AA to D's

looking for an adapter that will allow me to use 6 AA's in the space of 2 D's, yet give the voltage of 3 cells. my goal is to get max output from my malkof in my 2D mag. i believe standard 6AA adapters give the voltage of the 6 cells, yes?

typically I have seen parallel and series adapters for 6AA giving 3v or 9V but you are wanting 4.5 so you will have to have an adapter custom made for that with 2 parallel sets of 3AAs, not an easy thing to do IMO about the only way I can see is to get 2 adapters that go 3AA to D and wire them in parallel isolate the connection between the top/bottom between them and then drop them in there.

here's some ideas:

sell your 2-3 cell module, and buy a 4-6 cell module and run it on a regular 6 in series adapter.

or

load 3 1/2 D size NIMH cells into the 2D mag, those will add up to 108mm length and might work with the stock spring, or you might try to come up with a ~10-12mm dummy cell of sorts to bridge the gap.

or

Load 3 Sub-C size cells into the mag inside of a pipe of sorts to keep em from rattling around. This may require shortening the spring or seating it down in the tailcap.

Eric

Re: AA to Ds

Lynx_Arc said:

get 2 adapters that go 3AA to D and wire them in parallel isolate the connection between the top/bottom between them and then drop them in there.

Click to expand...

That's what I'd do.

thanks all. i'm going to try to make one out of some fiberglass and threaded rod i have. we'll see how it goes!

ginaz said:

thanks all. i'm going to try to make one out of some fiberglass and threaded rod i have. we'll see how it goes!

Click to expand...

IMO you may be better off to use 6AA in series and buy a buck circuit from KD or DX instead of trying to break it into two parallel 3AA circuits.

double post due to CPF going down (again)

are you saying feed the malkoff with the output from the buck circuit?

yup.... feed the circuit with the 6AAs and use the buck circuit to drive the malkoff it is is enough current to do so.. I am not familiar with a malkoff though I am just giving suggestions but there are many buck circuits that are made to drive high power LEDs.

On paper the idea of using a buck circuit to drive the boost circuit might work, but in reality, my gut tells me that there is a lot more complexity involved that needs to be taken into consideration.

If you were going to go through the trouble of installing a buck circuit into the design to run the boost circuit of the module, why not just modify the module you have by replacing the boost circuit with a buck circuit and be done with it? Running both circuits would probably eat up 20% of the power alone, but going to a buck-only circuit will improve efficiency to around 95% or so or better.

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I have a question:
is there any evidence out there to suggest that the 2-3 cell module, when running on 2 cells, is not "as bright" as 3+ cell configurations? Do we know for certain that all this work is going to produce a configuration that is brighter by enough to justify all the complexity?

I've made the mistake myself, of doing a ton of work trying to eek out some performance, only to come back to realize, again, that the eyes don't see these little differences.

Eric