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FrozenGate by Avery

The GhostDrive is Coming...

Wish you good luck ghostchrome, im impressed by your new driver.. it is very much basic and i agree on the driver being entry level.. since it uses two~three li-ion cells the host would be a bigger one, you dont need to worry about the size imo.. you should make it better in sense of duty cycle and maybe then size too.. but it will still sit inside an aixiz.. so that is fantastic...
GL
 





there are a few boost drivers but they are not very stable and cant boost as high...we will see there are a few in the midst...

boost drivers are not as complicated as you may think with the help of youtube a few members here and allot, allot of data sheets im slowly starting to understand them (slightly lol)
 
I agree that two capacitors are better for the driver, but if you already have a large batch made, I guess there's no need to change it. I myself was thinking about offering this type of driver (with this smaller LM1117 vs. Jib's), but I decided it wasn't worth the time dealing with orders, and there isn't much of a need from the community (though competition is good for bringing down prices :) ). Just wondering, perhaps I missed it somewhere, but is there a specific price you plan to sell these at?
 
Just picked one up for free thanks gost! But i would like to ask at 395mA how hot do you think it will get? im open to heatsinking it i have the space but if u dont need to i wont waste the time.
 
tylerbmxkid17 said:
Just picked one up for free thanks gost! But i would like to ask at 395mA how hot do you think it will get? im open to heatsinking it i have the space but if u dont need to i wont waste the time.
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At 395mA, I would probably heatsink it. I've never run it at 395mA, but I've run it at 450mA and it gets hot pretty quickly. On the flip side, I've run it at 120mA and it barely gets warm, even after about 5 minutes.

Also, what are you building it into? How much voltage are you using? It's a linear driver, so remember that any excess voltage that you put into it that is not used is going to be converted into heat.

If you have the space, I'd say go for it. If nothing else, you'll get longer run times. Let us know how it handles it.
 
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Ghostchrome said:
At 395mA, I would probably heatsink it. I've never run it at 395mA, but I've run it at 450mA and it gets hot pretty quickly. On the flip side, I've run it at 120mA and it barely gets warm, even after a few minutes.

Also, what are you building it into? How much voltage are you using? It's a linear driver, so remember that any excess voltage that you put into it that is not used is going to be converted into heat.

If you have the space, I'd say go for it. If nothing else, you'll get longer run times. Let us know how it handles it.
Click to expand...

In this scenario, current is actually less relevant to the need for heatsinking, than your diode's Vf.

Using the same two cells as a power source, running a 445nm at 100 mA will generate MORE heat for the IC to dissipate than running a 405nm diode at 400 mA:

100 * (8 - 4 - 1.25) = 275 mW
400 * (8 - 6.25 - 1.25) = 200 mW

Current is irrelevant here, except I suppose for the impact it has on the laser diode's Vf.
 
rhd said:
In this scenario, current is actually less relevant to the need for heatsinking, than your diode's Vf.

Using the same two cells as a power source, running a 445nm at 100 mA will generate MORE heat for the IC to dissipate than running a 405nm diode at 400 mA:

100 * (8 - 4 - 1.25) = 275 mW
400 * (8 - 6.25 - 1.25) = 200 mW

Current is irrelevant here, except I suppose for the impact it has on the laser diode's Vf.
Click to expand...

Ah, interesting, thanks! That makes sense.

tylerbmxkid17 said:
Well i have a rayovac sportsman extream Rayovac - Sportsman Xtreme LED Flashlights and i am haveing a copper heatsink made. On that note i plan on useing 2 14500? I think this is correct as they are about the same size as AA's. O and il be doing a 650nm build from a 815 sled
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Those batteries look like they should fit. I'm not sure what the inside of that host looks like, maybe someone else here is familiar with it. You're going to have to secure the driver in there somewhere though. If you can, just use a thermal adhesive to secure it to the pill and turn the entire host into a heatsink for the driver.
 
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Thats what I was thinking I have pill pulled apart and the led driver removed. I was thinking of useing a copper disk and cuting two sides off as there are holes in the top of the pill for wires to come out of, Then glueing it to the top of the inside of the pill, then glueing the driver to it. Im not sure how good that will work feel free to tell me it wont. The one thing stoping me is how to keep the wires from twisting up when i put the head of the host back on. The one idea i had is to keep the pill in place there is a nut that screws down to hold it in place i could just not screw it down all the way so it can freely twist. This might even be how it has to be done as i think the 14500's i want to use are just a little longer then AA's.
 
I put the GhostDrive into a build tonight. It's the first complete build that I've done using the driver other than just running tests on it. The diode is an LPC-815 running at 456mA in a C6 host with a Moh heatsink. The driver is Arctic Alumina'ed to the pill.

I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

futd0h.jpg
 
Looks great! I got mine today but sad news is i killed the diode like a noob. I will be geting a new one asap. While im talking any one know who can make me a custom heatsink?
 
Don't worry, I think we've all killed a few diodes. At least it wasn't too horribly expensive. ;)
 
Thought I'd post an update.

The UPS guy just dropped off the GhostDrive2 boards. I'm pretty excited about them and all the tweaks that have been done.

The best part is that I got the cost waaay down because of how many I ordered, so when they go up for sale they should be around 7-8 bucks for an assembled driver. :wave:
 

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