Luxeon III @ 1.5A?

After reading Mr. Bulk's 11,000 lux Mag/LIII mod, I decided to try one myself.

Direct Driving the LIII with 3 D's gave Mr. Bulk about 1.4xA. Lumileds specs the LIII up to 1000mA.

Is running the LIII at 1.4-1.5A (whatever 3D's can muster) going to significantly shorten the life of the LED down to a point where it's going to blow after a little runtime?

I'll be running this in a Hotlips, DD, and won't be running it for more than a minute at a time or so, more of a fun light than a work light...

Sorry, I just don't have a good understanding of what overdriving is, versus overdriving-to-the-point-of-destruction /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

running it that hard you get to the point where your're wasting power and not getting much light back out. But your're using D's so who cares? You only gotta watch out for thermal run away. If it gets too hot then it's resistance goes down allowing it to suck more power and then pretty soon it dims and dies. If your're using the hotlips that's about the best heat management you can do, plus you said you'd only be using it intermitantly. So I'd say your good to go. Hopefully my rambling wasn't useless...
It won't be driven that hard the intire life of the batts either. As they become less new it will drive it at more "normal" levels.

kinzli,
I have a couple of M@g mods that I'm running DD into a Q3J and haven't had any problems. The key is heat management. Make sure that you have good heatsinking and you'll be fine.

Overdriving is driving a luxeon beyond spec. For the 1W, spec is 350mA. The 3W is spec'd at 700mA and 1A.

I removed the resistor in my Blaster III to make it a 1 Watt flashlight running direct drive on 3 D Energizer². I don't have a meter capable of reading more then 200 milliamps so i really have no idea how much current it's feeding the 1 watt. I'll be using wayne's method with the 0.1 ohm resister to measure the current with my meter as soon as i can get the resistor. But i imagine 3D's would be feeding about 1 amp as you guy's have mentioned. As for my Blaster i've been using it on and off regularly and it's been running perfectly fine, it get's only a little warm but not hot. I have seen an improvement in light output but nothing huge, i should see much more noticeable output once i get my 3 watt star in from Wayne. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

DaMeatMan,
Depending on what luxeon you have in there right now, I wouldn't expect too much of an improvement, if any, with the 3W.

If you have a good Q3J or R2 in your light right now, you may not SEE any difference at all. I just replaced a Q3J with a SX1K 3W in a modded KL1 that I had, just to see if it would make a difference; and I couldn't tell.

Has anyone tried to see if a 3D Alk DD config can hold up three, 3 - watters in parallel?
I've had great success with 3D DD into single 1 watters with good runtime. (Many hours of usefull light)

But, I wonder how much current the D cells could muster driving three, 3 watters. I plan to try it soon.
If the Alks can't hold up then I would go to a 4D config and use 1.2vNimh's and balence with resistance if need be.

Hey guys, I just now did it although I am sure everyone's own MMV. Yet on the two or three I have done so far, using Just the light meter to measure actual output results, the III's are indeed doing their own name proud.

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Chop said:
DaMeatMan,
Depending on what luxeon you have in there right now, I wouldn't expect too much of an improvement, if any, with the 3W.

If you have a good Q3J or R2 in your light right now, you may not SEE any difference at all. I just replaced a Q3J with a SX1K 3W in a modded KL1 that I had, just to see if it would make a difference; and I couldn't tell.

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I just got my 3 watter in today and it was binned as a SVOL, so i anxiously removed the Q2J 1 watt i had in my blaster III and replaced it with the 3 watt. After testing i did notice it was somewhat brighter, but it was hard to tell just by looking. I'm sure if i had a meter to test with it would show higher numbers then the 1 watt, but to the unaided eye it seems only slightly brighter. One thing though that was greatly improved was the colour, the 3 watt was much whiter then the 1 watt i had in there which was somewhat greenish. All in all i'm happy with my purchase, i can at least feel relieved that the 3 watter was built to take the higher loads i am feeding it while running it DD with 3D's. Right now i'm just waiting anxiously for my hotlips and TWAK emitter to arive so that i can mod my 3D mag! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

DaMeatMan,
The results that you are seeing is about right on. I don't have anymore Q2J's, but do have Q3J's and the S binned 3W's I've gotten were very close to the Q3J's in color.

I'm not saying that the 3W's aren't nice. The one's I've seen are. I just don't think that they are as drastic an improvement in brightness as we had hoped.