When I replaced my bad emitter I checked all three, and I will say they all seemed to have more solder under them then they should have. I’ve also never been thrilled with the quality of the solder China uses.
I believe so, but moonlight is probably my most used mode, and because I have a fair number of other lights the annoyance of a light which does not work properly would relegate this to never use land.
That is kind of unacceptable, could have purchased some pretty nice lights for what I have invested in this one.
Reflowed my FW3T polished today.
Removed the LEDs and tested the star. The short from negative driver wire to ground was gone. So the problem was indeed solder shorting under one of the LEDs. Reflowed the LEDs back onto the star and now the light works properly again. It appears to be fixed.
Started seeing a strange inconsistent behavior.
I run my FW3A in stepped ramping. I configured it for 10 steps. It has been working great. But just recently I went to ramp up and found the light cutting out after 5 steps. It would be repeatable too. Double click would go to high. Then click-hold would ramp down in steps to floor. If I then did a click-hold from there, it would ramp up all the way to high. No cut-out. Turn off light. Now, from off, click-hold… and again, up 5 steps then cut out. Not understanding why this is happening. Battery is at 3.9v.
So I thought my switch might be faulty. Then I figured, might as well try out another battery. So I swapped my 18650 with another that was in my other flashlight (Zebralight). It checks in at 4.1v. Problem goes away. It must be the battery.
Is there some battery charge minimum threshold whereby going below it makes for unpredictable behavior?
EDIT: Well, I think it may be the switch. I modified it to make the switch firmer — take out nubbin and install o-ring. It does work. Switch is tighter & accidental activation is much less likely. However, when I went ramping… same problem happened again. And battery checks in at 4.1v. I can get the ramping to work fluidly if I start with ramp down from high. But if I turn off the light and try ramping up, still cuts off at 5th step. Very, very strange.
NUBBIN REPLACEMENTS
Both of my lights have been used by my kids, and inevitably the nubbins got lost and the two lights went AWOL. I managed to get one working again without a nubbin (not knowing that these were the problem when reconfiguring the tail switches) and could not get the other to work at all until now - when I read through this thread and realised what the problem was.
As a result, however, I can let you know that almost all of us have the capacity to make new nubbins, almost perfectly. Find an O-ring of the appropriate diameter and cut through it to make a long rod of it. Then chop off a round slice with a sharp craft knife or razor. It’s the perfect material; not too soft, grippy in the recess, and pliant enough to take the ‘push’.
If you have access to various size O-rings you’ll eventually find the perfect fit, as I did. Keep the remainder of the O-ring for extra nubbins for you and friends. And be warned - the efficiency of the nubbin is very related to the thickness of the slice (and therefore the height when tamped into place). Mine are about 1.5 to 2.00mm thick, I guess. Too much and your light will be permanently on, and too small and you’ll suffer strange flickerings and so on. By the time you’ve sliced your O-ring into bits you’ll have found the right-sized one somewhere.
Nubbin to it. As the man said previously. 
one of my lights does this also—-If you unscrew the head and retighten the problem goes away without changing the battery—I think it has something to do with the switch tube contact to the driver—-the tube either doesn’t stick out far enough or the battery tube itself might be hitting the retaining ring
Interesting. I have tightened & re-tightened the head and it didn’t completely go away. But perhaps there’s some carbon build-up or debris that needs to be cleaned off. That may have inadvertently happened… as I put the nubbin back in & took out the o-ring—now it’s working fine. I’m going to have to try a thinner o-ring as the one I’d been using required a bit too much force.
The switch either works or it doesn’t. Yours works, so it’s not switch related.
What do you mean by cut out? It stays at that level or does all power turn off?
Thanks for clearing that up.
Here’s the behavior:
- From off, press+hold. Light is on at lowest setting.
- Keep pressing, light begins to ramp up.
- With a 10 step configuration, once the light reaches the 5th level, the light turns off while still holding. It’s as if you released the button then single clicked to turn off.
