Re: hmmwv\'s P60 replacement
As for the parts availability - 18004newark -
www.newark.com -they sell in qty 1-1000 and dont charge a massive penalty for qty 1.
The chopper selection is a difficult one - most are designed for draining a 1.6V AA alkaline down to 0.8V over the period of a month running a pager. Some pagers are 3.3V, some are 5V, some have transmitters built in so need higher current, etc - motorola's 2-way unit uses 2ea. AAA nimh cells in series instead. Combine those potential parts with the desire to run white, blue, red LEDs, and you have a large decision tree.
Brock and I want to drain dl123s in LED converted 6Ps and 9Ps - so the input voltage will be 6 or 9 V instead of 1.6 or 2.4 - this is way outside the maximum input for the choppers. The next idea is a PWM regulator ic from maxim that would give us a nice stable 4.5V from 6-9V in, with 95%+ efficiency (resistor would be 50-70% efficient) - and the light output would remain constant until the cells were near dead. At that point, the pwms can throttle back the drive current to extend the life even longer (like HDS does). But they'll need DL123 lithiums.
For soldering - when I was 25 I owned a top of the line weller temp. controlled station - you know - the one with the fancy readout of the temperature, etc. - I had a production line under my command and there was a 16 year old "kid" who introduced this "old fart" to the metcal
www.metcal.com - once I learned how to solder with a metcal, I came home and tossed out the weller and bought a metcal. Metcal tips go down to 1/128" and can do amazing things - it uses RF energy at 13.56 MHz to heat the joint - not AC 60 Hz like most irons. It's the ultimate soldering iron, even though it's just an ugly black box. Under a microscope, you can use a metcal to solder .005" connections, and do 2-3 per second in production work. You can also pop in another tip and solder PL-259 connectors onto coax better than a soldering-gun.
I have plenty of Ideas on how to run the electronics part - I need to chat with telephony about what LEDs to use for the 6P conversion and then bring it together. I could easily fit 40-50 SMT leds inside a P60 lamp, producing a serious amount of light, but 50 LEDs at 30 mA each is 1.5A total - right back to the xenon bulbs that come with the flashlight!
As for Ginger - she's living in alaska right now - I need to figure how to get her to move to california- even a maxabeam won't overcome that hurdle...