# Stanley HID 35W Torch charging overseas.



## Oztorchfreak (Aug 18, 2010)

My newly delivered Stanley HID 35W that I bought from the USA really powers into the night and has a much tighter beam than the 35W Teking HID torch that I posted about recently that has serious battery and focus problems. 

The only problem for Australian buyers or other Countries that do not have 120V AC available is that the supplied US 12V adaptor is rated at 120V AC and will not run on 240V AC. I had a mate make up a power supply to give the torch the 19V DC at 500ma that it needs to run the internal charging system. It runs perfectly well at 18V as this is what we measured when testing the output voltage from the original adaptor running on a 120V AC bench power supply. 

The charging LED turns orange and flashes whilst charging and when charged the internal charging circuit cuts the current completely from the external power supply that we made for it. The LED light then turns green. I also can charge it through the handle at the bottom via a 12V automotive battery charger. It depends on the angle that you look at this indicator LED as to what colour you are seeing between the red and orange indications. 

This multicolour LED is a bit misleading on my torch as it was not until I measured the current that I actually knew whether this torch was charging or not. It looked like it was flashing red from the top of the torch but when you view the LED from underneath it looked like it was flashing orange. It turns out that it really was flashing orange and was charging ok. Flashing red indicates the torch needs charging. A steady green means the torch is fully charged.


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## kramer5150 (Aug 19, 2010)

Arent there adapters that adapt from 220 to 110 and vise-versa?

its nice to know the stanley will charge using plain 18V. I thought I read that there is something unique about the OEM wall wart and the charging circuit would not work without it.


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## Oztorchfreak (Aug 22, 2010)

I have not tried a 240v to 110v adaptor yet only because I am not 100% sure that it will work well on our 50hz power supply in Australia. The US power grid uses a 60hz frequency. It may be fine and I will check it out eventually.


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## kiwiman3139 (Aug 23, 2010)

You need a step-down transformer from somewhere like Jaycar.
Mine was about $50 a year or two ago.
Stewart


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## Tally-ho (Aug 23, 2010)

Oztorchfreak said:


> My newly delivered Stanley HID 35W that I bought from the USA really powers into the night...


Which shop did you order it from ?


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## Oztorchfreak (Aug 23, 2010)

If Tally-ho was asking where I bought my Stanley 35W HID from, it was on Ebay at the link below. The seller was walhab1 in the US. I had trouble finding a dealer that would ship this product overseas.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Stanley-HID-/110568176973?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0

My Stanley came with no hi-lo switch installed and my model is the HID0109 not the HID3000. I really would have liked to have been told about the lack of a low output function before the item was shipped to me. I don't know why the makers dropped the low function, maybe just to save money I guess. 

It would have been nice to have the option just to be able to run the torch for a longer time as 28 minutes on hi is not a really long runtime. Most users say the difference in light output at the lo setting is stll damn good. I will personally never know for myself. Woe is me!!

Keep the hi-lo function in mind if you plan on ordering a Stanley HID from anywhere, ask before you buy if you can't live without the lo setting.

There were no problems with shipping to Australia.

And also thanks kiwiman3139, I have a Jaycar Electronics store nearby and was looking in their catalogue at the stepdown transformers recently.

Personally I would buy an Olight SR90 if I had the money, but at $600 retail in Australia it is just out of my price range. I have seen and handled the SR90 and it has a beautifully sweet beam profile, a huge throw and heaps of spill for peripheral vision. I have also seen the SR91 in action and it is pretty good if you don't need the extra throw and bulk of the SR90. Also the SR90 has to have the battery unscrewed from the torch to put the torch back in its case because of the length of the torch body. The SR91 can be stored with the battery attached.

I can dream can't I?


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## Ventrex (Sep 16, 2010)

Living in Europe, I'm having that problem too. When the package arrived earlier today and I tried it, it was very dim and shut off after half a second or so, so it needed to be charged.

I had found a universal laptop power supply which shares the same power tip and first set it to 12V as specified on the charger, but after about 7 hours of charging (and the led still blinking) it was exactly the same scenario. I then found this thread where you said the charger was 18V, so I set the PS accordingly. A couple of hours later I unplugged the charger again (which isn't a very good thing to do, I know :shakehead), shot it and unfortunately the same happened, although it was somewhat brighter and stayed on for a couple of seconds. I then hooked it to the car where I was pleased about the light output and to see it actually worked.

