Do I need to sink the driver?

Hey I am going to build tonight my first 3D Mag. Using SB's 2.8A driver, XM-L and H22A heatsink. Going to run on 3D cells/4C cells

Am I going to need to heatsink the driver to the LED's heatsink? If so then whats the best way? Can someone post a picture of the easiest/most effective way?


Thanks I really appreciate it!

I assume you are going to be running Nimh cells? If so you won't need to heatsink the driver when running on 3 cells. Four cells is unnecessary for a XM-L. If you did run 4 cells then yes you would need to heatsink the driver.

If you are running on alkalines then you would need to run 4C cells, 3 D alkalines would sag too much under load. Alkalines wont be able to supply much more than 1 amp for a reasonable amount of time. For a alkaline setup you can probably get away without heatsinking the driver.

You can use thermal glue/epoxy to heatsink the driver (if necessary). I used Fujik (found on DX), details can be found in my build thread.

Okay thanks.

Did you use the thermal right on the driver or did you attach something else to it? ( I am worried about shorting it out with putting something else on the driver to mount it to the sink)

Products like Fujik or Arctic Alumina are electrically non-conductive, so you can apply it directly to the driver. This is actually the prefered way to do it in combination with H22A's bare heatsinks as this will prevent the driver from shorting out on the heatsink. Take a closer look at the pics in my build thread (clickable thumbnails) as they are pretty self-explanatory.

I made this to work with a amc7135 board in a 1D mag heat sink. I simply fujik glued the 1/4 round in the inside of the heat sink. Then glued the driver to the flat of the 1/4 round.

Thats not holes in the bottom of the 1/4 round thats just the reflection.