Legend AA / LS / Zetex Circuit

 
 
 
         

This mod is provided by Jack P.

Here are some pictures of my latest mod. The first picture shows the Zetex circuit and LS next to it. You can just make out the positive contact sitting on top of the inductor. I have it running at about 400-450 mA, I'm not really sure though, I just kept increasing the current until the brightness started to level off. That usually happens around 400 mA or so.

The second picture is the completed flashlight with the head off. The wires are seen coming through the circuitboard right next to the LED.

 

All the other pictures are pretty self explanantory.

I've made some improvements to this mod, but don't have any of the latest pictures yet. The circuit has been potted in thermal epoxy to protect it, and the LS was glued to the body also with thermally conductive epoxy to help with the heat transfer. I don't know the runtime yet, I haven't gone through a set of batteries, but I do know the circuit will still work with less than 1.5 V input, and probably even less than that. I was able to power it with an old AA battery that barely lit up my mini-mag.

The last shot is a beam shot of the darkest place I could find right now, which happened to be under my desk from about a foot away. The green spot next to it is my ARC-AAA turquoise.

Many thanks to Jack P. for sharing this project with FlashlightReviews.com and its visitors!

Just a quick update on the Legend/Zetex mod I sent to you a while ago. I did some runtime test with this circuit, and have a graph for it.

I measured the total light output from the head of the flashlight using an integrating sphere. The x-axis on the graph corresponds to 1/2 minute intervals, so the runtime was approximately 110 minutes or so. This is about what I expected of the circuit running at 400 mA and two 1600 mAH Nimh batteries. The circuit does a pretty good job of regulating the light output of the flashlight, the change from high output to low output happened in only few minutes. Also, the efficiency of the collimating optics is >85%. I am going to compare this to an unmodified Legend AA to see how the runtimes and output are.

 

 
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