Parallel wiring of shining beam 2.5A driver

LEDBE
Hill

Hill

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I was wondering if anyone has tried wiring two of the 2.5A Shiningbeam drivers (sku 1217) in parallel to drive an sst-50 at 5A. I asked Bryan but he did not know.

A $6.95 each, it would be a relatively inexpensive driver solution. Plus, the driver has 3 modes (140, 1000, 2500 mA). If two are run, these values would be doubled (280, 2000, and 5000 mA) which would give a nice "low, med, high" for the sst-50. The only drawback is the max Vin is set at 6V, so it would not be possible to power with 2 series connected 3.6V cells (I was hoping for 2 x 26500). One option would be Techjunckie's homemade 2P 26650 carrier here, an FM 3P 3x17670 holder, or 4 series C/D NimH cells.
 
I actually ordered some of those this week and was thinking about trying it.
Only problem that I can see is getting the modes to match up each time you hit the switch.

I put together a 3D m@g with an sst-50, and with the 12000mAh Ni-MH in it it pulls way over 5 amps. (Angry blue within seconds:sigh:)
I ordered some 1 mode P7 drivers from DX but they haven't even shipped yet. So I might give this a try.

I can't wait to see this thing running at 5 amps because it has crazy throw using an aspherical lens with just regular D alkalines in it.
 
I would not try it that way, however I would make a slave amc and attach it accordingly. If you have two multi mode chips it will not behave how you would like it. I have not made a 5a amc myself but I have done several 3 board sandwiches(1 multi mode and 2 slave amc) for 3a.

It is hard to explain but there are several posts about amc sandwiches you can pull ideas from. If you used three 1400 ma boards you can theoretically get to 4.2a. I would think that if you added even one more board you could get to the 5a number you are trying to regulate.

I am not sure how much longevity it will have, but it should work as well as the 3a ones that many make for the P7.
 
Running two of the shining beam drivers in parallel will give you mixed results. As mentioned stacking a few 4 x AMC7135 boards together and running it with one shining beam driver works great. You have to keep your supply under 6.0 volts which is the spec of the AMC7135 chip, which are also used in the shining beam driver. The shining beam driver has 8 of them on board driven by PWM. If you keep your source to under 4.2 volts you really do not have to worry about heat with this driver. If you push it with 4 NiMH it becomes less efficient but is doable if you heatsink the driver well. Pushing this driver with 2 lithium batteries is a no no in my experience. I have stacked 3 of the 4 X AMC7135 boards together and it drives a SST-50 at a measured 4.2 amps. Initially when I tested the shining beam driver I was only getting 2.36 amps on high, which was a little disappointing. I really did not like the looks of the supplied red and black emitter wires that came attached to the driver. I replaced them with 24 gauge silver plated copper stranded wire and ran another test. I measured a constant 2.81 amps.
 
Good job, so basically you made one SB driver into a single mode "amc" style board. So theoretically you can make a 5a board with a 2 board sandwich. That is cool.

Any pictures of what your finished product looks like.
 
indeed it is only wiring, and it will be close to the other sandiwch mods - if you have the pace to feed the wires to....(imposiible in a P60 module?
 
The only reason I asked...was because I tried to remove the IC from a multi mode amc before and did not have good luck.

There is room in a custom P60 module, I am currently working on my own since the moddoo ones are so hard to get and they are constantly pushing out newer, cooler, and all around better versions as time goes on. So I figure since I can, I will mod myself and learn something. But I would like to buy one from Moddoo and EG to support their great ideas.

I am curious about how you removed the IC chip and what connections you made to make the two boards work well together. I can order a few SB boards and test on them but I rather not ruin one or more of I dont have to. And I think it would help if I had a schematic of the board and the current paths. I have heard people talk about it but I have never been able to find one, or even seen one.

I have made a ton of amc sandwiches, so I feel good/comfortable about modding the SB boards.
 
well after reading your post I did some looking around and I have some ideas on how to approach it. Since you have not done it yet and have no definitive information I will try it out after I order some boards next week and post back.

