You only need a small, thin amount. You want as much metal to metal contact as possible. The thermal paste is just there to fill in the microscopic gaps. The surface can look flat to your eye, but under magnification you can see the roughness. Link to thermal paste theory. You can check your light to see if it’s there and spread out evenly. Unscrew the bezel, carefully turn the light over to drop the reflector out. Keep it clean. Undo the 2 screws preventing the led from spinning and I believe the wires are long enough to look under it.
Okay, sounds like a defective driver. You should contact Banggood. Once they get back to work they will probably ask for a video to prove the issue is real. You know how to post videos, right? If not, you can make a short, low resolution video and email to them.
I know how to take them with my phone, will uploading to imgur or something like that work for it, or do they require something specific?
Imgur might work. They may not hassle you about a video, but since they would have to send another $90 light to you, they usually will hassle you. Lol
Well that’s gonna add to the confusion
Yes, research needs to be done.
Thanks for the helpful info. Will adding a bit of thermal paste help with the overall run time on turbo?
I wrote them that I need one asap to get comparable numbers
Doesn’t lifting the LED PCB and screwing it back without cleaning and reapplying the thermal paste create air bubbles?
Yes.
Ideally you’d clean and re-paste properly. If you clamp it down from one side first, it should do a semi reasonable job of avoiding bubbles. Clamping straight down would be the worst, other than crazy stuff like no thermal paste or not clamping down well.
Received mine just now. It had thermal paste. Lifted the PCB and checked this. Did not clean or add anything. Clamped it back down from other side first and then the other too. Heat transfers nicely to the body and no doughnut hole on mine. Stepdown from turbo seems to be a bit over 20 seconds though. Tried with a liitokala 26650 and a molicel 21700. With Molicel was visibly a bit brighter.
No, thermal paste helps keep the led from overheating and dying.
I think it is a non-worry issue. Pressure from the reflector should create good metal to metal contact. I see no need to clean and reapply. Just having paste is good. LEDs are pretty robust. Computer CPU’s are not so robust.
PS, the screws are for anti-rotation, not clamping down. The reflector is what applies downward pressure.
Just ran it for 8 mins at max ramp. External temp was 53°C (room 22.6°C). Internal was 61°C. There’s definitely some kinda issue with the driver cause on turbo I’m only getting 20 seconds it doesn’t even get warm.
On the above 8 min test, what did you set the thermal limit to? Did it function like it should?
There are ways to trick the thermal settings to make the exterior get hotter if that’s what you want.
As far as Turbo, that generates a lot of heat quickly, so time plays a factor. There is always going to be a time lag between the inside of the light heating up to when than heat gets to the exterior. Toykeeper generally sets up Anduril to read the rate of heat increase so as to anticipate when it needs to start ramping down. I dont know if Astrolux asked her to do a Anduril build just for this light or if they just grabbed a version from a different light and flashed it to the FT03S.
Let’s hypothetically say they grabbed the Anduril build from the S43 (similar 3 channel design) and used that on the FT03S. That build was probably set up to reduce power sooner when the temp rise is fast due to the light being so small. It heats up quick.
So if they used that build for a bigger light, we might be seeing the software reacting too soon as far as reducing output.
The thermal stepdown software is never going to be all that accurate in the first place since it thermistor is built into the MCU. So we just have to accept this. Maybe in the future we will have remote temp probes we can put on the mcpcb or the body of the light.
I sent Toykeeper a PM to see what she knows about this lights Anduril build.
We did just have a situation with the Astrolux MF01 mini where the temp sensor reduced output way too soon only when at the top of the ramp. On that driver the MCU was directly on the other side of the board from a 7135 chip. Top of the ramp activates these chips and they get pretty hot so the heat was transferring to the MCU. It was a small design flaw in the driver layout. To fix this a user machined a heatsink to soak up the heat from the 7135 chips.
In the FT03S, we are having a different issue, but maybe the FET is on the opposite side of the board as the MCU? I can’t find any driver pictures although I swore someone posted some.
The thermal limit was set to 75 and it didn’t step down which is good cause it hadn’t reached that temp yet. Turbo steps down fast but if the batteries voltage a bit low so the output is under about 75% I can run if for about 4 minutes without any problems. Seems like it’s a similar problem to the MF01 mini. Hopefully there’s an easy way to fix it even if it involves but another part like with the MF01 mini.
Would setting the ambient temp falsely to trick the light into thinking it’s colder work? Would this be risky for the led?
Here’s a screenshot at 16:32 from ZozzV6’s video SBT90.2 hype train. Is the Astrolux FT03S worth triple price than FT03? - YouTube
It’s easy to do this. To avoid risk, hold the light and turn off if it starts to get too hot. The led should be able to handle it.