new P7 driver 3amps?

bstrickler

Enlightened
Joined
Jul 13, 2008
Messages
831
Location
Tucson, Arizona
My need for it went out the window last week, when the driver blew. I wasn't even overdriving it! It was in my WF-1000L with 2 18650's, and the whole flashlight got hot as hell. I checked it out when I got back home, and sure as heck, several components were blown.

List of blown parts:

3 SMD Resistors(?) marked R20 (looks like they literally blew the ends out. Board is semi-charred near them. WTF happened?)
2 Small diodes
+ a few other small components starting to bubble.

Other than that, it still works, but only for like 5 minutes before the thermal protection kicks in (idk if the LED is being DD with 8.4 volts or not, since I decided to rip the driver out. LED was happy at w/e power it was getting, though)

I would steer away from the 3-mode KD 5-15 volt driver. At $12, I would expect better quality.

I'm going to replace the driver with ShiningBeams 17mm 8x7135 3-mode driver. The flashlight doesn't heat up at all when ghetto-rigging the flashlight to run off my Mag (3 Alkaline D's hooked to driver, and the driver hooked to the head and body of the WF-1000L. Hey, it works, though it's not pretty)

~Brian
 

Ogg Vorbis

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jan 25, 2007
Messages
147
Location
West Yorkshire, England
Sorry, not much chance of making any more heatsinks... as with most of the stuff i do it's a one off. Would love to be able to make more but i've change departments making it even harder to get on a machine :thumbsdow

But on a positive note my driver's still going strong :thumbsup:

Dan
 

dyannantuonojr

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Sep 4, 2009
Messages
2
I ordered a driver on 9-3-09, it's now sat happily in a 2C Mag. I checked the current in series with the LED and got 2.8A. I did find the board got very hot were the wopping great transistor was... so this is my solution!

DSC00689.jpg
DSC00690.jpg


DSC00692.jpg
DSC00693.jpg


+ Arctic Alumina...

It was powering a MC-E 'till i broke it (long story) but is now feeding a DSWOI P7 and i haven't had any troubles yet...

Just thought i'd share...

Dan
My name is Daniel
I am new to the flash light modding genre and I have a question. Where do I solder my negative wire to the driver you have pictured above? Have you ever tried using 3 p7's in one flashlight using elliptical optics?
Thanks for your expertise.
 

rufusbduck

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jan 13, 2009
Messages
81
Has anyone figured out yet exactly which components are kicking out all the heat in the latest batch?
I've found that a good way to sink these boards is to pot them in heatsink paste (the setting kind) from either dx or kd and them make a sandwich of copper sheet that fits into a piece of copper pipe ~ 1/2" long then AA the slug to the flashlight body. I use these to drive 3 q5's in parallel(I know this is supposed to be a bad idea but it's been working for over a year now) in old vistalite bike light heads with additional copper added to the outside and copper nails drilled through and soldered as vias to aid in heat transfer. The lights never dim while riding and only heat up when I stop which is when I dim the light anyway. The stock switch in the lamp head works both as a momentary (normally closed) switch to change modes and full click to power on/off. I have the newer ones which do have memory. The power fet and the inductor on one side and the two ic's on the other should all be AAed to the heatsink. If you remove the positive contact you can solder a new vin+ to the other side and have all your wires on one side. This helps immensely for my purposes. If you have just a little more room, Georges Maxflex driver from Taskled works GREAT at pushing 4 epg r5's at 1.3 A and is about the size of a quarter. If you ran your mce/p7 2s2p it would be only slightly underdriven and mulltiple leds would be even more efficient.
 

TorchBoy

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Jan 15, 2007
Messages
4,486
Location
New Zealand
The lights never dim while riding and only heat up when I stop which is when I dim the light anyway.
I just had the possibly crazy idea of using one of those fan-powered LED lights to control the dimming of a bike light. I wonder if that would work...
 

rufusbduck

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jan 13, 2009
Messages
81
Does anyone know what the difference is between the 8566 kd driver and the 5296 kd driver besides $2.00? They seem to use the same info page.
Thanks
 

Packhorse

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Nov 29, 2007
Messages
1,912
Location
New Zealand
Has anyone tried running 3 (XML's) LED's in series off a 12v NuMh pack yet?

I have had very good results running a 7.4v load from one but the 10vf off 3 XMLs??????
 

djipe

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
10
Location
France
Hy !

2 years ago, I baught this driver (3 Amps for MCE) from KD :
hotof3.jpg


Since 2 years, I supply it with 2 18650 (7,2 V)
And Now, I'm interested to supply it with 3 18650 (10,8 V). The specifications are not any more available on KD website :(

Do anybody know the max voltage that we can supply this driver ?

In advance thanks
 

jpou

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Mar 31, 2012
Messages
19
are there any parts on back side? It might be risky to drive it with 10,8V because electrolytic 100uF cap is rated for 10V.
 
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