My First Mag 3D SSC P7 Mod

[old4570]

Or Mad Mod as I like to call it ..

Some pictures first .



Some cutting needed to be done ...



Some wiring needed doing ..



Potting : :sick2:



Plastic ring around the driver to hold the 5 minute Epoxy



Potting Mad Driver



Ready for trimming and then some soldering ...



Ready for the LED and heatsink assembly


Another angle ...

What I left out of the Mad Mag Mod : Spring Loaded Reflector , so you can focus the beam and hold the heatsink in place

Ok , driver is KD driver [ ill get the link ] potted in 5 minute epoxy ..

It seems to be a straight 3 mode driver / Hi - Med - Lo

On Hi = 1.43A / Med = 0.44A / Lo = 0.17A
Voltage to driver is about 12.6 to 13v so measured at the tail 18Watts + on Hi ...

I potted the driver since many a KD super driver has gone up in flames , and I hope that is enough to let it survive ...
This thing seems to really pump ..
I need to go and buy some more AA's so I have 9 matching cells , ATM I only have 8 at best , so 1 is a mismatch .
I will take some beamshots tonight ..

 

[old4570]

Its dark outside !


1st Pic = Lo



2nd Pic = Med



3rd Pic = Hi

 

[jar3ds]

:thumbsup:

 

[old4570]

Hmmmm, pictures dont show it well ..
1st one is MTE SSC P7 driven close to full power .
2nd one is mag mod ..

I picked a bad spot to high light throw ... But the mag throws all the way to the trees , and has a nice hot spot .. The ground is too lumpy and the camera too low to the ground ...

 

[wquiles]

Very nice mod - well done

 

[Justin Case]

You used regular epoxy to pot a driver with a reputation for running excessively hot? All that will do is to help keep the heat in. You need to use a thermally conductive epoxy and also put the potted driver in thermal contact with a heat sink. Preferably, the driver is sinked to the Mag tube, not the LED heat sink.

The driver performance looks bad. As a back of the envelope estimate, a drive current of 2.8A, P7 Vf of 3.5V, and Vbatt of 12-13V should result in a much lower Ibatt than 1.43A. The driver efficiency must be very poor, calculated to be less than 60%. No wonder the board runs hot. Instead of pulling say 12W to deliver 10W to the P7, it is pulling about 18W, meaning about 8W as waste heat.

 

[rizky_p]

Nice, i sputtered that reflector if i were you

does potting the driver with epoxy actually helps?

 

[old4570]

Nice, i sputtered that reflector if i were you

does potting the driver with epoxy actually helps?

??????????? Depends on who you ask .. Its all I had ..
Some people use hot glue [ AKA hot glue gun ]

I look at it like this , More mass ... If it dies , ill let you know .. I do know that several have died from being used as is ..
So Im prepared to try something a little radical .

 

[Aircraft800]

I noticed that driver you used has changed from the one you linked in post one. (underside of board is different in the pictures) I wonder if KD finally redesigned it to better address the heat/thermal shut down issue? The original ones were junk, and would overheat in less than 2 min. running on high.

 

[StefanFS]

Looks good!
Nice potting. Your revision of the driver seem to be OK.

 

[tx101]

Im interested in how the driver holds up after continuous use ?

Let us know please

 

[csadzuki]

Im interested in how the driver holds up after continuous use ?

Let us know please

I'd also be very interested in this. I just built a M*g 6D - SSC P7 - KD driver (prod. id: 9534, looks the same as yours) setup. It ran fine for 1 minute (except for the high pitched whining sound), but after that it's just dead. :shakehead

Any recommendations for other cheap drivers for 6D alkaline cells? (assuming that I can remove the AA'd dead driver from the heatsink...)

 

[old4570]

Still working , on medium there is a whine , but who cares ..
Still not dead , I use it a little every day ..


Memorry is great , so I have it starting on low . So far I have run it on high for up to 2 minutes with no problems .

The battery carriers are rated to 1A and its drawing 1.5A , and If I remember correctly they can melt around 2A if run for too long .

In anyway , I use it on low and medium 95% of the time , and if I remember correctly , medium is close to 290Lumen and low is around 100lumen .

 

[Tim Carleton]

Here's an idea on your loose heatsink, you can use one of those spring loaded center punches to make several indentions around the outside of the sink, and the raised edges of the indentions will tighten the heatsink up in the body. I guess you could use a nail too, but that's what I used to use before I got my lathe and now run a knurler over a slightly undersized heatsink. Good luck!

 

[old4570]

OK I said I would let you know when the driver died , well its not dead but its giving problems , looks like this driver is a dead loss .

http://www.kaidomain.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductId=1866

I think the verdict is in , junk !

 

[Aircraft800]

Don't feel bad, it didn't cost much. You are not the only one that had one fail. Thanks for the update!