Anybody successfully opened a Zebralight before?

Wow! Keep us updated!

do you think you get the led of the pcb in there or get off all cables first ??

I’ve never had much luck swapping LEDs in place. Wish I could justify buying one of those nice “tweezer” soldering/rework stations but I don’t have that. So I’ll remove the board and reflow it.

Wise move. Have you tried contacting Zebralight to get a new lens maybe?

I warned you earlier about the glass :stuck_out_tongue:

You can check the diameter and buy a replacement from fasttech or Kaidomain :smiley:

So I actually performed the emitter transplant tonight. I unsoldered all that mass of wiring and removed the mcpcb. I was kinda surprised to see no sign of thermal compound under there. Its even fully anodized:

Terrible thermal control there, but I guess this little light isn’t driven hard enough to need it? Not sure, but its at least getting some thermal compound before I put it back.

My first swap was with one of my new 90 CRI 219c’s. Turns out the Zebralight driver doesn’t like it at all. The light comes on in sort of a medium mode, with some flicker. Any sort of switch holding or double-clicking causes the emitter to pulse a little, but not actually change. I can only assume the low Vf of the 219c is messing something up, but I don’t know enough about the electronics to say for sure.

So I pulled it again, this time swapping in a 219b:

This one works great! Its not as bright as the 219c would’ve been, but that’s okay. I love 219b’s anyway, and so does this Zebralight apparently. It’s alive!

Its also still disassembled, because my fasttech lens order hasn’t arrived yet. But the hard part is done!

PS: Sorry for the bad photography. All I had handy was my cell phone.

Good job you did there. It is very strange the 219C didn’t work, have you tested the led outside the flashlight?

Not at high power, but I always touch my DMM leads to them in continuity mode. Emitter works fine that way. I don’t know…

I had a batch of Luxeon rebel that flickered when powered with moderate-high power (and of course in the flashlight grr), but was fine at low current. Turned out they were not correctly reflowed, maybe that was just the case for you? Don’t know, just a suggestion :slight_smile:
(after all, doesn’t this beautiful SC80 deserve the current state of the art high CRI emitter?)

Gah, you’re right of course. I wanted the 219c to work in there. Maybe there was some other issue, but it just seems strange that the light would come on in some medium-power mode, quite bright, even when it should be turning on in its lowest output. And I did test the reflow outside the light using my continuity check - worked fine.

That was my last loose 219c around here to use, so I dropped the 219b in. If I get some more 219c’s before the lenses arrive I may pull the board and have another try at it.

If the Vf is the problem you can always add a small diode to get that extra voltage drop

That’s awesome! A modded zebralight!

Thanks to emarkd I was encouraged to open my brand new (more on that later) Zebralight SC30 and prepare it for the same emitter swap. However, I thought starting from the switch could help me to prevent the light from any damage. At CPF someone did so with a Zebralight headlamp, pulling the boot retaining ring with a pick. Well, I wasn’t really successful, as you can see…

So I cut away the whole cap and desoldered the electronic switch, in order to use a screwdriver as a lever.

It was quite easy then to pull the ring, but some minor marks were left.

I could lift the switch PCB from the right site, but I destroyed one of the solder contacts. The cable could not move at all as it was soldered to the MCPCB for no obvious reason.

Now I used a screw driver between the MCPCB and the reflector to push out the lens. This caused some damage at the base of the reflector. Not dramatically, but hard to avoid.

Desoldered the wires and lift of the MCPCB. No thermal paste here as well. Did you note the alignment of the screws? I have never seen this on another board, so you cannot just throw in a normal 10 mm one…

Ok, my conclusion is to sacrifice the lens and not the boot cap, as this is not a regular spare part. Luckily, Zebralight will help me here and promised to send me one (thanks a lot, Zebralight!). The lens has a diameter of 18.5 mm (diameter of the light opening is 19 mm) and a thickness of 1 mm, so one of these lenses should fit:

https://www.fasttech.com/products/1606/10001022/5422700-18-3mm-ar-coated-glass-lens-for-led-flashlights
http://kaidomain.com/p/S024571.18_4mm-D-x-1_0mm-T-AR-Coated-Lens
http://kaidomain.com/p/S021958.18_6mm-D-x-1mm-T-AR-Coated-Lens-1-pc

You avoid desoldering the switch and the potential of destroying the PCB and the reflector, as evything can stay in place.

Hope that helps. I will give you an update as soon as I have sourced a new emitter for the light.

Wow, yeah, I’d say you did it the hard way :slight_smile: :stuck_out_tongue: I also was advised elsewhere to start with the switch bezel, so I understand why you did it that way. Sorry it didn’t work out, but hopefully it’ll all be good in the end :slight_smile: Glad Zebra is helping you source replacement parts.

Yeah the screw holes on mine aren’t perfectly aligned either. Everything in this little light seems to be special/custom made just for it. I’m sure the newer lights are even worse in that regard.

Honestly if I ever do another Zebralight mod in the future I probably won’t even try to save the lens. Just bust it out and go from there, saving myself a lot of time and effort for very little chance of success.

Since I love zebralight lights I’ll be keeping my eye on this thread. Though I don’t think I’d risk damaging my lights to mod them.

Definately right, the newer ons are much more integrated, see here: http://www.zebralight.com/zoomify.asp?catalogid=123&img=assets/images/SC600MkII(L2)cutaway.jpg

No easy emitter swap, I’d say.

I think I will order some replacement lenses and try to find a way to crack the lens in the flashlight without harming the reflector. I have an option to buy 22 more brand new (or let’s say new old stock) SC30.

If it turns out well with the Nichia 219C in there, it might be interesting for some others here. Which would be the best forum category btw. to ask for that interest?

Now I want to know if my ZL headlamps also lack thermal paste.

I pretty much guess so, as components and assembly design are more or less the same.

totally agreed.

im going to mod my SC600 too as the led is so out of date now.

I will break the lens method to save the hassle and ipost pics later once i get them all work out so stay tune and pray for me haha

Where do you find these SC30?
I’d be interested in one or two, to “have fun” modding them :smiley: