FW3A Troubleshooting / FAQ

Same for me, my original mail is from May 19th and no reply, also not to the followup.

Has anybody had chance in contacting Neal? I really love the design of the FW3A but would rather have a working flashlight.

If I don’t get any reaction I would consider using PayPal buyer protection, sadly.

Loosen the retaining ring and retighten and it works now. Thx guys for the help.

This is quite the finicky flashlight design.

Glad it’s all working now.

@ Atom00
Excellent!! Glad things are working now… :+1:

If I may, I think it more a case of, this high-precision-build light doesn't lend itself easily to mass production, especially if the goal of production is quantity over quality/good QC.

It seems like the problems we are seeing are mostly the results of assembly errors on the part of the manufacturer.

My $0.02 :)

-Ben

I’m having an issue where the light flickers like crazy. It’s like it gains and loses 10% of its brightness a few times a second. It also takes almost a full second to turn off after hitting the button. Has anyone seen any issues like this?

I ordered glow gaskets from Neal on May 22nd paid for expedited shipping and order is still shows unfulfilled. Nothing from Neal, have several projects that are at a standstill waiting to get finished.

Anduril has a turn off delay, this is normal. It looks for another button press before turning off.

As far as flickers, this sounds odd. There might be a dirty connection somewhere. I’d suggest cleaning the threads and making sure the driver retaining ring is tight. You know, the usual stuff we’ve been suggesting.

Yep, do like JasonWW said… tighten & clean it.

Go HERE . Read it, do what it says, and hopefully that will fix you up. :+1:

Keep us posted on the results.

Did you end up using PayPal buyer protection? I haven’t received any response and it’s coming up on a month since I purchased in a week or so.

whats the best price post-group buy?

I had to take a refund on the lost light (long story)

Or has anyone flipped yet?

I passed my first one to a friend thinkin I had a second coming (derp)

The group buy code still works so you can just use it again. Everyone on the list has had a shot at ordering so I think it is open season now.

hmmmm

How did you you go about getting your refund? Did you contact Neal or did you go through PayPal?

Ok, interesting problem. My light will go into and out of lockout unless it has been in lockout for a few hours. Then the light will not unlock with 4 quick press, I have to loosen the head to unlock it. Has this been seen, am I doing something wrong?

I haven’t seen it do that. Sometimes I lock a light overnight, but I haven’t had it get stuck.

Carried this and used this light for almost a month with no problems . Then suddenly would not work right . Ramp up only part way and turn off. Thought battery needed charged , but that wasn’t it . Read Firelight 2 , post # 30 . The driver retaining ring was loose . Works fine again . Thankyou Firelight2 .

Last night was my first time carrying my FW3A and its already broken…

The light turned on in my pocket and I didn’t notice until I felt the heat. After turning the light off, it appears the lower regulated modes do not work.

If I turn on the light and hold to ramp up, it turns on in brighter modes only.

I can’t tell what my floor/ceiling/thermal/battery settings are at because the blinks use these lower modes.

Switching to stepped ramp mode seems to make the light go dimmer than smooth ramp will allow it to go - but I only have ~7 discrete steps (all on the high-brightness end).

I suspect one or several of the 7135’s are damaged. Any troubleshooting suggestions I should try before requesting a new driver?

I too have had this failure mode, only once, up to pressing I didn’t pay it much heed at the time and it’s not recurred since; I keep the torch in 4 click lockout mode most of the time, unlocking if I need more than ML mode. A week or so ago, I couldn’t get the torch to unlock with any number of clicks and had to resort to taking the head off and rebooting it.

No, it sounds like you’re probably right. Not much can cause those symptoms except for a dead 7135 chip.

I wonder if it was having a switch contact issue. If the switch was constantly flapping on and off, or if it sensed multiple presses per click, it would be difficult or impossible to unlock.

Once in a while I see it detect the wrong number of clicks, but not very often and not to an unusable extent. Usually if it happens it’ll just get two for one. This can happen because the switch on the FW3A is pretty noisy electrically, and can take a while to settle to a steady state. The only switch I’ve tried which was more bouncy was a cheap crappy switch people use in lightsabers.

Meanwhile, the switch used in the Emisar products is unusually clean. Back when the D4 was the only supported light, I used completely different code to read the button presses… because the switch sends a really clean and solid signal. But when I started adding support for other lights, I had to make the button code tolerate noise. In the case of the FW3A, it had to deal with quite a bit of noise.

So if it refuses to unlock, as a way of testing for this, I’d suggest trying to loosen the head just a little, tighten the tail, and gently tighten the head again. Ideally without causing the light to reboot, if possible. This should take care of any switch contact issues and help determine whether that was the problem or if it was something else.