I have tried to remove the IC from other multi mode boards to make a sandwich and it did not work. I may have done it wrong...who knows. I did try it several ways.


p1010162fx5.jpg


I am pretty sure this is how you would do it, substitute the SB board for these
7135x6.jpg


th_CIMG6399.jpg
 
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Fulgeo said:
As mentioned stacking a few 4 x AMC7135 boards together and running it with one shining beam driver works great.
Click to expand...
And that would be slightly less expensive than using two of these 3 mode drivers.

Fulgeo said:
You have to keep your supply under 6.0 volts which is the spec of the AMC7135 chip, which are also used in the shining beam driver.
Click to expand...
That is indeed the spec of the chip, but did you (and others) notice the "Reverse-polarity protection prevents wrongly installed batteries from damaging the circuit" claim? That means there's a diode on the Vdd pin which will drop ~0.6 V, so the driver as a whole will actually have a 3.3-6.6 V range. :) As far as heat goes the thermal protection will likely cut in well under 6.6 V.

Is there an easy way to keep the modes but disable the memory?
 
Completely agree with what you guys are saying. I've been working on an SST-90 maglite, using 4xAMC7135 driver boards (1.4A each) as a slave sandwich, with the Shiningbeam 3-mode driver (2.8A/w 22ga wire as pointed out earlier) controlling everything. I just thought I'd post some pics for anyone who's looking for information in this thread and hasn't seen this stuff done before.

As a side note, I've removed 2 of the AMC7135 boards from the sandwich until I figure out a way to run my Batteryspace 26650 batteries in parallel to deliver the current that I'm trying to run. It seems one 26650, with this setup, will only deliver 7.4A according to my DMM. My DMM isn't the best in the world, but it's been pretty accurate so far. Anyway, after removing 2 of the AMC7135 boards, my current readings at the tailcap are 5.7A. Here are a couple of pics:






IMG_7593.jpg

IMG_7596.jpg

IMG_7601.jpg

IMG_7649copy.jpg

IMG_7666copy.jpg
 
420light said:
What is holding it in place once you assemble it? AA?
Click to expand...




I used some silicone based thermal adhesive to hold the Shiningbeam driver in place with the 4xAMC7135 sandwich, but it's probably not necessary because once the 22ga teflon coated wire is soldered and the sandwich is connected, it's stiff enough to hold it in place. I don't have anything holding the whole driver assembly to the heatsink. The 22ga wire is pretty short (coming out of the heatsink) and it's stiff, so it really can't go anywhere plus I twisted the driver assembly, while pushing it towards the heatsink.
 
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nice work on your amc stack! Its a monster.

The only thing I think is that it would be nice to be able to hit 5A with only two boards and no more. So that is why the OP was asking about paralleling two SB boards. This would benefit those of us trying to fit this in a really small package.

oh and Torch, I am pretty sure that the IC has the memory in it, and also the modes. I think the only way would be different programing? Maybe someone else knows different.
 
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So, ti-force, is it correct that the four 7135 boards are in parallel with one another and the SB board is in series with and "downstream" of the 7135 set? If this is the case, all of the current must go through the SB board, making me wonder how much current it can pass?
 
Cool stack but since 1xIMR26650 is not going to be able drive SST-90 to 9Amp even in Direct Drive,
there's really no need for a buck driver in such application.

All you need is a PWM to control modes like d2flex.
 
Mettee said:
nice work on your amc stack! Its a monster.

The only thing I think is that it would be nice to be able to hit 5A with only two boards and no more. So that is why the OP was asking about paralleling two SB boards. This would benefit those of us trying to fit this in a really small package.

oh and Torch, I am pretty sure that the IC has the memory in it, and also the modes. I think the only way would be different programing? Maybe someone else knows different.
Click to expand...


Depending on how much room you've got to work with, I have seen someone on here stack the actual 7135 chips on top of each other. I can't remember who did it, but it was pretty darn neat:thumbsup:.
 
saltytri said:
So, ti-force, is it correct that the four 7135 boards are in parallel with one another and the SB board is in series with and "downstream" of the 7135 set? If this is the case, all of the current must go through the SB board, making me wonder how much current it can pass?
Click to expand...

It's my understanding that the atmel chips on these boards don't see much current at all.

This is a better explaination than I can give:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showpost.php?p=3112794&postcount=26
 
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