I finally go to the point where I started hooking stuff up to power a handheld pistol grip spotlight. I had to make a holder for the driver out of copper and soldered it in to hwy or to work with my heat sink. It was working fine with my 12V power supply, but tonight when I hooked it up, it's going to direct drive instead of having modes. Its almost anything lime a short somewhere, but I honestly can't figure out where. I'm glad I tested it first with my multimeter because it would have killed the led if I had it hooked up. Is the driver toast, or is there another issue? I'm connecting the negative from the power supply to the bare copper puce and the positive to the red wire.
Thanks
Are you trying to break the ground connection to change modes?
I thought the same thing. I tried breaking at positive and negative to change the modes. Same deal for both.
Thanks
You could have de-soldered/loosen a component when adding the heat sink?
I can’t make the pics any bigger to see if any thing looks suss.
I have bigger pictures if you want them.
You got it. I did check it ot for any obvious damage, but it all looks fine. I bought another one off Aliexpress tonight in case this one's toast. I might remove it from the holder and re solder it if possible. Thanks.
So I figured out the problem. I managed to desolder it from the copper holder with a heat gun to see if that wad the issue. I accidentally un soldered the 8-pin IC from the board in the process, but soldered it back on.
If you look in the picture at the conductive gold ring around the top and bottom, you’ll see a gap where the the plating is gone. Also, solder got between the layers of the pcb and its shorting out. Too much solder! Too much heat. Lesson learned. I ordered another one from China, so hurry up and wait…