flashlight gets here.

Again AWESOME JOB..I nominate your new laser for Laser of the Week/Month!!

LarryQ