Tear Down (and upcoming mod) - Boruit RJ-02 Headlight (Pic Heavy)

Bugger. Good luck for the repair.

Bummer, your mods on page one are pretty cool. It appears you did some emitter trace work. When I did the XM-L2 mod, I had a couple issues with shorts. Had to reflow a couple times to fix. The second time was fixed by removing excess solder. You appear to have a good amount of solder under that emitter. Check to make sure you don't have continuity between the center thermal pad and the LED power tabs on each side of it. A good way to remove the excess solder is to heat up the emitter until it "floats" than slide a small piece of solder wick up against the emitter so that is slides just enough for the solder wick to touch the MCPCB pads. The solder wick should draw out the excess solder. I find putting a drop of flux on the solder wick helps greatly.

Like you, I had to reflow from the top side. Didn't want to melt any plastic inside the light with my heat gun.

Swapping in the XML requires a good amount of surgery. Check out Post 6 if you decide you want to go that route.

Well the 2nd emitter was working for a little while (was being the key word). Apparently I burned it up as it only dimly lights up now even if I connect a li-ion cell directly across the pads (a mostly discharged cell to test). I’m guessing the center pad didn’t connect and so it burned right up.

And now after screwing around with it in the body, the end board with the switch has broken away from the main board and I don’t know that I can even fix that.

So I guess I’ll try a heat gun to reflow on this board now that I don’t have much to lose. Can I use a heat gun blowing directly on the emitter dome? I’ve only ever used a heat gun from below.

At least I have the 2nd headlamp with its craptastic Chinese cool white emitter.

-Garry

You can. It can take it. If you do it in the host, you should wedge the board so it isn't making full contact with the host. Sorry to hear about your bad luck with this light. It's an ackward one and really not a good design for modding. Did you resister mod this one?

I did not resistor mod it. The stock 1.25A /- is fine by me for my intended use. I’m afraid of applying heat and knocking the dome off or having the other components fall off. I was going to say I’d work with the board out of the body (since it’s so easy to remove), but perhaps leaving it in the body forces you to only apply heat at the emitter area (my heat gun has a/- 1 inch or larger end on it).

-Garry

ImA4Wheelr, what tool did you use to remove the pressed on cap? it’s very tight.

I carefully held the body in the vice with soft jaws and tapped the cap off with an aluminium drift. Yes they are very tight.

Thanks for the sharing man. After you put it together is the cap still able to fit tightly? Did you just hammer the cap back onto the light?

Interesting light, thanks for the teardown :+1:

Sorry for missing the above question. Thanks MRsDNF. Not really recalling at the moment. I think I did similar to MRsDNF, but used a wood dowel and hammer to knock off the cap. It does go back on quite secure. Pretty sure I used a piece of a 2x3 or 2x4 to smack it back in place.

The cap can also be pressed back on with the vice, Make sure the cap goes on straight though.

Hello, simple change of led, that had leftover from a convoy c8, a hpl-hi u63a, to part more difficult the re-flow led, only missing a new tir ……., greetings !!

Thanks for the tips guys. :slight_smile:

You guys have this n00b curious about this cheapy head lamp to replace the purple-blue cheap ones I have from 15 years ago.

Have any of you considered sticking the assembly with end cap in the freezer and slightly warming up the friction-fit cap afterwards to help expand it relative to the cold tube? Might come off really easily and save you some damage.

I'd buy one or two if the flash sale came back.

Ask Fin17 for a coupon code?

See GearBEST's Sale . Rovyvon A5 $15.99 . Convoy S21 $15.99 .

I loaded up when I saw they were <10bux. :smiley:

Still, compared to the price of even an entry-level Skilhunt and such, 11bux is downright cheap. Waiting for it to drop a coupla bux might not be worth the ag. Buy it. Buy it now.

My wife is not fully employed. I'd rather save the 3 dollars. Maybe even the 11 dollars (for now) until she is. Let's all hope that she gets the full time position and out-earns me.

Plus there's no guarantee it/they would get here before we leave on our vacation (eclipse + yosemite) so I'm in no rush.

pinging Fin17 for a code might be the way to go. I'll need more 18650 cells too.

$8.89 at Aliexp.
But if you need it quick, free shipping won’t help you much.
(long link?)
:money_mouth_face:

Boruit

3wks seems about on par vs GB.

Had 2 packages due from GB, 1 came today. so still waiting for 1 last one (and the priciest, figures…). From July 11th and 13th or something like that, so yeah, about 3wks courtesy of Azerbaijan Air is about the norm.

well would you look at this...

Go crazy… :smiley: