Roche F6 hacking

And another D'OH! I just realized why the cap/diode piggyback version didn't work, I totally forgot that one still needs a 10uF cap in the original spot. So, effectively, I never did either the V01 or V02 version fixes correctly, so it still may work with one of those and without the gate resistor.

Good. While that’s a “DOPE!!” type moment, I bet it makes you feel waaay less crazy, right?

The F6 tail spring sucks donkey balls. It needs to go away unless you like adding resistors to your lights. With a DD driver I don't want to think about how hot the stock springs will get.

Cut a copper round to the same size or a little smaller than the stainless plug.

Before removing the spring, mark the spot to cut so that when reinstalled it won't overlap at the ends.This part needs to go back in to fill in the groove, otherwise the copper round can shift out of center.

Stick the spacer ring back in the groove. Once in it can stay there, shouldn't ever have to worry with removing it later.

File down the copper until it'll fit inside the spring-ring-filler thing, it has to sit flat on the lip at the bottom of the bore.

Solder on your favorite spring, drop in the new spring plate, add a little silicone grease down in the corner between the copper and the bore, and hammer the stainless plug back in. It's not that tight, but it seems to be tight enough that it shouldn't need Loctite or anything of the sort... if yours is a bit loose, some Loctite wouldn't hurt anything. The electrical connection will be between the copper plate and the tube, so anything you put on the other side won't affect that part.

Helios has done gone missing. :_(

Nothing succeeds like success, or so I've heard.

Close-up of the fix. Of course, as with nearly everything, once you've figured it out it's simple.

By the way, this is NOT a good combo. It's OK on a normal low-drain cell, but stick a 25R in it and the li'l 219B turns blooooo. It's been a really long time since I've seen that happen, with any LED.

I checked your diagram. Looks like this is the move-the-cap-before-the-diode fix after all, right? What did it turn out was the problem with that fix the first time around?

I’m posting a link to your post over in Mattaus’s Medusa thread, he recently torched a 219 DD IMR cells so he’ll be a little interested in more evidence that you “shouldn’t do that”, heh.

Yep, cap on B+ instead of Vcc.

The first attempts were a pile of fail, between not checking to see if the switch bracket was actually ground, and using a 1uF cap instead of 10uF, and then to top it off, trying the cap with the diode piggybacked but forgetting it still needed a second 10uF at the original C1 spot.

Gotcha, sounds like a normal evening at the workbench for me (hooking things up all kind of crazy and then realizing it later).

I’m glad you got it working now, and no smoke came out!

I think I know what happened with the blooo Nichia... and it's another D'OH!

I ran out of the 10* TIRs and re-used the original reflector. But I forgot that my XP-to-XM adapter centering pieces are really really REALLY thin, the flat the reflector sits on is only around .010-.012" thick. These F6's originally used the semi-transparent butterfly centering pieces, and those are around .035" thick on the flat part. I completely totally utterly forgot to do anything to compensate for the dramatically thinner spacer, and the design of this light makes the stack height there critical.

The lens o-ring sits on its own little shelf around the OD of the reflector, so even with no reflector in the light the bezel & lens compress the o-ring, and the bezel feels nice and snug when you screw it down. The MCPCB+insulator+reflector have to be tall enough to clamp it all together, yet not so tall that the o-ring under the lens doesn't get compressed enough to seal. Get it wrong and heat transfer goes all to shit. Which is exactly what happened. When I swapped the 219B for the XPG2 I used a different, thicker centering piece and never gave any consideration to the effect on the stack height. Which is why the XPG2 handles a 25r just fine, but the 219B didn't.

The 219B will survive DD from a 25R, which I should have known since I have a Kung (so one cell per LED) with 219Bs on the same 16mm Sinkpads and I only run that light on 25Rs, and it doesn't turn blue. Because in that light, the four MCPCBs are clamped down nice and tight by the Kung's center screw from the pill to reflector. Sheesh!

The machined step in the head is just to locate & center the 3XP board, it's cut deeper than where the top surface of the plug/spacer will end up.

I’ve just received F6 that I’ve ordered from FT but it seems to me to be the same as the one on banggood.
It has memory and my biggest problem is that I can’t find any lens for low battery indicator, and I don’t want it without that.
Can I turn it back or ask for refund?
Here are some pictures:

P.S.
Does the one from banggood has that low battery indicator or no?

Here is the difference:

Black shadow makes the F6 also and has the same driver pictured above. Their version has 4 little resistors and one missing.

Any ideas on how to gain more output out of this driver? Resistor changes?

Bridge the bank of resistors at the bottom. Output will be limited then by the internal resistance of the FET (identified & link to datasheet earlier in the thread).

The BG F6s I got do have the fiber optic pickup for the battery indicator, but the cheaper version of the driver has the indicator LED right beside the switch which is all the way on the opposite side of the driver (lens is located directly over the bank of sense resistors), and it's not easily visible when on. It does at least function, tested with a single CR123+spacer.

Well shit. So there's no known source for the version I got first from Fasttech? The lesser versions from BG aren't any cheaper, I was going to buy a big pile of the 'good' ones from FT and use them as hosts, but now...

So just remove all the resistors from the bank of 4 or 5 and replace with solder? Maybe I should swap main led for a noctigon?

Yes, that's a given... direct drive + LED on aluminum = bad.

The resistors don't have to be removed, just add a jumper over them. There's even a blank spot you can use off to one side if you don't want to go over the top. Use a piece of scrap copper cut to roughly the same size as the resistors.

The SD01 version I got from Blackshadow solarstorm does not have the fiber optic pick up. The led is next to the side switch. And the SD01 only has 4 resistors instead of 5

What does it matter about the number of resistors? They are all in parallel. The total resistance of whatever resistors are present is what determines the output current. Four 1 ohm resistors in parallel is exactly the same resistance as a single 0.25 ohm resistor. If you are going to bridge them anyway it wouldn't matter if the pads had all been left blank and the stock output was zero amps.

I have a few questions:
Do you have any idea how can I use that led for low voltage warning?
Should I drill a hole and put some other rounded red led there?
How did you removed the front glass, how can I open it there to get to the emitter?

@phsinvent
On that link they say that it has:
“custom-setting brightness level on High mode.”
How can you change brightness on High mode?