Then, I decided to measure the current at 18V which was only +-90mA. Rising the voltage to 22V, the current was +-180mA and one step higher to 24V (trying to get to 500mA), the current was 1.6A. So now It's charging at 22.13V which doesn't seem quite normal to me, I hope I haven't damaged the light at any of these stages as the shipping costs were about $60 and the light was $90 on eBay, not including custom costs.

On a sidenote: I've ordered a 240V/120V transformer already, as to be able to charge using the standard charger. I tried making one myself by using an old 400W 240V/80V transformer with 3 secondary wires (I don't know how this type is called in English, feel free to enlighten me ), I hooked mains power to the outer secondary wires, hoping to have 120V between the third and one of the other wires, which I had, but the transformer made a lot of noise so it didn't quite like it.

Can anyone share some thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE: The battery finally reached 12.35V and I decided to test it. It lit up and shut off after a minute or so, I measured the voltage again and got 11.9V. According to this chart, that would have been a drop from 75% to 40% capacity. Do I have a (nearly) dead battery? It needs 22.13V for 180mA and gets drained in no-time. Should I take it out and try to revive it or buy a new one?


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## Tally-ho (Sep 17, 2010)

Thank you guys for your feedbacks.





(I haven't found any HID3000 to be ship in europe yet. I need to spend more time searching for it).


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## Ventrex (Sep 17, 2010)

Isn't that series discontinued and replaced by the HID0109? Are there any differences apart from the dimmer?

EDIT: This message appeared very late, I've asked this a few posts below too, sorry.


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## Oztorchfreak (Sep 17, 2010)

The power supply I have is adjustable and when I am charging my Stanley 35W HID I have it set to an output voltage of around 19V.

The current at that voltage starts at over 400 ma and gradually falls back until the torch charging control circuit cuts the charger supply off.

You see the charger really needs to be able to supply about 300 - 400 ma to be successful it seems.

Hey, it works for me here in Australia.

This thing can sure throw and it lights up the whole length of my street.

I have not tried a 240 - 120 volt transformer yet only because the power supply a mate of mine made works great only it is bulkier than the standard charger that came with the Stanley.

I think your battery is no good.

Batteries like SLAs (sealed lead acid) have a number of cells in series to make a higher output voltage for whatever the voltage is that is required.

Lead acid batteries plates in the individual cells sulphate over time when not charged occasionally or stored for too long without any charging.

As cells sulphate the resultant coating on the cells increases the resistance and that impedes the chargers ability to drive the correct current (ma) through the battery.

My battery is pretty fresh from what I can make out.

The torch I received has not got the "Lo" mode.

These are apparently the later production runs and therefore the battery was hopefully not sitting on a shelf somewhere for too long.

My charging rate is fine for a battery of this type and capacity.

My charging LED on the Stanley torch only blinked red when I tried 12V on it.

The LED charge indicator looks ORANGE when charging is properly happening although I have to look at an angle from under the torch to really make out the orange colour.

It looks like it is flashing RED when looked at from different angles.

This was deceiving when I first started trying to charge this thing. 

I get around 25 minutes after a full charge so far.

That is plenty of time to check my street out and hopefully scare anybody away that should not be there.

I hope this helps you out.

I originally started this thread in case you did not know.


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## mattheww50 (Sep 17, 2010)

Oztorchfreak said:


> I have not tried a 240v to 110v adaptor yet only because I am not 100% sure that it will work well on our 50hz power supply in Australia. The US power grid uses a 60hz frequency. It may be fine and I will check it out eventually.



This is indeed a potential issue. Most step-up/down transformer and auto transformers are designed to operate safely anywhere from 50 to 60Hz. Many other devices are not designed to do so.

It is generally safe to run 50Hz devices on 60Hz (although output may be reduced slightly), but the converse is a lot more delicate. The inductive component of the impediance will be 16.6% lower at 50Hz, and many inductor, transformer and motor designs are highly optimized to utilize the absolute minimum amounts of expensive magnetic material in the core(s). 50hz devices required 16.6% more material than 60Hz devices.

The result is at the lower frequency, the current will usually be at least 16.6% higher. In addition the higher current may drive the material into saturation causing the current to be a lot more than 16.6% higher. This can lead to serious overheating, and catastrophic failure.

If the 'nameplate' on the power supply or wall wart says 50-60hz or 50/60hz, it is designed to operate safetly at 50Hz. If it says only 60Hz, you are taking what can be a sizeable risk.

