Ah, thank you! I didn’t realize the bezel unscrewed.
First post here. Received my fw3a today and I’m having problems already. Everything worked great at first. Unscrewed the head, popped in a freshly charged Sanyo GA cell and starting trying out the ramping up and down. Double clicked to Turbo, nice. Cut light off, put on table bezel down. Was away from the light for around 20 minutes, walked by the table and noticed the light was on. Tried to cut it off with a click and no dice. The switch wouldn’t do anything. Had to unscrew the head almost all the way to get it to cut off. So I pulled the cell out and left it for a couple of minutes, then put the cell back in and screwed the head back on. Light comes on as soon as the spring makes contact with cell. With the head tightened all the way down very firmly it will step ramp up and down through the highest 4 or 5 levels. I can also double click to turbo and out of turbo. That’s it. Tried all of the stuff mentioned in the FAQ with no improvement. Ring is tightened down very tightly to driver, head is tight, tail is tight, threads cleaned, switch pulled out and inspected. Everything seems in order. Suggestions?
It seems there’s a problem with the switch, maybe it’s shorted. Disassemble carefully and be careful not to loose the nubbin.
I’ve disassembled it already. Wiped everything off and reassembled it. Looked ok to me. Anything specific I should look for?
The driver might be off center causing an intermittent short. Remove the head and loosen the driver retaining ring. Wiggle the driver around if possible and make sure the flat notches are lined up. Try to get the driver perfectly centered, then tighten the retaining ring.
The driver does look a hair off center. The retaining ring is super tight though. Already tried to loosen to verify it was tightened down. Used tweezers and thought they were going to cut into my thumbs I was pushing so hard. SMH
Was able to get the retaining ring out and make sure the driver is centered. Still the same symptoms.
Check the metal contact for the switch, remove the yellow tape, remove the metal, clean everything and install it back.
On the old copper prototype (which has ill-fitting parts), I had to manually center the tail PCB while looking down the tube, and then tighten it as hard as I can. It took quite a while to get the thing to work at all. The front end was mostly fine, but getting the tail parts together properly was rather tricky.
If its working, your ok. If your having problems, youll need to put some elbow grease on that retaining ring:)
This part sounds like a short assuming it comes on at Turbo. When the light turns on, is it at Turbo or at a lesser brightness?
If a lesser brightness, then it’s probably not a short in the driver.
You say it only step ramps at the top 4 or 5 levels? No lower levels?
If you switch to the smooth ramping will it go all the way down to moonlight level?
I’m having a hard time figuring out if it’s something in the head or in the tail. It sounds like the head.
What battery are you using, a button top or flat?
He did… 
Oops
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It might be worth trying to loosen the retaining ring and push the driver off center to the left, tighten and try it out. If no change, loosen and push it to the right, tighten.
I think one person said they saw a few metal shavings on the driver. There could also be some excess solder almost touching another circuit. If you have a solder iron you can undo the two wires by the leds and pull the driver out. Brush it off, see if anything is there. Maybe take some pictures.
Believe it or not, just taking a driver out and putting it back in has fixed a few lights for me.
Got the ring out and made sure the notches were lined up and the driver was centered. All is good on that front.
I had so many froggen problems with this light, it’s a love/hate relationship, like a wife that bitches and complains all day long but makes you dinner when you get home.
I’m using unprotected Sanyo 18650GA cells.The light comes on at what looks like 200 lumens. The UI isn’t working at all basically. Just random settings are working. The more I mess with it the weirder it gets. Now I get step ramping in about 20 steps instead of 4 or 5. Still the higher levels only. Still get turbo when I double click. For a little while all I got was momentary at one brightness level. No ramping or turbo.
I’m beginning to feel like that also, lol. It’s a cool little wow light. Wish it would work for me.
I took time to read your issues. I had the exact same problem. Except that it was self induced when I modded it and put it all together again.
Right when I screwed the head on, bam! It turned on. If I tightened the head all the way down with maximum brutus force, nothing - head would stay on and at full turbo speed and get hot. I had to unscrew it quickly.
So I disassembled everything. Realigned the tail cap switch very carefully, ensuring it’s dead center. Cleaned all the contact points so anywhere you see bare aluminum and on threads, clean it. Here I removed the retaining ring and I noticed the driver was a little tweaked. 2 things, the driver wasn’t sitting flush on the plate and it was off center.
I made sure I centered it and held it down while torquing the centering ring. Then I torqued the ring down as hard as I could, making sure it would not move with the pressure of the battery.
Do this and report your findings