Hello everyone,
Since this is my first post here let me give a short introduction on myself: I am Floris Beerens and I live in the Netherlands. Since I was young I've always had some kind of urge to tear apart most of the appliances in house to find out how they work, and somtimes I actually fixed something
(sometimes broke stuff too.... 
) That's probably the reason that I'm here now, I took apart my 3D-cell incan maglite and figured, If it is this big of a flashlight I might as well give it some real oomph, since the stock output was a bit less than you would expect from the size/weight of the thing. I started looking into LED dropins and figured out I may as well go with something really bright the first time and ended up with the 5x Cree R2 dropin from DX. The reason I chose this dropin was the fact that it was a complete unit with driver that should fit easily. It did fit, but not very neat and I ended up making some shaving on the maglite body to make the maglite screw back together without gaps.
The output straight out of the box on 3 D-type alkaline cells was somehow disappointing however. It tried powering it with a 9V block type battery and it was alot brighter already, 2 of them in parallel and even a little more bright. This got me thinking, if I'd put 6 AA cells in series that would also be 9Volts. I made up an adapter to hold 12 AA cells (6 in series times 2 parallel) and voila! bright. however the runtime of the AA cells is a little under an hour (not sure if all the AA's were fresh) and is disappoiting.
To come to my questions:
- I've read that alkalines aren't good for high current applications. should I expect vastly improved runtimes with NiMH batery's or just slightly better (I have got no experience with lithium, and would prefer to avoid since I'm not the only one using the torch and I want to keep it foolproof so from what I read here I'd better not go unexprienced into the Lithium adventure)
- To drop-in module has a boost driver, so should work on 4,5 V as good as on 9 V. Why didn't it light up as bright as it should on the 3 D-alkalines? should it be better on 3 D-NiMH's? and as bright as on the 6 AA-cell Alkalines?
My gut tells me I should just buy the NiMH D-cells and try it, there not that expensive but I don't want to end up with something that doesn't help for this problem.
So please, feel free to reply!
Regards,
Floris Beerens
Since this is my first post here let me give a short introduction on myself: I am Floris Beerens and I live in the Netherlands. Since I was young I've always had some kind of urge to tear apart most of the appliances in house to find out how they work, and somtimes I actually fixed something
(sometimes broke stuff too.... ) That's probably the reason that I'm here now, I took apart my 3D-cell incan maglite and figured, If it is this big of a flashlight I might as well give it some real oomph, since the stock output was a bit less than you would expect from the size/weight of the thing. I started looking into LED dropins and figured out I may as well go with something really bright the first time and ended up with the 5x Cree R2 dropin from DX. The reason I chose this dropin was the fact that it was a complete unit with driver that should fit easily. It did fit, but not very neat and I ended up making some shaving on the maglite body to make the maglite screw back together without gaps.The output straight out of the box on 3 D-type alkaline cells was somehow disappointing however. It tried powering it with a 9V block type battery and it was alot brighter already, 2 of them in parallel and even a little more bright. This got me thinking, if I'd put 6 AA cells in series that would also be 9Volts. I made up an adapter to hold 12 AA cells (6 in series times 2 parallel) and voila! bright. however the runtime of the AA cells is a little under an hour (not sure if all the AA's were fresh) and is disappoiting.
To come to my questions:
- I've read that alkalines aren't good for high current applications. should I expect vastly improved runtimes with NiMH batery's or just slightly better (I have got no experience with lithium, and would prefer to avoid since I'm not the only one using the torch and I want to keep it foolproof so from what I read here I'd better not go unexprienced into the Lithium adventure)
- To drop-in module has a boost driver, so should work on 4,5 V as good as on 9 V. Why didn't it light up as bright as it should on the 3 D-alkalines? should it be better on 3 D-NiMH's? and as bright as on the 6 AA-cell Alkalines?
My gut tells me I should just buy the NiMH D-cells and try it, there not that expensive but I don't want to end up with something that doesn't help for this problem.
So please, feel free to reply!
Regards,
Floris Beerens
