wquiles
Flashaholic
Back in 2008/2009, Eric, myself, and many forum collaborators tested "many" incandescent bulbs while developing the PhD-M6. At the time, we settled on the battery technology we had back then, namely the protected 17670 LiOn cells. Nearly all of the experiments and the fine-tuning of the soft-start, and set voltages were set based on those cells.
I recently sold my personal black edition PhD-M6 to another forum member and upon receiving it, and trying it with new cells, he had an insta-flash with an old/used MN-20. I had (many times) tested that M6, MN20, and 17670 cells until I was sure it was working great, so of course I was disappointed to hear about the insta-flash.
Upon asking a few questions, I learned he was using very-low resistance, high-amperage 16650 batteries, which were not the protected 17670 cells we/I used during development & testing. Although all of my PhD-M6 programming setup is long gone, I still have my true-RMS (AC+DC) Fluke and my old but still trusty Tek scope.
In order for me to know/learn what might be happening, and to help him out on what cells to try different (if any), I purchased 3 different sets of 16650 protected cells, plus a set of non-protected 17670 cells. Based on the testing I have done today:
- Only the protected 16650 cells behave along the original cells the PhD-M6 was developed around
- The high-amperage 16650 cells behave like the unprotected cells - both subjecting the bulb to a higher voltage, and sooner, thus making it more "likely" to insta-flash.
Here is my basic setup and batteries to try out (not in picture are the UltraFire unprotected cells):
KeepPower 16650 2100mAh protected cells:
Soft-start in action:
Orbtronic 16650 protected cells:
Soft-start:
I recently sold my personal black edition PhD-M6 to another forum member and upon receiving it, and trying it with new cells, he had an insta-flash with an old/used MN-20. I had (many times) tested that M6, MN20, and 17670 cells until I was sure it was working great, so of course I was disappointed to hear about the insta-flash.
Upon asking a few questions, I learned he was using very-low resistance, high-amperage 16650 batteries, which were not the protected 17670 cells we/I used during development & testing. Although all of my PhD-M6 programming setup is long gone, I still have my true-RMS (AC+DC) Fluke and my old but still trusty Tek scope.
In order for me to know/learn what might be happening, and to help him out on what cells to try different (if any), I purchased 3 different sets of 16650 protected cells, plus a set of non-protected 17670 cells. Based on the testing I have done today:
- Only the protected 16650 cells behave along the original cells the PhD-M6 was developed around
- The high-amperage 16650 cells behave like the unprotected cells - both subjecting the bulb to a higher voltage, and sooner, thus making it more "likely" to insta-flash.
Here is my basic setup and batteries to try out (not in picture are the UltraFire unprotected cells):
KeepPower 16650 2100mAh protected cells:
Soft-start in action:
Orbtronic 16650 protected cells:
Soft-start:
