Mr board current

[Hasid Lafre]

Oh yeah I forgot you were still using the rechargables.

[gundamaniac]

?? i'm not quite following. Is a potential 3.6v set-up no good or what?

[Hasid Lafre]

No its good. ya just wont get as much potential out of it.

[vortextwist]

well it seem I could see a bit of a diff from 3.6v to 4.8v. I wouldn't go much more then 5v. The mr board can't handle much more then that.

[gundamaniac]

K, I just tried a jumper in place of one of the AAA batteries. At 3.6 volts vs 4.8 volts, the brightness doesn't seem to be affected that much; I could hardly tell the difference. And so I'm going to make my own 3-AA nimh battery packs this weekend for my saber. Hopefully AA 2200mah batteries will offer at least a 50% improvement in duration over the AAA 1000mah batteries...

I'll be happy with even an hour of runtime...but the 40 mins I have currently? That's ridiculous.

And if the runtime doesn't improve that much, then at least I'll have rid myself of having to change out 4 cells one at a time...I'll just snap out one pack and snap in another pack. That'll take most of the pain out of battery-replacement in the middle of an event.

[neophyl]

My dooku sabre uses a MR maul board for the sound and a seperate konlux driver for the led that puts 1amp through it. I have 4x 2500mah Nimh batteries powering it (4.8v nominal more like 5.6 when charged) and I get 2-1/2+ hours run time out of it.

The MR board is not efficient when it comes to driving luxeons. You will get a better brighter output with longer runtimes for the investment in a proper luxeon driver.

[gundamaniac]

How did you wire up the driver? between the LED and the MR board, or did you run the driver and LED separately from the MR...if that's possible. I'm so lost right now...

[Hasid Lafre]

This is for using a corbin driver with a recharge port. same basic idea just ignore the recharge port.

You need a dpdt switch thou.

[gundamaniac]

Ok...so I don't have the space for Corbin's board after all =(.

Last night I changed my setup from a green LuxIII to a green K2...but the K2 looks to be about as bright as the LuxIII. Is there a reason for this, like the MR board limiting the current flowing to the LED or something? I'll reiterate my setup- 4 AAA NiMH batteries rated at 1000mAh, Anakin RotS MR board, and a green K2 (used to be a LuxIII).

I have yet to run operating-time tests....so I don't know how long the batts will last with the K2 versus the LuxIII. But the brightness is currently the top issue for me.

[neophyl]

Ive found the MR boards output current to be quite variable. Some are better than others. With a normal MR blade this doesnt really matter as each led is individually limited and powered fairly low. It does however make a big difference when using our favourite leds.

If you cant fit one of Corbins drivers in then use a Konlux. They are tiny, less than an inch wide, about a third the size of the MR board. You wont have the ramp up/down of Corbins but you still get the brightness and run times.