Fixing/Replacing broken Nkoray 106 Driver

[lighto]

I have a Nkoray 106 with a broken driver ($14 version with green cap). After looking for hours for a suitable driver replacement, and not really coming up with anything good, I'm a couple idle hours away from just turning it into a direct drive light (somebody stop me! )

Anyhow, I thought I'd post some pictures of the thing, and maybe someone'll have some ideas:

The driver itself is 15mm. The bottom piece that seals the pill is 16mm. (the wires all came off while i was twisting it to try to get a good look at the components)

A couple questions for anyone handy with this type of stuff:

1. How do I get that brass ring out??? It's in there, solid!
2. Nothing on the driver looks fried or shorted. Any ideas what went wrong?
3. Anything good and cheap as a replacement driver? (I couldn't find any suitable < 16mm .7-4.5V 1A drivers)
4. Direct drive from 14500 lithium ion -- no resistor, ok?

 

[lighto]

Alright, since nobody responded to this post, I thought I'd update this in case anyone else is in the same situation.

I decided to just direct drive this thing. I went out and bought some resistors but when I got home and measured the resistance of the body through the tailcap, I was getting around 1/2 ohm of resistance, the resistance I was aiming for to get 1A (assuming max voltage of 4.2V, Vf of 3.7).

Anyhow, I put the whole assembly on the breadboard, alligator clips all over the place, and put it straight to the battery (through the body and tailswitch), and sure enough, it lit up pretty darn bright, without blowing up.

The measured current going through the whole thing was about .9 amps, and the pill got crazy hot after awhile.

By the time it occured to me to measure the battery voltage, it had already dropped to 3.9V, and ~3.7 under load. I'm sure all those alligator clips, breadboard contacts, etc added some resistance too, but it was good enough for me. I soldered the LED ground to the brass ring, and the red wire to the pill cover and then soldered the cover back in place.

And there you have it, a resistor-less direct drive, IHopeItDoesntExplodeWhenIRechargeTheBattery-ORay 106.

 

[lighto]

Forgot to mention, Vf was as low as 3.2 when I was getting ready to break-down from the breadboard for reassembly. At that point, the current was ~.7-.8.

The reassembled flashlight has a little more heatsinking due to the pill being in the body (?), but it does get warm pretty rapidly.

 

[Egsise]

What broke the driver?

 

[Doh!Nut]

Interesting to see how that light is put together - it will save me pulling mine apart just to take a look.
I am getting an occasional flicker which I am guessing is a poor contact somewhere.

It would be an idea to use some thermal compound to help get some heat away from the LED to the body.

 

[kosPap]

well DX and KD have some not that great drivers (single mode0 in that dimension....

But I wpould suggest getting 14mm drivers for the sandwich shoppe..google it...

 

[lighto]

What broke the driver?

Good question--I was just using it as a book light on low mode, and it suddenly just stopped working. No noises, pops, angry LEDs, nothing. At rest, on low, it just turned off. (I was using a li-ion battery in it at the time. Voltage was around 3.7 Volts when it stopped working.)

At first, I thought it was the battery, but after trying both fully charged nimh and li-ion, it just refused to turn back on.

If you look at the driver picture, the top plastic thing on the inductor looks eaten-away a little... well... I can't be sure of it, but i think that's my fault.. when I was drilling a hole in the outer pill cover and the drill bit broke through, i think that's where it landed. :shrug:

 

[sylviocc]

I lose 2 drivers, and contact DX, they send me more 2 drivers for replacement.


Sorry for my bad english.

 

[Lighthouse one]

I got an Nkoray 106 and it lasted 1 day until the driver burnt out. I replaced it with the 750ma 2 (7135) driver that dx sells. I simply ground down the lip of the pill that the old driver sat in, and glued this driver onto the pill. Grind about half of the lip away. DX only sells these 10 at a time. Kai sells 5. The light is excellent with this driver...just a bit less bright, but super reliable.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.3146

Actually, any 16 or 17mm driver will work.