Most laptop power supply are either auto-sense, or wide range, and can handle 120-240V, 50-60hz, and a few can even operate from 25hz-400z. Consequently used laptop power supplies that have the right voltage output, and sufficient current are almost always a safe bet to use as power supplies (and I have done so several times). Laptop power supplies can often be obtained used at very low cost relative to other power supplies of comparable output.


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## Ventrex (Sep 17, 2010)

I went to my uncle today and hooked a bench power supply to the car plug and the torch behaved just fine, but not so fine when I tried to charge it the normal way.

Knowing it had to be charging circuit I opened it and bingo! There was a blown transistor (B772) on the circuit board in the back, which shouldn't be too hard to repair. Or I should leave it and just make a custom battery charger? 14,4V with current limited to about 850mA, with an additional 7,2V option so I can use it to charge my halogen spot as well.

Picture of the circuit board. Hence the blown transistor.
http://i55.tinypic.com/a3kz2a.jpg

As the torch was disassembled, I took some measurements as well and they seem fine to me. Initially 6,3A at the battery, which decreased incrementally to 3,3A which in turn increased very slowly as the battery drained. Open terminal battery voltage was 12,4V.

By the way, are there any differences between the HID3000 and HID0109 apart from the dimmer? I also noticed it doesn't stay very long in 'turbo' mode. More like 200% initially -> 180% after one second -> ... -> 100% after 5 seconds.

Cheers


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## Oztorchfreak (Oct 2, 2010)

Ventrex said:


> I went to my uncle today and hooked a bench power supply to the car plug and the torch behaved just fine, but not so fine when I tried to charge it the normal way.
> 
> Knowing it had to be charging circuit I opened it and bingo! There was a blown transistor (B772) on the circuit board in the back, which shouldn't be too hard to repair. Or I should leave it and just make a custom battery charger? 14,4V with current limited to about 850mA, with an additional 7,2V option so I can use it to charge my halogen spot as well.
> 
> ...


 

The Stanley 35W HID overdrives the HID bulb at a higher wattage to get it started quickly and then throttles back the power after the first 5 seconds or so.

This is why this torch achieves such a good quick-start time.

Some owners wonder whether their torch is faulty because the beam gets dimmer after the initial higher startup brightness.

Owners would also prefer that the torch stayed at the higher brightness but eventually this bulb would wear out very quickly at that power level not to mention the reflector and case sustaining that level of heat.

I don't know of any differences between the 0109 or 3000 models of this torch.

My version is 0109 and has no Hi/Lo switch. :candle:


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## richardcpf (Oct 2, 2010)

I charge my stanley hid in the car. Running voltage is around 13.8v and it fully charges the battery in less than 1 hour.

With the wall charger it would take much longer, and the led doesnt seem to turn green, even after 2 days of being plugged in.


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## Oztorchfreak (Oct 3, 2010)

richardcpf said:


> I charge my stanley hid in the car. Running voltage is around 13.8v and it fully charges the battery in less than 1 hour.
> 
> With the wall charger it would take much longer, and the led doesnt seem to turn green, even after 2 days of being plugged in.


 

I have read in previous threads that the charging LED does not work at all when using the 12V auto charging lead.

I have this torch and I have never had the LED come on when running the torch from the cigarette lighter cord.

It is a bit silly that you cannot see the level of charge that the battery has reached. 

How do they expect you to know when it is charged right up?

Even though it can run for as long as the battery that it is connected to this torch has plenty of power left in it.

A normal car battery would be able to run this torch for quite a few hours using the supplied 12V auto charging cord.

It would be a good idea to start the engine once in a while to keep the car battery charged up as the Stanley HID would drain the car battery.

Even another LED could have been used for that use in the circuit.

I seem to remember something about the Stanley HID not using power through the auto cord unless there was a reasonably high voltage available from the other battery so that it would not completely drain the car battery.


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## Techjunkie (Mar 16, 2012)

Big thanks to Oztorchfreak for posting this discovery. This info just saved me the trouble of replacing the SLA battery prematurely. My charging LED never went green when charging this light with a conventional 12V wall wart DC adapter. I just assumed the battery was being charged. Tonight, the light would shut off within a few seconds of starting and wouldn't light the LEDs at all. After reading this thread, I plugged in an old IBM Thinkpad 16V supply to it and for the first time the charging light turned green and now the light works again.


