new P7 driver 3amps?

[KnightRule]

I got the KD P7 Driver in March and it seem it's a new design from ones in September. There's no more thermal shutdown now. I ran it for 2 hours continuously, numerous times with no dimming in a Maglite 2c with no heatsink. It automatically shutoff when the voltage is too low (after 20 min of blinking). Although it get hot it work fine. I put a heatsink on it now though. I had an ealier version that runs on high for only 90 sec and then switch to medium (without heatsink).




It's available in 2 version: a 3 modes (high, med, low), and a 5 modes (low, med, high, strobe, sos). Both version looks exactly the same.

[kevinm]

Mind posting a link to the new version driver board?

Thanks,
Kevin

[KnightRule]

It's the same driver, just redesigned. Kaidomain didn't make a new page for the 5-mode. You don't which modes they will send you, so you might have to contact them directly and specifically state that you want the 3-modes or the 5 modes.

[Ogg Vorbis]

I ordered a driver on 9-3-09, it's now sat happily in a 2C Mag. I checked the current in series with the LED and got 2.8A. I did find the board got very hot were the wopping great transistor was... so this is my solution!





+ Arctic Alumina...

It was powering a MC-E 'till i broke it (long story) but is now feeding a DSWOI P7 and i haven't had any troubles yet...

Just thought i'd share...

Dan

[Aircraft800]

Wow Dan! That is an exceptional heatsink! Great design and clean work!

(Is that the 3 mode? If it holds up, I'll need one to replace the old one I have)

[wquiles]

Wow Dan! That is an exceptional heatsink! Great design and clean work!

(Is that the 3 mode? If it holds up, I'll need one to replace the old one I have)

+1. Really nice work

Will

[Ogg Vorbis]

Thanks guys

You may notice there are two holes and a little bit that i had to file out from the hole for the inductor, simply put i miss guessed the position of one of the LED wires

And yeah it's the 3-mode driver, works great. I know it's not the most efficient one out there, but it works on 2x18650 (what i wanted for the 2C), and fits in the 2C mag, oh and it doesn't break the bank! (quick note as well, the sample i recieved has memory and turns on at the last used level)

I though i'd run it a little while today, i left it for 10 min on high with no contact, got quite warm but seemed stable. Now i can't wait for my Eagletac M2 to arrive

Dan

[bstrickler]

Okay, I have one of these and installed it in my WF-1000L, but I have a problem

It's only single mode. It won't leave high mode (which is brighter than the original driver, which I fried, lol)
Also, it shuts off after only 30-60 seconds.

~Brian

[phantom23]

I got the KD P7 Driver in March and it seem it's a new design from ones in September. There's no more thermal shutdown now. I ran it for 2 hours continuously, numerous times with no dimming in a Maglite 2c with no heatsink.

Also, it shuts off after only 30-60 seconds.

Next change - thermal protection onboard again! And triggers even earlier...

[bstrickler]

I bought the driver ~September-November of last year, when I was gonna make a P7 mag, but ran out of money before I could, so now its in the 1000L.

I hate the thermal protection circuit, because it cuts out so soon. What they need to do is just slap a heatsink plug on the driver like Ogg's heatsink, and charge like $1-2 more, so people don't have to worry about the damn heatsinking. Or just have it as an option, for the people who don't want it, because they're using it for something else.

Ogg, any chance you'll be willing to make more of those heatsinks? Just curious.

~Brian

[xiejol]

Ogg, any chance you'll be willing to make more of those heatsinks? Just curious.

Let me 2nd that.

[bstrickler]

My need for it went out the window last week, when the driver blew. I wasn't even overdriving it! It was in my WF-1000L with 2 18650's, and the whole flashlight got hot as hell. I checked it out when I got back home, and sure as heck, several components were blown.

List of blown parts:

3 SMD Resistors(?) marked R20 (looks like they literally blew the ends out. Board is semi-charred near them. WTF happened?)
2 Small diodes
+ a few other small components starting to bubble.

