BLF A6 FET+7135 Light Troubleshooting and Mod thread

Question 1

I bought two BLF A6s with tint 3D. One works perfectly, and the tint appears to be very close to white in white-wall tests. The other one is broken. Its moonlight mode does not work. In addition, in side-by-side white wall tests with the working flashlight, the tint is distinctly yellow on the broken one. In this test, both flashlights were set to one of the lower modes.

Is it possible that the broken moonlight mode has caused a tint shift?

(I checked carefully, and the emitter on the flashlight that has yellow tint has not been inadvertently dedomed.)

Question 2

Banggood offered 300 points if I am willing to keep the broken flashlight without repair. If I would rather have it repaired, Banggood has offered to send a new driver free of charge. Installation would be my responsibility.

Am I right in assuming that a replacement driver would not include a replacement emitter? What soldering is necessary to install a replacement driver, just the two leads that connect the driver to the emitter board?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

you have two separate problems in your light: the 7135 chip is not soldered correctly or is broken, and the dome of the led is sheared off, it may still be there but it has come loose and that results in tint shift.

You could remove the emitter dome entirely and be happy with the shiffted tint (and improved throw), and you could try to resolder the 7135 chip. But if you're not happy doing that, because there are 2 problems I would just ask Banggood to repair/replace the entire flashlight.

Well, Neal and Banggood never replied to PMs and emails, and I’m stuck with a broken un-useable light. I opened a PayPal ticket, I hope that will get some attention. I’m disappointed though.

Good Day Chenko,

Have you sent your emails to Neal's assistant: heyanqing1@banggood.com

Make sure you include your order number in the email's subject title, and have patience as Banggood is only working with less staff during China National Day holiday.

And remember their english is limited, so adhere to the KISS principle.

Tell them what is wrong, what testing you have done to determine the cause(s), and finally what you want them to do for you.

In my experience, Neal & Banggood have till now done the right thing, and taken care of any issues.

Best Regards,

George

Yeah, I waited, then resent after a week, waited some other days, but nothing.
I did not know about the assistant’s email, nor of his existence to be honest, I’ll give this address a shot.
Thank you!

Neil’s assistant, Professional Guy (lol) replied after just 2 days and my longer tube is on its way.
So give it some more time because Chinese are celebrating National day.

burnsd, you’re right; you’ve written a good summary. Nicely worded. Bugsy and the others who made this happen have heard this all before, more than twice.

Patience. We’re all hoping the people who made the Manker first round parts are not also making parts for China’s aircraft or fission power plants.

The history of the development of how to make interchangeable parts is being repeated in China now. From scratch, apparently.

Ironically, this rediscovery is (we can hope) teaching people who made our parts what they could have learned from history.

As Marx pointed out, history repeats itself, for those who did not learn the history, and repeats “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Our flashlights this round must be the farce. We can laugh so we don’t cry over the imperfections and appreciate the result, imperfect as it is, is wonderful.

So it can be improved.

Marx further wrote there that success happens when those involved “… constantly criticize themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts ….”

Yep.

We’ll see better work coming, to the extent the people at the bottom of the heap there learn this stuff.

And there you have it, philosophy applied to a $20 Budget Chinese flashlight.

I’m not saying we can’t WANT perfection, but if you expect it at these prices there’s some soul searching you need to do…

Edit: Honestly, just being realistic. What lengths do YOU go to for $20?

They replied promptly to my request for a new tube, and I received it last week.

> DBCustom

Chuckle. Hey, I have no objection to “craftsman” one-off creations — that’s art, like you do.

For mass production work, well, that’s where the basic, lowest level skill is turning out interchangeable parts reliably.

Burnsd’s new here, and as you’ve noticed, new folks come in and make the same observations Bugsy36 and the rest of the creative team have heard all too often.

We don’t want to wear down our treasured creative folks, as they’ve done wonders with this light.
They also ended up being teachers about how to do QA and QC. Above and beyond the call. Awesome.

Just saying, this is interesting — Burnsd’s link tells us when interchangeable parts were invented in China (hey, I didn’t know that — did they over there?) Bronze crossbow parts, field-exchangeable. Wow.

What a story that would be if anyone has written it up. And the idea is being reinvented, now, one little shop at a time.

So I applaud everyone for accepting that this round sunk below the threshold for interchangeable parts — and even the cheapest work, maybe especially the cheapest machine tool work — should rise above that threshold.

I want their new trainee machine tool operators — the ones who get assigned to cheap flashlight pieces — to raise the lowest level of skill, and keep improving — so they can make more money, get better jobs, and make things that are much more important than flashlights. Aircraft. Fission plants. Bridges. Trains. Not fall down.

But as I keep saying, I’ve said too much. Again. mmmmmmpfh

I posted this in the other thread.

Thanks THAO916! I’m sorry that in a way I made things more confusing with this thread. Thanks for posting in both!

I’ve been stuck with a DOA BLF A6 since August 24th. I ordered two and one works flawlessly. I was able to take the tail cap from the working light and it makes both lights work. The tail cap from the non-working light will not work on either light. The switch is fine, the contact point is the issue. Neal sent a new tube, which I received yesterday and it didn’t fix the issue. I asked him to send a tail cap to begin with but he said that it was an issue with the tube. The light is still dead…

DJ, send it to me and I’ll fix it for you. Even modify it further if you so desire.

(I can only do this occasionally people, if I were rich I’d offer to fix any that don’t meet your satisfaction, but rich I’m not)

BG just confirmed they will send me a replacement head. I told them there was no need for a entire new head since only the driver is bad, but they insisted.

There is also a small problem with the centering ring being too tall causing it to “turn” the LED when tightening the bezel, but a bit of sanding and a reflow minimized the issue. Meanwhile my A6 remains unused, I’m a bit disappointed since I waited so long and expected a lot from this light, really wanted to see the A6 FW in action.

I’ve been pretty busy lately but I wanted to post that I received another 5a and a bare 3d. I tried to lego the bare with two of my anos to no avail. I didn’t put a caliper to anything but used my knife as a depth guide and the bare tail cap is definitely deeper to the “shelf” that meets up with the tube compared to the others. The bare would have no doubt been a d.o.a. had it been anodized.

I would recommend people first ask for a tailcap and/or new tubes as the tube thread length on mine seem consistent. But not the tailcap depth.

Thanks for all your input thus far my friends!

I guess I’m missing something but it seems to me that it’s less effort to put a few solder blobs on the retaining ring or put a metal shim under the retaining ring to raise it enough to make contact. It’s only a $25 light and if fixing it takes less than 15 minutes then that’s the approach I would take.

I agree. Had mine come in doa -I personally would have. But at the same time I can’t blame people for wanting bg/manker to make it right. I think the idea being that if manker is going to do more business with us (cu/ss lights) they should at the very least test everything that leaves their shop. But in the end…… solder blob/paper clip is way less headache! :wink:

Is there room to add a second retaining ring over top of the first one, to make that contact?
Are the rings a standard size?

I think expecting perfection from a cheap item is unrealistic. Desirable but not usually reality :wink:

Heck I’ve bought many guns that I’ve had to tweak to make work right with the ammo I shoot. And they costed a wee bit more than most flashlights.