Running high power led's without drivers.

Hi,

Seems like a perfect fit, 4x 700 = 2800ma. I wired up the driver, and had 4 of these led's in parallel, and using a 18650 battery, which is a single cell lithium ion battery. However, at full power, this setup only seems to be drawing about 700ma for all 4 of them, not the 2800 I was expecting.

No two LEDs are exactly the same! One of the for LEDs you wired in parallel will start conducting at a slightly lower voltage than the others. This one will get most of the current, and limit the voltage (and thus the current) for the other LEDs. If the difference between the LEDs is large enough, the conducting one can actually get a lot more current than it's rated for, and become a SEDD (Smoke Emitting Dead Diode), after that the other LEDs will follow one by one. Each LED MUST have it's own current control wired in series. In your case, the forward voltages were close enough to prevent instant meltdown, but in the long run the LEDs would have failed one by one. If you want to drive 4 LEDs you can wire them in series using one 700 mA driver (this requires a higher voltage or a step-up driver), or in parallel using four separate 700mA drivers.