What did you BREAK today?

Have you disassembled the tail on a AAA Tool? I haven't gotten the tail apart on mine yet, and am wondering about bypassing the spring.

The retaining ring and switch come out easily, but the switch PCB is inside some kind of plastic shell. I don’t really want to risk breaking it, since it’s probably not easily replaceable.

Thanks. I'll probably start with my AAA Tool (have an IYP07 to do also) and worst case I can gift it with the magnetic tailcap LOL :facepalm:

The spring on the driver of my GT mini. I put an Acebeam 3100 in there and yh the spring decided to come off. Now I have a half broken switch and spring.

I am trying to slow down on collecting lights. Until I found out that one of my neighbours is a professional reviewer (eh, unboxer) for an outdoors magazine. So we spent a few nights talking lights. And we swapped a few lights. But his came without a battery and I had no spare 18650 att.
Usually I have batteries in every light, so I took the battery from my good old bored out SureFire 6PD. I knew that the EagTac drop-in in it has a working range of 3.0-8.4V, and thought: why not put in two 18350 batteries. But those were flat tops, and I was fiddling about trying to make them connect. Till the moment I shorted out the switch! You can find upgrade sets for SF switches all over the web but those are for the momentary switch that’s constant on after rotating (Z41). A 6PD has a rather “unique” built forward clicky switch (Z59).
Here the possibilities are limited to buying an original NOS tailcap assembly, after selling one of my kidneys, or buying some inferior $hxx from Ali. So the coming time I will be MacGyver-ing some sort of solution. Or say goodbye to yet another light from an era I could afford lights with big names on them.

Wow, that must hurt Wim!
So we can expect some nice reviews then?

I was careless about reattaching a wire that fell off a small AAA driver and later found out it was delivering ~6v to a 3v led.

The driver of EDC01 was not held securely and instead of removing the pill I twisted the wires off the driver

I couldn’t unscrew the pill of my trustfire mini3, it was glued.
All my pliers were too thick and wouldn’t work with the holes on the driver. Tweezers were too flimsy to give sufficient force.

I purchased snap ring pliers like these:

to do the job.
They arrived yesterday….and they were too thick as well. :person_facepalming:
They were cheap, screw it. I filed them until they fit.
I managed another few turns but then stopped again due to not being able to hold the head strong enough in my hands.
I took a strap wrench. It allowed me another half-turn but I did not have as good control of the head and my pliers slipped ripping a few passives off the board.
So…I have a broken and still unopened light. :person_facepalming:
Need to mount it in a vice. And maybe heat up….

I hate to be that guy, but it’s not reverse threaded is it? I made that mistake a few months ago with a Tool AA.

No. I wondered about it. But it went down by a couple of mm so I did it right.

My Cometa is now fubar; way too much “experimentation” by a muggle.
I’ve never modded any light before; is it possible to replace the entire insides of this light? :slight_smile:



used that exact pliers too - but then i found a better tool (shown in this video)

Before buying them I’ve seen such tool in a ZozzV6 video. I searched for it and only found some very expensive ones.
If someone needs them - the correct search term is “camera lens spanner”.

lexel driver, soldering on spring, shit fell off!

I was repairing my DQG Fairy.
I suspected a faulty FET.

I set out to test it, unsoldered it and started measuring.
Test 1 – probably failed. Not sure, the tiny MOSFET would move under the slightest touch. I turned to find something to hold it. When I turned back…the MOSFET was gone. Did my t-shirt touch it during the turn and swipe it off the table? I don’t know. Anyway – I failed to find it. I think I’ll need to ask somewhere else to find a replacement….

It’s a tiny 3-legged FET named A2:

Any hints on where I can find a replacement or how is this package called?

burnt my coat... during beamshots I held 1 of the lights to my coat in order to wait 30 seconds before the next beamshot.. but it quickly burnt my coat.... so I'm not sure if that counts as something being broken though.

A walk has broght me a solution. Ditch the FET, short the tracks, put QTC inside. :slight_smile:

Not today, but yesterday I broke some plastics inside my old Audi Q7 while changing the Xenon bulbs. Doesn’t seem to be important but still hurt a little.

Recently I tried to install one of gcharts battery indicator tail lights. I should point out at the start here that all the following mishaps are my own and not a reflection of gcharts goods. I used regular noodle to connect the board to the switch (installed). The light didn’t function. I thought maybe the nob on the rubber switch boot was too long so I trimmed it (reinstalled). The light would flicker and was sporadic so I figured it was an earthing issue, added a spacer to make good earth, checked it with psu outside host (reinstall). No light at all. Check switch outside host with psu, nothing, then found the issue was the noodle allowed the board to spin and push off one of the components.

At that scale I can’t see well (even with glasses) let alone use an iron well. So I set it aside and pulled out the second board I purchased. At that time I saw the stiff wire in the packet and realized why it was supplied. So, everything soldered up and stiff. Install, no light. Check switch with psu, it works. Install and check with battery, nothing. Check with psu in host, works. I removed a BG lighted tail from another light and checked it in this one, works. Reinstall gchart switch, nothing. So now I’m guessing the new board requires more current than the Dr Jones driver can bleed off. I confer with gchart and gives me some advice in the right direction ( :beer: ). Install a bleed resistor of 680-1000 ohm.

The driver is soldered in place on this light, I hate that due to my soldering skills. Pretty much the whole head needs to be dismantled to get the driver out. Remove pill, oring, glass, optic, desolder led wires, desolder driver. I found a 600ohm and installed that, hoping it might work. I was kinda proud of my soldering at this point

Install, one light in the tail lights up :partying_face: Woohoo so i’m on the right track. I just need to a higher value resistor. When trying to desolder the resistor both the capacitor and resistor come off in one. I picked up the duo with my tweezers and pinched it so they went flying … down the back of my bench :open_mouth: :cry: :weary:

So now i’m thinking of removing the leds and driver and installing L4P driver and mosled. I just haven’t got around to it yet because the above pissed me off.

Oh no, what luck :frowning: Those PFETs are tiny! (SC-70 / SOT-323)

That 604 Ohm resistor should have been perfect. Not exactly what you want to hear now… What was the battery’s voltage? With 1 LED lit, the extended datasheet I found says the voltage should be in the range of 3.4-3.55 V. Was it near that?

And yes, that range is a bit different than some of my testing and seems a bit high if you think of capacity as being linear with voltage, but the more I study HKJ’s tests, I’m changing my thoughts on that subject.