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.
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).
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.
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 !!
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.
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.
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.