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## Techjunkie (Mar 16, 2012)

Hmm... after posting this, I played with the light for a while, attempting to gauge the difference between high and low mode by letting it run on low for over 2 minutes, then switching to high mode. I still couldn't see any change. After the short run, the voltage had dropped from 13.4V open to 12.7V open, as tested through the contacts on the bottom of the handle. Then I put it back on the laptop charger. Six hours later, the charging LED is still flashing red, and the open voltage is still 12.7V. The only difference here is that prior to the charging LED turning green, I ran the light from my car's lighter socket with the engine running for a few minutes. The direct charging from the lighter socket must have picked Vbatt up enough to make charging possible from the 16V AC supply. I'll have to find a 19V supply or just charge through the handle from now on. Looking at the flashing LED now, I can't see a difference in color between the 12v charger and the 16v, whereas the one time AC charging was successful, the red looked closer to orange.


*EDIT*

After writing the first par of this post, I connected a Radio Shack selectable DC adapter to the light with 18V dialed in and was surprised when the light on the RS DC adapter stayed lit. Previously, it would turn off, presumably to protect itself from too much load. I suspect what was happening to this DC adapter earlier was that the difference between Vbatt and Vin was too great. This time, Vbatt of 12.7V was not too low and the DC adapter was able to handle the load and stay on. The charging indicator on the light is now flashing reddish orange again and a measurement at the handle contacts shows that Vbatt is steadily climbing; it's now at 12.88V. So, I'm back in business again, so to speak, with AC charging; first with the 16V adapter when the battery is very low, and with the 18V adapter for a top-off charge to bring the LED to green.

I am a bit surprised at the narrow open voltage range here... the light won't stay on and the topside LEDs won't light when open voltage is 11.something volts. I'm guessing the battery has probably had it and Vbatt is sagging significantly at that point. I'll have to check the voltage at the handle during the few seconds the light will stay on when that happens next time to see what it's sagging down to.


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## BVH (Mar 16, 2012)

IIRC, from Mr Ted Bears initial testing way, way back, the change from high to low and low to high takes place over 2-3 minutes, or something like that. I could never see the change occurring. I think you can see it with a light meter.


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## FRITZHID (Mar 16, 2012)

i've had mixed results charging the stanley with other than oem chargers, even ones with "close to" the same specs. the Out Put of my OEM charger is 15.7v DC, and a max of 500mA, this seems to be the ideal rate at which the stanley likes to charge. i've set others to charge from 9v all the way up to 18v and 20mA to 1.7A and they've all had what i would call undesirable resaults. the lower volt/amp sets would cause the red to stay steady or blink for more than a day, and the higher V would cause orange blink for a short period, then turn green, but Batts actual voltage rating was 12.7v or lower and lamp performance time was reduced to <15 mins.... not to mention, when some of the other chargers were used, they gave off an unusual whining sound. when i used the OEM charger with a depleted SLA, the orange would blink for aprox 5 hrs and turn green, THEN every so often, pop back into the red/orange blink mode for a min or 2 and back to green, meaning it's a smart charger built into the light that keeps the SLA maint charged @ aprox 13.4v  yay! and when OEM charger was used, lamp run time was 27-32 mins.


Perhaps finding a ac/dc charger with same plug/polarity and V-A raitings as they OEM charger but that runs on the 50Hz 220v in your country would do the trick?:thinking:


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## Techjunkie (Mar 16, 2012)

FRITZHID said:


> i've had mixed results charging the stanley with other than oem chargers, even ones with "close to" the same specs. the Out Put of my OEM charger is 15.7v DC, and a max of 500mA, this seems to be the ideal rate at which the stanley likes to charge. i've set others to charge from 9v all the way up to 18v and 20mA to 1.7A and they've all had what i would call undesirable resaults. the lower volt/amp sets would cause the red to stay steady or blink for more than a day, and the higher V would cause orange blink for a short period, then turn green, but Batts actual voltage rating was 12.7v or lower and lamp performance time was reduced to <15 mins.... not to mention, when some of the other chargers were used, they gave off an unusual whining sound. when i used the OEM charger with a depleted SLA, the orange would blink for aprox 5 hrs and turn green, THEN every so often, pop back into the red/orange blink mode for a min or 2 and back to green, meaning it's a smart charger built into the light that keeps the SLA maint charged @ aprox 13.4v  yay! and when OEM charger was used, lamp run time was 27-32 mins.
> 
> 
> Perhaps finding a ac/dc charger with same plug/polarity and V-A raitings as they OEM charger but that runs on the 50Hz 220v in your country would do the trick?:thinking:



Thanks, FRITZHID. My Stanley HID didn't come with the OEM charger and I never bothered looking into where to get one. Now I will.


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