I have done three reflows using a soldering iron I bought on Amazon for $29.
All have been successful.
When you are giving advice to people, it’s important you understand their skill level. If you look at ttylamg’s posts, it’s clear to me they are a very new beginner and don’t understand much about flashlights. I’m not even sure he/she can even solder, so I do not recommend they try something that is even more diffucult.
True, but that’s my skill level too!
Yes, all very valid approaches. I am taking a lot of short cuts, while mechanically inclined, I resulted in needing a lot of help. I don’t have basic skill or practice in this hobby, so I appreciate the guard rails for sure.
The reflowing video was very informative, but not something I would try just yet. I’ll wait till I accumulate more scrap part
That is why I suggested buying the replacement board you linked with the LED installed.
That only requires soldering two wires.
I suggest a good soldering iron, a helping hands (you can get that that at Harbor freight) and a solder tip wipe box.
Once you have the light working, you can use the same stuff to practice reflowing the LED on the board you remove, which is toast anyway.
I have had success reflowing using a soldering iron. I know that is not the preferred way.
Just keep in mind, if you remove an LED from a board and then replace it with an LED you took off another board, you don’t need flux or to add any solder to either part. In my VERY limited experience re-used parts have enough residual solder to just use heat,
YMMV!
I always replace the solder with fresh, high quality leaded solder. I also add extra flux.
You don’t know if enough solder was used from the factory plus you might loose some due to being stuck to the old led. If you have just a tiny bit too little you may not get good contact over the center thermal pad. It is the deepest pad. This can result in poor heat transfer and the LED burning up. It’s better to have too much than too little. Plus the old solder might be lead free which is harder to work with and requires higher temperatures.
The solder in liquid form can take just 10 seconds or so to burn off the existing flux, assuming there is any left in the original solder. There is no good reason to not add extra flux. It aids in the wetting action and helps the solder to flow.
Speaking of soldering, I know there’s google, but do you guys have a link to a good tutorial? I am basically learning by trial and error and watching only. I fixed items in the past but I really suck at it.
Check out this 3 part series from Dave at eevblog. Here is part 1.
These Pace videos are good, too.
Anyone ever think of making a bat signal cover for the fto3 got the idea when thick clouds were hovering low over our campsite
Finally got the replacement, of course I had to dedome it. I forgot to test it first before I start, now after dedome it won’t light up… just my luck.
Bummer. There is always risk involved in modding lights.
I think it’s a sign for me to explore reflowing. Now I just need to find sources of SST-40
Is it possible to flash Anduril on this driver?
I would like to have the ramping not stop in the middle, but go right to turbo and Narsil can’t do that, bus Anduril can.
Why are there even two UI’s that are so similar?
after several stars (3 replacements), I finally got it working. However, after running it on turbo, it died instantly! And again, it seems that the led died, not the flashlight/driver part, as the button still works and can go into different modes, I even left the star there and used 2 wires to pull current from the star to another led, and that led runs just fine.
do I just have bad luck with SST-40 leds or what?
That’s a real disappointment after spending the time you have on it. It seems to me that the initial issue of voltage overload may have not only had a detrimental affect on the LED, but may also have adversely affected the FET driver - as you say, the regulated modes are seemingly driving the LED normally. Out of curiosity, what happened to the previous star replacements you made on the flashlight?