Exactly what I needed to hear, thank you. Guess I'll pick up one of rkcstr's fixed 100mA driver boards (
http://rkcstr.googlepages.com/home ) unless anyone has a good reason not too - the cheap price seems like a good deal for my first DIY build. The only thing that concerns me is that it recommends about 7 volts of power. I was hoping to take a real cheap LED flashlight platform as a housing and replace the AAs with two 3.7v lithium ion cells. However, they can be as high as 4.2v each fully charged, so I'm worried I might kill the thing.
From what I've gathered so far, the build process is going to go something like this:
1. Extract diode from drive
2. Solder diode to driver board
3. Solder driver board to power source
4. Assemble into housing
Am I on the right track here? I think I'm missing a way to focus the diode. I've been told I need an Aixiz module which I assume does just that, however I have no idea how to use/install it and my attempts at asking Google have only incited further confusion.
Daguin, thanks for that link. $28 shipped for the drive seems reasonable enough.