Fried my first driver and need to know what I did wrong

[Mattaus]

Hi all,

I recently got into this flash light ‘game’ and am planning a build of a flood light. As a test I bought a cheap driver + LED + lens combo off eBay for $10. I figured this was a good way to go about things before I touched the more expensive gear I bought for the flood light itself.

The combo is here: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230602444370&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_3365wt_907


I soldered the driver to the LED, but left the lens off the first time. I attempted to solder some wires to the back of the driver but the solder wouldn’t grip. Do I need to sand the pads a little or something before hand?

Anyway, I got some alligator leads out and a 6V M908 Lantern Battery from a Dolphin work light (big bugger – the driver takes 3-9V so I thought this would be fine). I managed to connect the leads up correctly and the LED lit up nicely for a few seconds until I lost my grip and in turn the connection to the driver.

I attached the lens and the light lit up a second time but after about 3 seconds I heard a quick buzz, a small puff of smoke and the whole lot went dead. L

A close inspection revealed that a diode (I think) labelled as B1 burnt out (possibly R1, the burn marks were right across the middle)

Pretending for a moment that the driver was not just a dodgy cheap piece of cr*p, what could I possibly have done to cause this? I don’t really care about fixing the driver, though I might if I can identify the part correctly. Crossed leads? Too much power from the battery? Or just likely a crappy driver? I guess it wouldn’t have reverse polarity protection being so cheap…

As alluded to earlier I’m very new to this so I have no idea what I could have done wrong, but in order to learn from my mistakes I need to know what I did!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

- Matt.

 

[mvyrmnd]

I've done that before as well. Destroyed a nice light in the process :( If you power up the driver without a load (the LED) it will fry.

Better you learn these lessons with a $10 set from eBay rather than a $100+ light :)

 

[Mattaus]

Well the LED was connected...but good to point that out anyway because I'm the kind of guy who will do something stupid like that! All I can assume is that I crossed the battery leads. (+ve from the battery to -ve on the driver and vice versa).

Any word on how I can solder leads to the pads on the back of these little drivers? The flood light I'm building won't be using springs and what-not that's for sure.

Then again I have a driver I can experiment on now lol!

 

[mvyrmnd]

If it won't stick, you'll need some flux.

 

[Norm]

Moved to Flashlight-Electronics-Batteries-Included
Norm

 

[Mattaus]

If it won't stick, you'll need some flux.

True. Didn't even think of that. I just sanded the contacts ever so slightly with some wet and dry and the solder stuck well. Might go with that in the future.