i’ve already ruined my my four sevens light. it was my first attempt at opening a light and i tried bicycle tubing but the teeth from my wrench broke through it. ah well. no turning back now. i cant stand the tint on this light.
It’s been years since I’ve opened a Fenix light but I remember that I’ve put the head in 3 or 4 ziplock bags, each time removing as much air as possible, then boil it for a good 10 minutes. When you take it out, act as fast as possible, put it in a vise (with a lot of rubber protection) and use a strap wrench.
Almost all Fenix glued. Simple heating using heat gun will remove it easily. I opened 8 Fenix E05 with success.
Heat the head of the flashlight and measure the temp whenever possible. In my case I kept the temp below 120C because E05 uses TIR PMMA lens. LD10 seems to use reflector, I don’t know.
Then after you’re sure the entire head is evenly heated to ~100 - 120C use circlip plier or tweezer (there are two fastening holes) to turn the driver anti-clockwise. Don’t use brute force, the driver board is soft. If you can’t get it in the first try, try to heat it longer (not hotter). The thread locker need sometimes to soften, and when the whole head cools it will hardens back.
At it’s current level swapping to 219C or XPL won’t gain you measurable (by eyes) output, but you should get better runtime. XPG R5 has smaller die, swapping to XPL/XPL2 HD will give you almost almost twice bigger hotspot. Newer LEDs have lower voltage, this should give you slightly better regulated runtime. And the lumen/watt efficiency will be improved because lower output voltage is easier for the boost driver used in this light.
- Clemence
Excellent and detailed post Clemence ! :+1:
Along the same topic. I managed to get my PD35 open and it has a copper 15dia sinkpad. I was thinking of getting an LED with noctigon before but maybe i should attempt a reflow? Or is the noctigon mcpcb superior?
Noctigon is indeed superior. So far it’s the best DTP board. The only thing from Noctigon which I don’t like is the red color.
If you’re just swapping the LED while keeping the rest as is, there’s no point switching to Noctigon. Most Fenix DTP boards are already good enough, even for mild hot rodding. Reflowing is easy and can be done easily with many household stuffs.
- Clemence
Thanks for the feedback. I don’t mind the red as the insulator will block it. I’ve never reflowed so maybe a good time to try. Unless I go with XP-L. I was just on fenix’s website and latest emitter is XP-L. I know very little about them. It is just farther throwing but same hot spot as XM-L2 ?
I’ve taken apart couple fenix lights and a~7 year old 4Sevens. I use a small butane torch lighter and heat up the bezel evenly all around, and then an ice cube around the perimeter to anneal the thread lock adhesive. I then use strap wrenches combined with a small bench vise, and crank the snot out of it to get it to unscrew.
This 4Sevens had a green tinted XPG2 that I replaced with a neutral XP-G3. The mod went very well actually, despite its age I still use this light all the time. Love the sub-lumen firefly mode, despite being brighter with the new XPG3 its still very useful for preserving night adapted vision.
Thanks for tip. I used heat and vice but no ice. Didnt have strap wrenches. I damaged the ano but once i did that i didnt care anymore. Finally got it off.
It has a green tint also. Prefer warm/neutral.
Probably the AR coated lens . Some make everything green . try a clear lens
Never thought of that. I’ll check the tint in candle mode.
I just realized i had one of these in a drawer. Any measurements on the diameter and thickness of the board?
For the Fenix LD10 the board dia is 10mm and thickness of 1mm.
For the foursevens QP2A-X the board fia is 13mm and thickness of 1mm.
Thanks for that. Interesting Fenix use a 10mm board for the LD10 I figure it’d be larger and have the smaller boards reserved for their AAA line like the E05 or LD01.
Yeah kinda odd but i guess that screw is in the way. Not sure what its there for. It is also on the quark so something to do with the tightening of the bezel to get to turbo im guessing? Would love to use bigger mcpcb. Do AA llights get hot enough to matter??
So i finally swapped the emitter over to XP-L2 V5 last night. first attempt did not go well as the light would only stay in one mode, the highest mode. i was probably due to the wires touching the sinkpad? didnt help that the wires were really short and i couldn’t get the driver out to resolder longer ones. so i resoldered again making sure it would only touch the pads and it worked but for some reason in the high setting it dims randomly. still bright but i could tell it would dim and brighten up randomly. lower modes worked fine. what could cause this?
Check if you have soldered the LED’s plus and minus pads correctly.
Yes they were soldered correctly. It kept acting up. I tried resoldering but the dome fell off so its destroyed now. Dissappointed with myself. Pretty sure i damaged it when reflowing.
With almost any leaded solder paste such as Pb60Sn40, Pb63Sn37, you don’t need more than 200C at tho hot plate’s surface. The LED designed for up to 260C reflow soldering temperature. The dome will starts to separate from the base at ~300C. But at this temp the die and the bond wires (if there’s any) will be just fine. If the LED flickers after the reflow while everything else are OK, then it’s a sure sign you hit more than 300C.
Another indicator is the solder mask color. At ~200C more than 30 seconds, it will start to slightly yellow. At 240C it will turned light brown and gets darker the longer you hold it on the hotplate. Those are example using any white masks or white lettering.
Use thermocouple to monitor your hotplate temp. The easiest way is to use fabric iron. You can set the temp to “cotton”. Usually it’s between 190-210C.
- Clemence
Thanks for the good info. Truth be told I don’t have a hot plate. I used helping hands and a lighter. Guess that was my first mistake. Second being using regular solder not paste? Only plan to do an emitter swap one more time so hard to justify hot plate. I do have an iron lying around. Will try that out. Good tip!