I was toying around and lego-ing a bunch of solarforce l2p and l2m parts and was testing odd combos to see what batteries fit and i accidentally hit the switch and it turned on for 1 second and then shut off on its own. led and board dont look fried to the naked eye so i was wondering whats up? i knew feeding double the voltage is stupid but i was just tinkering around and if i found a length combo i liked i would have bought another drop in that handles up to 18v. i just dropped the light and it happened to have a non tailstanding forward tactical switch so it turned on when it touched the ground.
anyway the modes still sorta work and the led is on constant ultra moonlight. like .001 lumen
any ideas? i tried searching here and a few other flashlight forums and havent found much.
i hope its the driver so i can send it to e1320 and have him put his custom board in.
the led looks OK and all the lines light up. like i mentioned it still looks fine its just on a really low moonlight mode.
i dont mind if the drop in is completely broken, but if its just one or the other id like to take the opportunity to mod it or salvage what i can for other lights.
I think that there is a pretty good chance that the LED is alright. It might have gotten slammed with lots of amps for a few milliseconds before the driver cooked, which might reduce it's lifetime - but you can still probably get lots of hours out of it. New driver, and I'll bet it will work just fine.
Answer: It is very bright for a second then dies. Sounds like what happened to the DD free light. It was a 2aa light with components meant for a 1aa light
Had pretty much the same happen to a cheap-o light. Before: DD on High. After: Moonlight only. MCU and one resistor were dead. The LED itself can handle a lot..
But I'd rather buy a complete dropin from E and use the one you just killed to toy around. Maybe buy some driver from KD and solder it in by yourself. Sooner or later, almost every flashaholic has to learn how to solder. :)
