1400mA driver

[xwingband]

factory said 4.5v max, but I know people who have overdriven it. YMMV and whatnot.

Ah well. My favorite battery is still the 18650. There's a reason I bought a case of them (144 batteries... all going to good homes... and I may still need more...)

The spec sheet linked at the bottom of my initial link says 2.7-6V... although the absolute max is 7V.

[Dregan]

I was just quoting what the factory rep told me. Like I said, I know people who have hot-rodded this chip, so obviously it can be done.

My first batch of the 1050's should be in next week. Afther these, I'm switching to buying from Kyle @ DX.com - he's cheaper, and I prefer dealing with him beacuse I've worked with him before, and he's good people. I paid around $3 each for my current batch because I did not buy in the bulk that a full retailer (like DX.com, who buys rolls of 20-chip sheets) does. Live and learn.

Anyway, where I was going with that, at $3 a pop, I'm willing to fry a few to see exactly what this will take. I don't have any of the 1400's (I bought the 1500's that DX doesn't have yet) so I can't test them, but maybe someone else will. When I get a solid result, I'll post here.

[neophyl]

Well my 10x 1400ma drivers arrived from DX along with the 800ma ones I ordered earlier so I decided to do a bit of testing.

Im currently putting together a pair of Assaj Ventress sabres so I decided to use the red leds/heatsinks Id built for those as they were sat there conveniently.

First of all I set the bench supply to 5v (i was planning on using 4xaa nimh so 5v simulates this pretty well).

I selected one at random and wired it all up to the led and psu. Powered it up and it was only drawing 350ma. Huh!!. Thats not right I thought. Checked the board and of the 4 IC's, 2 had one of thier pins not connected. Checked all the other boards and all 10 were the same. The 4xic's on the board are electrically wired in parallel so they should ALL have the pins connected.

It looks like the tracks are deliberately designed that way for the 700ma versions with the tiny gap supposed to be bridged with solder to put the extra 2 in circuit. So I bridged them out and powered it up again.

This time it was drawing 700ma. Still only half of the rated value so I did some more checking on the board. It turns out that 1 of the 2 diodes is defective. This means only 2 of the IC's are actually getting power. This corresponds to the 350ma i first got as it meant only 1 IC was properly connected and only 2 after I had bridged the extras in.

So I tested the diodes on the other 9 boards and they all checked out as ok. I wired up a second board after id bridged all the ic's. Results were much better this time. With all the IC's connected and both the diodes working this time it was 1347ma, close enough to the 1400ma for me to be happy.

Only problem is it gets hot real quick. Theres no heatsinking on the driver and doing so will be difficult due to the way its designed. I dropped the voltage down to 4v to simulate a 3xaa rechargeable pack instead as this will still run the red led and while it gets hot it doesnt as quickly.

When the board gets too warm it causes the led to flicker like a very fast strobe. That might look cool in a sabre but it means the electronics are in danger. This seems to happen more when run above 4.5v. I know its heat related as it gets faster as it gets hotter and gently blowing on the board to cool it slows/stops it lol.

I'll have to do some testing on the other colours to see what they run like with their higher forward voltages.

For those that arent used to soldering, wiring these up is going to be tricky as the led negative wire is close to other components so you have to be careful. The positives of the led and battery wire to the middle of the reverse of the pcb and the neagtive battery goes to the ring on the reverse so the other wires are easy to do.

For their price they arent that bad but quality control is something that needs to be improved.

Tim id double check all of these and possibly add wires on yourself before selling them otherwise you are going to get some unhappy customers I think.

Oh, the 800ma ones I bought, I tested 1 and it was only driving at around 210ma. Tested a second and it was driving at 797ma.

[Dregan]

That's a whole lot of useful info right there...

On another note, I will verify that these go Plop-plop Fizz-fizz when given 7.2v.

Works great with a single 18650, but then, 95% of these that I've ordered are the 350 mAh variety for white LED's. The higher amp versions are probably different.

I agree about the heat once you get into 4.5+v, I'm looking at simple in-line heatsinks. My best so far has been a layer of thermal epoxy an a copper pipe cap, but I'm not happy with how the leads are working without creating a short. For most of what I do, 3.7v does not create too much of a heat issue, though. I'll probably have to get a few 1050's for my next RGB saber, so I'll definately work something out by then.

[Strydur]

I got these and tried them out as well. With 4 new AA's so 6v this baby overheated and started flashing the led within seconds. At 4.5v it seemed to work fine. They are sort of a pain to solder also. They would probably work great with a single li-ion setup. Because of the technical aspect I dont think I will offer these on the store. If any of you want to try one out just drop a note on your next order and I will toss one in the box as long as I still have some.

[Corbin_Das]

Hi all
Tim sent me one of these to play around with too. I was thinking about having it in a single Li-Ion mini saber with a red blade. We'll see.

Corbin

P.S. Does anyone have a link to a PDF manual for these? I can only find ones for a more block like looking piece. Thanks