Last night I left my LM-10 on until the head got quite hot (this required me double-clicking to re-activate turbo after rampdown).
After several minutes of this I noticed the light was no longer shutting off completely. All the controls worked fine, but in the āoffā position, all 3 LEDs were still lit at a very low level. Lower than the moonlight setting.
My first thought was a bad 7135 chip. I swapped the driver for one from an FW3A, but it still wasnāt working properly. The light was still on when it should be off, except now it was brighter than before. It turns out the driver was fine. The problem was the star.
The problem was this:
When I ran the light until it got really hot, excess solder under one or more of the LEDs melted.
Pressure from the optic, then pressed the LEDs into the star. This caused some of the solder under at least one of the LEDs to spread sideways and bridge to the center ground pad. Initially, this bridging was tiny so the light output was very low. After the driver reinstall, things moved again and the bridging was more severe. This explained why it was brighter after the first attempt. The solution:
Removed the star and LEDs. Used a vacuum suction pump to remove all excess solder from the LED pads on the star, then reflowed the LEDs.
During reassembly I also removed the stock thermal compound and replaced it with Arctic Silver 5. Not sure it will help, but it is my standard practice to apply fresh thermal grease any time I remove a star. And itās especially important with a hot-rod like these lights.
Now the light is fixed and works fine. But one caution is it probably isnāt a good idea to constantly override the temperature rampdown on the lights with a titanium head. These lights look and feel great ā¦ and I like them much better than lights with a copper head, but titanium isnāt the most practical material for removing heat from the star.
Unfortunately the shipping from China made it impractical. If youāre ordering another light, though, you might be able to get them to include some parts.
Are you talking about the FW3A? It does pull a lot of amps. Either type of battery is fine. A 35E will pull less amps than the 30Q which means slightly less output on Turbo, but you can run Turbo a bit longer before it heats up. I would just use whatever cell you have or whichever is cheapest.
when off, hold on button for moon mode and let go and it stays on moon mode. Then you press and hold again and it ramps up. This doesnāt happen with mine.
The issue is I hold down the button to go to moon mode and as soon as I let go, it jumps up to the level above moon mode. As a result it wonāt stay in moon mode.
I recently installed a 18350 tube on my FW3A, running an ICR 900mAh 18350 cell. Seems fine, but Iām wondering if thereās a recommended 18350 cell to use with this light. Any suggestions?