4x XM-L Driver

I see a lot of these 6-18V 3000ma units around now but no one is using them for 4 XM-L units, only 3x. Do these work for 4x XM-L or is there another 4x XM-L driver option out there?

Taskled HBflex or B3flex.

magudaman said:

I see a lot of these 6-18V 3000ma units around now but no one is using them for 4 XM-L units, only 3x. Do these work for 4x XM-L or is there another 4x XM-L driver option out there?

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And who is selling those?

Do they have any 6-18V 1.5A drivers, by any chance?

PhotonFanatic said:

And who is selling those?

Do they have any 6-18V 1.5A drivers, by any chance?

Click to expand...

I assume the op is refering to DX driver (sku 57779) and others who sell it. This driver may work with 4 xml's but probably requires some understanding of electronics to mod the components needed to get a higher input voltage with out frying the driver. One of the reviewers at dx claims he's runing 4 xpg's at 1.5a without problems. You may have to try it and see checking to make sure the driver doesn't get too hot. If it does you'll probably have to mod components.

Taskled drivers would be a better option in terms of reliabilty and flexibility with input voltage and number of leds. He has several that would work with 4 xml's or more.

Well I ordered that one from deal extreme and should be here soon for my 4x xlm maglite mod. I will test it on the 4x xmls and see if it works. At $5 bucks you really can't go wrong. I will report back to let you all know what I found.

This may be the wrong place for this, but I have been wondering why there aren't any 4*xml's out there that are mounted together. I have made a picture, of one of my burned out ones and it seems like to me as long as you get a nice sized copper board and a good heat sink it should work out great and it would make a better spotlight than the ones I have seen so far which have a lot of flood but not a lot of throw.
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This is an something that I thought I might see by now but I have not. Other than for heat reasons, is there a reason that no one has made a light with 4 xml's in this configuration? I think it would be a lot better for the throw and pattern of the light. The current 3 and 4*xml's have great flood but don't really send a lot of usefull light to the 100+m range. Sorry if this isn't the appropriate place for this, but thought some of you may be interested since you were discussing the use of 4*xml.

This is because putting 4 light sources that far appart, will introduce a large donut hole. Maybe with a very special reflector this can be cancelled, but not with a normale round SMO one. I have a 3x XP-G board on whicht the LEDS are close together to use with one reflector. Very nasty donuthole, and not a nice beam as a result.

Multi-die emitters almost always have donutholes, putting single die LEDS together will enlarge this problem unfortunately.

Alight well I got the driver and so far it doesn't work with 4x xm-l units. It lights them up but the two diodes on the board are too hot to touch in under 10 seconds! I did take some measurements. The LED array current on high is 2.5 amps, and low holds a nice steady .5 amps. I had to maintain just over 14.9v to hold current at the LEDs on low, so it seems the circuit is loosing something like 3 volts. Since everything else on the board seems to stay a little cooler, I may try a low dropout, high quality, through hole, diode in place of the two that are there. I am going to have to try and see if there is really a need for the two diodes or were they just paralleled up. Anyhow I will keep posting more results here.



I will also take a proper picture soon.

Posted up a build thread of my light that this driver ended up in:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?343065-3000-Lumen-Magmod-4x-XMLs-Build-Up