Battery Performance

[dkelly]

In a 2 or 3 D cell maglite with a Terralux TLE-6EXB LED drop in, what would be the performance results from switching from an alkaline cell to a 10000 mAh NIMH D cell battery. I understand that the voltage would be slightly lower. This bulb is for 2 or 3 cell flashlight and it is dimmer with 2 cells, brighter with 3 cells. The voltage with the NIMH would be between 2 cell and 3 cell alkaline batteries. The logical conclusion would be dimmer than 3 alkaline cells but brighter than 2. Is that correct? If I used it in a 2 cell flashlight and voltage was less than 3 volts, would this bulb still perform? How would run time be affected. If the bulb would run 5 hours on alkaline cells, how long would the above cells run?

Thanks for any help.

 

[shadowjk]

Alkaline only maintains higher voltage for the first few minutes of discharge, the nimh will have higher voltage through most of the use.

 

[dkelly]

How would the runtime compare with alkaline?

 

[mdocod]

Generally speaking, NIMH configurations offer longer running regulated performance, while alkaline configurations offer very drawn out diminishing outputs. So you can see where asking which one runs longer really is really a questions who's answers are in the eye of the beholder. I'm not exactly sure how this plays out with the teralux drop in. I own the cree version of the adapter from a few months ago and have been reasonably pleased with it in 2D mags on either alkaline or NIMH, but have never done any runtime testing. I usually just keep it around for backup purposes, in my experience, most other purpose built cree based throwers will out perform the teralux setup, so it's just nice for the fact that it runs in a big reliable host on some big cells for power outages and stuff.

 

[dkelly]

Thanks.

 

[Anders]

Hello dkelly.

I think you find this thread informative.

Anders