Tail was tightened first very tight and problem still there. Somehow cleaning threads fixed and I could not recreate the problem by loosening the head very slightly as before.
Iāve posted before about my fw3a stepping down to soon @40-50*C. , well I undid the bezel & took the optics out & noticed a discoloured led ,when the light is on moonlight it was showing a blue tinge , & Iāve been noticing it getting extremely hot to the touch whilst on turbo but also only reading 45*C when cold & about 54-55*C when warm when the thermal regulation turns the light down sharply ,now I have the optics off I can now see the FW smoking quite badly , Iāve emailed neal & told him. I thought I would take a video of it to show him & whilst I was videoing it I managed to catch it stop working ,itās actually melted the solder on the black wire. Hereās the video
On turbo it will get very hot, very fast. Mine steps down after 15 seconds with a 30Q. It stepped down after 12 seconds when the stock ambient calibration was off.
You never want to run a light (any light) at high power with nothing pressing the mcpcb to the head. The pressure is needed to transfer the heat and prevents the leds from burning up.
The smoke in your video is probably the flux or maybe the wire insulation burning because the mcpcb over heated due to insufficient pressure to the head.
Your original issue of a blueish led on moonlight is quite odd. It might have been due to that led not being reflowed properly, but itās hard to say for sure.
I was just looking at a bmw motorcyle (F750GS Adventure Tourer) and the dang thing has push button preload adjust on the rear spring. Push the handle bar joystick and the darn bike raises and lowers hydraulically! Crazy! Not to mention the big lcd screen with all itās fancy features. Geez, my bike is from 1986. Lol
It helps that computronium has recently become relatively small and cheap, and so has circuit printing. Many tasks donāt need more than a few MHz on the control chip, or more than a few KB of instructions, so all it needs for a brain is a fifty-cent chip the size of a small toenail.
Yes it was turbo but you can see it was only on for a few seconds before smoking & the light was cold at startup , itās actually melted the solder on the black wire , mine will ( would have ) always step down when it reached 45*C from cold & 55 when warm whatever thermal limit I put it on , out of the box the step down was almost instant. The dodgy led has only been happening since 24 hours ago ,since the dodgy led ,although it still did work you could clearly see that only two of them works on full power ( like car head beams)
Very interesting, my flashlight lives his own life, it can turn on an off without me. Happend a few minutes ago, it stood on the table near me and suddenly swithed on. Itās kind ofā¦disturbing.
I had the exact same thing happen with my fireflies rot66. Two or three times it just decided to turn on, and then eventually it changed to the switch just being always on which makes the light inoperable. I would email Neal and see if he can send you a replacement switch since it is easy to replace on the FW3A. Hopefully Neal/Lumintop have better warranty support than fireflies.
. That is somewhat ādisturbingā for sure. Keep us posted on any more āmagical eventsāā¦ :person_facepalming: ā¦ as well as the outcome. Good luck finding the causeā¦ :+1: