Roche F6 hacking

Probably a silly question, but did you remember to put the gasket back between the reflector and emitter?

Could the spring slide off the button and short the tube?

What’s hidden under the retainer? Is it a secret?

Dedicated F6 direct-fit driver? Some other driver piggybacked onto something else?

Under the retaining ring is an rgbw driver from dr jones. I added some chips to the spring side of the driver so I had to mill out some of the underside of the retaining ring. Everything is still in the same place though. Only difference is that there is an extra layer of chips under the ring.

I fit the battery tube again using a thin insulator over the retaining ring. This kept the battery from shorting. I just can’t figure out why others havnt has the same problem. As it is for me, most batteries will make a short without the insulator there so I’m wondering if I didn’t assemble correctly.

For anyone who has an f6, is the little white insulator ring that is right around the spring contact button free to push in along with the button? On mine it is. If it were held in place, it would keep the battery away from the ring. But I can’t see how it could be held in place. Even if I glued it, it wouldn’t hold the pressure of tightening the battery and tube.

Sorry, I am normally not able to read at this time of day so my writing may not be clear.
Thanks for your help!

Don’t have my F6 with me, @work, but I only use high performance flat tops in this light - would never consider using a button top, so I’m not sure how that white insulator ring works on my setup - I never had any troubles though.

I use a very very stiff spring on the driver under the stock brass button. The squat beefy Nanjg 105C spring. It’s not quite compressed far enough to get coil bind but it’s close to it. I only use flat top cells.

The anodizing on these lights is very good, so there is (or should be) no electrical connection through the threads, only through the bare non-anodized face of the battery tube and the brass driver retainer. I think you fixed the short by making sure there’s no way to get -BAT connection to the rest of the circuit.

Yes I think this did the trick. There has to be something that I changed for this to happen. Idk what though.

I was lucky. Normally I use a half drained Xtar protected battery for testing. This time however, I used a Sanyo 18650b unprotected because I gave my last protected cell away. After the event when the battery cooled down I checked the voltage. 255mv left in the cell. I completely drained the cell from a short circuit in less than 30sec. I’m thankful that nothing serious happens and I will be ordering some more protected cells.

…do you think I can revive this cell or did I ruin it for good?

Personally I’d call that cell toast and walk away.

It takes about 20 seconds to grab your meter and check between B+ and GND before you apply power the first time. You’d be amazed how many times a problem is discovered even when you ‘know’ everything is perfect.

Ok. I’ll lay him to rest like a sick family pet… Maybe I’ll keep him on my desk a bit longer. He was my best and favorite cell :-((

You’d think that ‘learning the hard way’ would eventually teach me this lesson. No luck yet. :-/

Strange, my F6s never had an issue with that, even though I used cells with a quite large (in diameter) button top, unprotected. The white plastic insulator can be pushed in. Maybe you cell was longer and pushed up with more force?

Yes. The cells are not longer, but I changed the spring in the tail and it is a much tighter fit. Maybe there is more room in stock form and the stock spring in the tail was much more loose than the driver spring. This would keep the cell from compressing the driver spring to the point of shorting out. I might have to take the tail apart again and adjust the spring. That’s not a fun task on this light, but doable. Either way, I’m now going to keep an insulator on the retaining ring. No more accidents. :-/

Well. I’m terribly disappointed right now :frowning: I’m afraid that the battery short may have damaged the driver. I have it assembled now with no response to the button. I also tested with removing the battery tube. I connected it straight from the driver to a power source.

Now I need to disassemble the head. Getting all the wires through the holes was difficult so I was planning on not having to do that again. Im also afraid that I damaged the driver when adding Amc chips. Adding the chips went well so I’m not sure. This is the point in a build where you just need to put it down for a couple days. But dr jones is playing fun games related to this driver so he is making that difficult also :wink: I’ll do some thinking, then take it apart.

Hi folks, does anyone know where I might be able to buy a new switch for the F6 driver? I have looked at RS, but can’t find a similar switch. Any help with this is much appreciated.

The Helios driver has it’s own switch. comfy published the complete parts list, think it was a DigiKey cart list wayyy back. Did you look at posts #20 and #21? Not sure if it helps. Dunno what RS is… If you can’t order from DigiKey in the UK, maybe you can at least use them as a resource to search for one?

Need to know which version driver first. The early stock driver and the Helios driver use one type (http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/MJTP1117/679-2400-ND/1795496), the cheaped-out 7136 driver uses a smaller one.

Thanks for the help, Digikey seem to have a much larger range than RS. I will have to see about ordering from them.

Out of curiousity, why do you have a 300-pixel-tall 1-pixel-wide image in your signature?

<p><img src="http://73.203.218.184/bort.png"></p>

comfychair has a large signature so that we'll complain so that comfy can laugh at us.