Diagnosis help: Flickering Zanflare F1

Hello y’all

Bought 5 zanflare f1’s during the flash sale and 2 were DOA unfortunately.

Any idea what could cause this flickering and dying out?

Your input is much appreciated!

If is DOA you can ask for refund/resend.

Same thing is happening to mine that i ordered during the sale, but nowhere near dramatic as yours, it is flickering but ever so slightly, it is not possible to pick it on camera, i messaged gearbest but not recieved a response from them still.

Also something is rattling inside the light, i think that should not happen.

@Irfatos:

Thanks, yes indeed I’ve started the procedure but it’s a shame that the flashlight is discarded if it can work. At the end of the day I bought it on offer and the refund isn’t enough to get a replacement. A replacement wasn’t offered as an option.

@BobbyMK
Thanks for chiming in. The fact that something is rattling inside is strange. Is your flicker due to PWM by any chance? For mine I think it is a cold solder / bad connection or perhaps a bad driver.

I’ve seen similar problems with other flashlights on the forum before but experience goes a long way in diagnosing what the cause is. Unfortunately I don’t have this experience :frowning:

Yes, their’s policy are strange.I’m facing it now with presale problem and I found no good solution from them.
I think seriously to close my GB account,even some time have good sales.
Take the money and use broken f1 for spare parts ,is my advice.

Nope, it is not PWM for sure. When i use the “flare” mode the light spikes in output and the spikes are noticeable by human eye but not by my mobile phone camera, it is overwhelming and the small sensor of the phone camera does not even care when the change in brightness happens so i cant really film a video of that problem.

But i will for sure film them the rattling noise and see what they come up with as an excuse.

Too bad they glued the light, it might have been something easy to fix, i would gladly do that instead of arguing with gearbest stuff on how and what is wrong with the light.

Try using the shortest unprotected battery you have. Have had lots of problems with the three I bought. One never would work but got the other two to work using short batteries, still won’t work with long batteries. GB just ignores the email I sent.

@Southland

Wow, their QC must be abysmal! What a shame as It is a well-thought out design but with major quality deficiencies. Seems to me GB only had these on sale because they failed QC or they were a problematic batch.

@Irfatos

They do have some good offers but the problem is they really struggle with the service side of things. Their warranty is very poor and pretty much fails to pass all US/EU / western consumer laws and regulations. If customers accept this shoddy standard they are bound to continue.

What a shame they don’t realize how much they would save in terms of customer servicing hours, returns, claims and most importantly customer satisfaction if they had a better approach. They first offered me a low partial refund for a DOA product! That isn’t right!

@BobbyMK

Weird. Their excuse will probably disappoint.
How hard is it to unglue? there is a good video review here that seems to show it in a teradown. Wonder how it was unglued:

Always check the tailclicky first …
Make sure the retaining ring is tight …

Propeak, I had an issue with my F1, it felt in the water and the water entered the light damaging it! By that time, Zanflare was still a member so I sent PM, but it was the member Gearbest that stepped in and solved the situation for me.
This is the thread were I explained the situation, with pics and suggestions - from other members - to open the light. I ended up opening it the brutal way, not so nice as David Sunshine did!

David is a nice guy, maybe you can also ask him, through the video, how did he opened the light, with what tools or methods. It is really well glued, and it is VERY hard to unscrew the parts. When I “destroyed” mine to open it…I had to put a lot of strength to unscrew the body and head.

But, for these questions with things bought on Gearbest, I would suggest to contact them on their threads, or through PM. They solved my the situation :wink: Good luck with those issues, hope both of you can solve them!!

Hi guys,

Mine flickered on turbo / flare mode too.
It was the brass + contact that was dirty, probably flux resin from soldering.
I scraped it clean with a dental pick (you know, that metal thing with a round bent hook and a sharp bent hook) with which i could reach the + contact.

(But i also replaced the switch, the switch PCB and the spring (which i bypassed while i was at it), and soldered one of those tiny brass pills on the spring to get more pressure on the battery.
In fact i did a total re-do on the tail switch, because i had to press the button really deep to click the switch.)

Thanks for the heads up Jerommel, i will check if mine is acting funky because of dirty “+” contact.

Also gearbest replied and wanted me to give them video proof of the problems, so i did recorded the rattle but i am not able to pick the flickering on camera, will have to wait now to see what gearbest give as an answer to the rattle.

I was just goiing to suggest that. I had an F13 that was “DOA” but would then flicker and do all sorts of random things when clicking the tailswitch furiously. On someone else’s advice, I unscrewed the retaining ring, removed everything, clicked the switch a bunch of times outside the light to try to reseat anything that was amiss, then carefully reassembled everything. Put back the retaining ring loosely, sample-clicked it a few times, then slowly snugged it up, still checking its operation. When I got it snug enough (ie, didn’t torque the crap out of it) and it still worked flawlessly, then I was done. Haven’t had a problem since.

The rattling is simple, if you look down the battery tube you will notice there is a smaller diameter shelf near the positive end so the battery is centered there and the back of the battery is free and can move when shook.
Solution = Rubber band on battery near negative end. Or just some tape, anything to take up the gap. No big deal.

As far as flicker, sounds like bad/dirty connection.
If the brass button looks dirty, a new pencil with nice square eraser should clean off the surface when twisted on the button,
I have best results with Samsung 28A, so anything near that length should be good.
Although this flashlight puts out good output, it does not need a super high amp battery.

HTH
Later,

Keith

Have you tried this, worked on two on mine that were doing the same thing.