Hi all.
I did a brief search of the forums here to find detailed info on the internals of TW batteries without success.
I'm hoping I've found an alternative use for the tiny regulator inside an expired or discarded battery...
I have a couple of regular Tornado batteries that came with my first kit & they still work ok, but I thought I'd replace them since they are pretty battered now having been dropped, scratched & generally abused.. ahem. Rather than just toss them in the bin or in a drawer in the garage, I was wondering if I could put parts of them to further good use.
Let me explain: A while ago I started a project to build a high power laser pointer for my teenage son who is a huge science fan & loves lasers. The consensus among the laser forum people is to use a couple of micro regulators in parallel to drive the insanely bright 2W laser diode I intended to use. Long story short, the regulators are very expensive (~£20 EACH + postage!! gasp!) & very awkward to get hold of. It occurred to me that the regulator in a Tornado unit (or similar) is rated for some serious power output & is of similar size. It looks like it might even be a more robust regulator capable of driving even more power?
The name of the game is compactness plus efficiency & it would appear that a T battery regulator has very efficient thermal characteristics for such a tiny package. They don't seem to even get warm in normal e-cig use compared to the alternative which definitely needs sinking. They also have the cool function of auto-off after ~10 seconds. This is a bonus with this very expensive laser diode which will cook up & burn out quickly if it's run continuously.
Do any of the electrically-minded folks here have any accurate or close approximations for max. output power/voltage characteristics. A data sheet would be awesome, but I can only hope on that.
Also... what's the biggest, most narly battery that TW sell? Is that the 1000mAh unit, or do they go bigger? lol That option would still be cheaper & come with a monster battery!
Thanking you in advance
A
