can someone draw the lines on the drivers, it will help me out a alot and do i solder one of the stars ? thanks
Hi beam,
Basically what you need to know is this. The pins on the chips have to be linked one to another. If you look at the chip with the fat single pin facing down that is the ground, the smaller pins from left to right would then be Pos, ground, neg.
You need a wire going from the - leg of one of the chips on the main board to the slave, then a wire from one of the + legs on the main board to a + leg on the slave and then one for a ground. For ground you can use the outer gold rim of the boards, but I use the tail piece for a better connect.
Then once that is done just wire up the main board to the battery like normal.
If you are going to use a slave replacing the factory leads with some thicker wire is a good idea.
Also when you do that in order to keep from tearing the little + LED pad off some thing I ALWAYS do is this.
I strip the + wire a little longer and solder it directly to both the + pad as well as the top end of that chip next to it.
As for the modes and soldering stars it depends on what you want. If you have the shining beam driver the default setting is 3 mode. If you have a variant of this driver from another source its probly 5 mode by default.
If you want to change the mode group on the shiningbeam driver you will first have to unsolder the 2 legs on the controller board that are soldered together, dont detach them from the board, just get the solder out from between them.
Next take a razor knife and cut the electrical path to the board. You can see it under the green. The one you want to cut is the 3rd one. You can see its path just above it running to a hole.
Then make a solder connection from the star you want to the outer rim of the board ( I use a piece of wire)
Star 1= Low, Mid, High,Strobe, Sos. S2= Low, High, Strobe. S3= Low, Mid, High. S4= Low, High.
Here is a picture.
http://s10.photobucket.com/albums/a102/udownload/Flashlight/?action=view¤t=8x71354mode.jpg
Finally its not a must, however in most cases when using these boards with a slave/s for some reason they require heat sinking to stabilize the current. I usually make sure all the wires will lay perfectly flat so that I can stick all of the 7135 chips to a chunk of copper or aluminum.
If you are only powering the light by 1 li-ion or 3x nimh you may get by without it, but if the voltage is any higher than that you'll need it for sure, other wise at about the 1-2 min mark your current will fall like a rock.