You can keep repeating this, over and over.
However, if you double click from moonlight, you do get turbo (highest). A press+hold will step down all the way to lowest. Then press+hold again, the FW3A ramps all the way up to turbo. No abrupt cut-off. You can keep ramping up/down no problems. But once you turn the light off and try the first steps as described, it will abruptly turn off again.
YET… today, I can’t reproduce this. I could do it yesterday, repeated reliably.
Yep, this is a strange one. One other person had this except it only turned off at max power and Toykeeper thought it might be the MCU rebooting itself (which turns off the light) due to a voltage surge. I think those issues were fixed years ago, though.
All I can think of is a flaky connection in the threads between the tail and head. You might try cleaning the threads to make sure the connection is good. Also make sure the ends are tight.
The fact yours turns off at a middle brightness level and not at max is what makes is strange. IDK.
Does it do it with a 9 or 11 step setting? Maybe there is something strange in your light with that particular setting?
Does it do it with smooth ramping?
I had checked the tube ends to see if there was any debris… didn’t spot any. It did happen with smooth ramping as well. I stated the stepped ramping to report on the “graduated” position. Btw, this was happening with the switch as stock. And initially when I modified it (removing the nubbin and installing an o-ring) it didn’t happen. Then, after a few more tries, it started happening again. I went back to a fully stock switch and then it stopped happening. The first o-ring gave too firm a tactile feeling, so I tried a slightly thinner one and that works much better. No cut-out problem with it.
What’s weird is that when the problem was happening, it was a predictable behavior. At the 5th ramping up step, it would shut off. Didn’t happen at #4 or #6. Anyway, I’m guessing that it must be something to do with the tube. That somehow, if the contact isn’t quite 100%, there must be some sort of voltage drop-off that confuses the Anduril UI.
FW3C just received from illumin today and the switch is DOA. Tried the head with a FW3A tail switch and it works fine. Is this an easy fix or should I send it back. Button on the copper is fixed in place, so nothing came apart.
Just call Illumn directly. They will help you promptly. They are a great small family business!
Is it glued in place? Should be a retaining ring you can remove with some tools.
It’s easy to check the switch with a multimeter. If you hear it click it’s probably okay. More likely is a contact problem with the inner tube. It’s these tolerances that seem to cause a problem in almost every case.
I assume you tried loosening the head, tighten the tail pretty firm, then tighten the head?
Thanks, I had read that before and never had to really tighten the tail that hard. Had to grab a towel and torque it pretty hard. Fired right up - so glad I didn’t have to send it back and thankful to this forum.
I’ve never has to use a towel to get it tight. Was the head loose when you tightened it?
I guess it’s okay because you don’t really have to loosen the tail for any reason. Just undo the head for battery changes.
Head was off the first two times I tried. Just wasn’t holding my mouth right I guess + I didn’t want to twist the clip? All good now.
The inner tube is too short, period. So I took out the clear o-ring that is between the inner tube and outer tube, and the one that keeps the clip
tight against the body and keeps it from from turning. This allowed the tail cap to tighten further than normal, which pushed the inner tube forward more, and now the driver makes contact with the inner tube before the head bottoms out. Works perfectly now, and I dont have to crank the head and tail caps super tight.
Also. Another thing that mad a difference was tightening both the switch and driver retaining rings. They were both loose.
Interesting that you have clear o-rings and that they need to squish “hard” to get good switch contact. My early light has white o-rings and it doesnt seem to squish very much (at least the outer one), just a little to hold the clip. I wonder if this newer clear o-ring is just a tiny bit thicker in cross section or maybe it’s durometer is a bit higher/stiffer? I could see where Lumintop designed the tolerances for the early white o-rings and then later the supplier ran out and had to switch to one “equivalent”, but it’s actually a bit firmer and now we see more fitment and tolerance issues. Just a theory.