TRI luxeon 3 watt

I want to wire up three luxeons together in a mag light. My question is what is the differnece between wiring the LEDs in parrell or series? Which is better.

p.s. what kind of voltage and amps will i need to power them up.

Thanks!

I built a tri lux I light in a 3D host. At first, I wired them in series because the instructions I was going on showed it that way but on the 3 D cells, nothing happened. Then I wired them in parallel.

BINGO!

Everything works... Huge hotspot! Very impressive throw considering the Lux I stars and only 20mm reflectors. It pulls 1.12A on fresh cells which is about perfect for Lux Is... not sure if it would pull more current for the Lux IIIs but I can't imagine battery life on alkaline cells would be very impressive if it did manage to pull 2.1+ amps.

Hopefully someone more knowledgable than myself will chime in.

I did one sometime back as one of my first mods. 3 TX1L stars in series run by 3 RCR123 in a 2C mag. IIRC current is in the neighbourhood of 700mA. Reason for series - should the current run too high, only one led will blow. But with the max allowable current at 1.5A, i don't think that will happen.

Another reason for series is you only need to solder 4 strips of wire as opposed to wiring them in parallel which requires 6 strips. There is also the problem of arranging the wires neatly within the m@g head. I deformed 2 leds' domes after the soldering iron got too close for comfort when attempting the parallel arrangement.

However, the runtime is only about and hour for the 2C mag setup. If you are looking for better runtime, cratz2's solution is definitely better.

Have fun choosing!

NotEnoughLight said:

I did one sometime back as one of my first mods. 3 TX1L stars in series run by 3 RCR123 in a 2C mag. IIRC current is in the neighbourhood of 700mA.

Click to expand...

Ooooh... that sounds like a very decent choice! I was going to build a quad Lux I in a 2C, but wasn't sure on power options. I think I might just do this instead!

But is the 700 the total current pull or the current to each LED? If each star is only seeing 230ma... is the output very impressive? If not, I'd probably just stick with Lux Is in the 2C. I'm very happy with the output of my 3D tri Lux I, but it pulls 1.1A from the cells.

The 700 mA is thru each led. also, in series, they are subjected to the same current. better for all of them too.