Other than that, it still works, but only for like 5 minutes before the thermal protection kicks in (idk if the LED is being DD with 8.4 volts or not, since I decided to rip the driver out. LED was happy at w/e power it was getting, though)

I would steer away from the 3-mode KD 5-15 volt driver. At $12, I would expect better quality.

I'm going to replace the driver with ShiningBeams 17mm 8x7135 3-mode driver. The flashlight doesn't heat up at all when ghetto-rigging the flashlight to run off my Mag (3 Alkaline D's hooked to driver, and the driver hooked to the head and body of the WF-1000L. Hey, it works, though it's not pretty)

~Brian

[Ogg Vorbis]

Sorry, not much chance of making any more heatsinks... as with most of the stuff i do it's a one off. Would love to be able to make more but i've change departments making it even harder to get on a machine

But on a positive note my driver's still going strong

Dan

[dyannantuonojr]

I ordered a driver on 9-3-09, it's now sat happily in a 2C Mag. I checked the current in series with the LED and got 2.8A. I did find the board got very hot were the wopping great transistor was... so this is my solution!





+ Arctic Alumina...

It was powering a MC-E 'till i broke it (long story) but is now feeding a DSWOI P7 and i haven't had any troubles yet...

Just thought i'd share...

Dan

My name is Daniel
I am new to the flash light modding genre and I have a question. Where do I solder my negative wire to the driver you have pictured above? Have you ever tried using 3 p7's in one flashlight using elliptical optics?
Thanks for your expertise.

[gav6280]

Has anyone figured out yet exactly which components are kicking out all the heat in the latest batch?

[SmurfTacular]

Is there a way to remove the Med and Lo functions?
Or am I forced to cycle through each time I turn it on?

[rufusbduck]

Has anyone figured out yet exactly which components are kicking out all the heat in the latest batch?

I've found that a good way to sink these boards is to pot them in heatsink paste (the setting kind) from either dx or kd and them make a sandwich of copper sheet that fits into a piece of copper pipe ~ 1/2" long then AA the slug to the flashlight body. I use these to drive 3 q5's in parallel(I know this is supposed to be a bad idea but it's been working for over a year now) in old vistalite bike light heads with additional copper added to the outside and copper nails drilled through and soldered as vias to aid in heat transfer. The lights never dim while riding and only heat up when I stop which is when I dim the light anyway. The stock switch in the lamp head works both as a momentary (normally closed) switch to change modes and full click to power on/off. I have the newer ones which do have memory. The power fet and the inductor on one side and the two ic's on the other should all be AAed to the heatsink. If you remove the positive contact you can solder a new vin+ to the other side and have all your wires on one side. This helps immensely for my purposes. If you have just a little more room, Georges Maxflex driver from Taskled works GREAT at pushing 4 epg r5's at 1.3 A and is about the size of a quarter. If you ran your mce/p7 2s2p it would be only slightly underdriven and mulltiple leds would be even more efficient.

[TorchBoy]

The lights never dim while riding and only heat up when I stop which is when I dim the light anyway.

I just had the possibly crazy idea of using one of those fan-powered LED lights to control the dimming of a bike light. I wonder if that would work...

[rufusbduck]

Does anyone know what the difference is between the 8566 kd driver and the 5296 kd driver besides $2.00? They seem to use the same info page.
Thanks

[Packhorse]

Has anyone tried running 3 (XML's) LED's in series off a 12v NuMh pack yet?

I have had very good results running a 7.4v load from one but the 10vf off 3 XMLs??????

[djipe]

Hy !

2 years ago, I baught this driver (3 Amps for MCE) from KD :


Since 2 years, I supply it with 2 18650 (7,2 V)
And Now, I'm interested to supply it with 3 18650 (10,8 V). The specifications are not any more available on KD website

Do anybody know the max voltage that we can supply this driver ?

In advance thanks

[jpou]

are there any parts on back side? It might be risky to drive it with 10,8V because electrolytic 100uF cap is rated for 10V.

[djipe]

Yes, theire is small componants (CMS) back side.

My driver seems to be the same than one of theses :
http://kaidomain.com/product/details.S007542
http://kaidomain.com/product/details.S006130

So, I will try... And if it burn... I will know...
Next buy, I'd better save basics specifications