My wife’s NiteCore tube stopped working. I suspected dead battery, but when plugged into a charger it showed as fully charged, but no response when the power button was clicked.
My son and I disassembled it, and found the positive wire from the battery had broken at the point where it attached to the circuit board.
I carefully stripped the wire back and soldered it into place (using my 10x jewelers magnifier hood and my Reylight Tool Ti as illumination), and celebration - it worked again.
Reassembled and good as new!
I still haven’t gotten the hang of getting out the camera first, but tried to get at least a couple of images.
yeah - I just HATE throwing stuff out so I always tear it down and at least TRY to fix it first (and not just flashlights - everything!), no matter how cheap a replacement might be.
EDIT: plus, I saw lots of cool bits and pieces inside that Tube when I had it open - switch and LED for sure, and maybe some other parts, could have been salvaged for future use if the light was beyond repair for some reason.
I find it very satisfying when you can take something apart to find out why it’s not working. Especially when it’s something so obvious like a wire that got disconnected. A lot of people will just throw it away when it stops working, but I like to try to figure out why. Sometimes there is not way to fix the issue, but sometimes it’s just an easy fix like with your wife’s NiteCore Tube raynman. Thanks for posting.
Almost the same thing happened to the one I gifted to colleague except the wire was broken from the battery contact which are from aluminium so not possible to solder them…
Just two weeks ago my neighbor lady threw a portable ice maker in the dumpster. I asked her if I could take a look. She said “Sure, it’s yours if you want it”. It’s 4 years old and I’m going to get a new one that makes clear ice anyways”.
Spent a day lookin it over. Blew the cat hair out of the works and eventually found a non-functioning microswitch. Ordered a matching switch off Ebay for couple bucks.
Been making ice all week long with my new Emerson ice machine. :money_mouth_face:
I pulled mine out one night and it wouldn’t work so I thought it had come on in my pocket and was dead. I tried to charge it, but that didn’t work so I opened it up. The joint where the LED joins the board had a big blob of solder on top, but was loose when I pushed on it.
I dabbed some flux on the joint and put a fine point tip on my soldering iron and was able to get the big blob on top to flow under the LED pin. Now it works, but I can’t tell how good the bond is on my solder job so I don’t trust it well enough to carry it with me any longer.
