- Joined
- Aug 25, 2007
- Messages
- 2,007
- Points
- 63
Wow, what a great hobby. I just finished a marathon laser day that began with components and ended with both of my Senkat GB diodes fully functional and striking matches in brand new flashlight hosts.
#1 is in an Eveready-branded rechargeable 1000mAh Ni-MH 1W LED flashlight. If nothing else, this light looks and feels great, solid anodized aluminum, nice and hefty, looks great. I just tore the reflector and lens out, soldered a 47 um cap across the LD leads, and attached 2 10-ohm resistors in series with the circuitry built in, much like everyone does with the Dorcys. I couldn't get the thing all the way apart (at least not without tearing up the recharge port, which was pressed in and then soldered down inside the tube, it appeared) to see what all is in the light's circuitry already, So I went with that resistance which worked well with a 4-diode mock-up and resulted in about 200 mA the last measurement. The cap fit in the Aixiz housing, and I fashioned an aluminum washer the perfect size to hold the Aixiz housing in the slot where the flashlight held its front lens, then JB-Welded it in. It's working like a champ, lights a black match at a foot in a few seconds when I hold it still enough.
#2 is in a Brinkman plastic/rubber light that was a xenon bulb with 2x cr123a that I got because it was on sale, and was cheaper than buying the two batteries by themselves. This light has DDL's driver, with a 10-ohm and 3x 47-ohm resistors all in parallet across the Vout and adj of the 317. This gave 6.2 ohms, a little higher than expected, and almost exactly 200 mA into the LD, about the same as the other. Another Aluminum washer in the lens groove, and the JB-weld is setting up as I type this.
These things are awesome. They have basically no extra heatsinking, so I'm not pushing them and keeping a very short duty cycle to keep them going. I'm amazed the 2nd one still worked, the ground pin snapped off of the diode at the base, and it took about 5 more attempts to get another pin soldered on, I'm amazed the diode survived the heat. It ended up being the only way we could get it to work was to jam a lead into one of the cuts around the bas of the diode, where it leaves a little gap with the Aixiz housing, and then drop solder onto that from the iron. Also ended up having to drill the entire back of the Aixiz off to make the hole bigger, we tried to get greedy and managed to get the capacitor and the reverse-protection diode both into the Aixiz housing, but thin the wire couldn't bend back out of the hole with out messing with the solder to the diode.
I'll post some pictures of the finished products in a few days, I don't have my camera with me at the moment. I also apologize for not documenting the process all the way through, the cramming of the components into the little Brinkman really made me proud, but there's no way I can get them back apart now without destroying things that I couldn't fix. Thanks for all the great info and ideas that I've gotten on here. I really couldn't have done all this, especially not getting both diodes working on the first try, without a lot of help from people on here. I'm actually a materials science and engineering major, and I'm going to graduate school beginning next year in electronic and photonic materials, so this has also been a great learning and growing experience for me in that regard, using an actual macro-product that I've studied so much on a micro and nano-scale.
Also, I have to acknowledge my brother's help in all this, he just plain has a steadier hand for soldering the small stuff, which helped out a whole lot.
#1 is in an Eveready-branded rechargeable 1000mAh Ni-MH 1W LED flashlight. If nothing else, this light looks and feels great, solid anodized aluminum, nice and hefty, looks great. I just tore the reflector and lens out, soldered a 47 um cap across the LD leads, and attached 2 10-ohm resistors in series with the circuitry built in, much like everyone does with the Dorcys. I couldn't get the thing all the way apart (at least not without tearing up the recharge port, which was pressed in and then soldered down inside the tube, it appeared) to see what all is in the light's circuitry already, So I went with that resistance which worked well with a 4-diode mock-up and resulted in about 200 mA the last measurement. The cap fit in the Aixiz housing, and I fashioned an aluminum washer the perfect size to hold the Aixiz housing in the slot where the flashlight held its front lens, then JB-Welded it in. It's working like a champ, lights a black match at a foot in a few seconds when I hold it still enough.
#2 is in a Brinkman plastic/rubber light that was a xenon bulb with 2x cr123a that I got because it was on sale, and was cheaper than buying the two batteries by themselves. This light has DDL's driver, with a 10-ohm and 3x 47-ohm resistors all in parallet across the Vout and adj of the 317. This gave 6.2 ohms, a little higher than expected, and almost exactly 200 mA into the LD, about the same as the other. Another Aluminum washer in the lens groove, and the JB-weld is setting up as I type this.
These things are awesome. They have basically no extra heatsinking, so I'm not pushing them and keeping a very short duty cycle to keep them going. I'm amazed the 2nd one still worked, the ground pin snapped off of the diode at the base, and it took about 5 more attempts to get another pin soldered on, I'm amazed the diode survived the heat. It ended up being the only way we could get it to work was to jam a lead into one of the cuts around the bas of the diode, where it leaves a little gap with the Aixiz housing, and then drop solder onto that from the iron. Also ended up having to drill the entire back of the Aixiz off to make the hole bigger, we tried to get greedy and managed to get the capacitor and the reverse-protection diode both into the Aixiz housing, but thin the wire couldn't bend back out of the hole with out messing with the solder to the diode.
I'll post some pictures of the finished products in a few days, I don't have my camera with me at the moment. I also apologize for not documenting the process all the way through, the cramming of the components into the little Brinkman really made me proud, but there's no way I can get them back apart now without destroying things that I couldn't fix. Thanks for all the great info and ideas that I've gotten on here. I really couldn't have done all this, especially not getting both diodes working on the first try, without a lot of help from people on here. I'm actually a materials science and engineering major, and I'm going to graduate school beginning next year in electronic and photonic materials, so this has also been a great learning and growing experience for me in that regard, using an actual macro-product that I've studied so much on a micro and nano-scale.
Also, I have to acknowledge my brother's help in all this, he just plain has a steadier hand for soldering the small stuff, which helped out a whole lot.
