Q8 modding

I wasn’t hallucinating. :+1:
I swear I saw another post with glue on the tail PCB screws. Paged all the way back to my Q8 arrival post, scanned it over and no joy finding it. 45min I quit. I am glad you found glue for my own sanity.

Thanks. It might be dirt from the tube which makes it look worse than it is. Time will tell anyway.

Yea, I thought you were nuts, but...

Actually I've seen the same thing on just one screw hole on a couple other Q8's, but more mildly applied, but now that I saw a bad case, it's clearly used on the other Q8's, but not as much. Between that and the sand :FACEPALM: .

Now I did see a bump on 2 lights I modded with replacement screws on driver and tail PCB, solder on the spring side of the tail screw hole rings, cleaning up of the PCB to battery tube contact, and applying NO-OX-ID to the contacts. the bump was only about 200 lumens though, at 30 secs.

Adding the spring bypasses now should be a bigger bump.

More like just around 4. One side of my driver is very wore and the exact opposite side it is making “some” slight contact. I’ve stared at the board until my eyes hurt and there is in no way continuous contact all the way around. I think I may take some sandpaper flat on a glass surface then smooth up the face of the battery tube.

Also Tom E:
I made a post about glue on my tail pcb screws as well. It wasn’t very hard, more like sticky/gummy. I just took a shop rag with some rubbing alcohol and cleaned up all of the surfaces. I need to open the flashlight head hole in my approximation shoebox so I can see if any of these changes are boosting my brightness or if it was all for nought. You seemed to have really bad luck with your screws, I was very cautious removing mine due to your warnings, but they all are in good shape. Someone must have been a little too heavy-handed when screwing yours down.

So what do you do to get the tail PCB out?
Does it unscrew?
Push out from inside the battery tube?
Shake really hard?

I’m still waiting for mine (package in MI but fedex changed expected delivery from 9/21 to 9/25) but based on the ground contact issue I plan to do what I did with my Chimera - form a piece of 12 awg copper wire into a ring to fit into the space between the threads and driver, pound it with a hammer to thin and widen it, sand the flattened surfaces, and use it as a retainer/contact ring between the driver and battery tube. The end of the tube may require a bit of sanding to position the o-ring correctly and adjust alignment of the flats on the tube with the head as desired but it worked nicely on my Chimera. Good contact all the way around and enough output from the xhp70.2 on the wall 12 ft away in a room lit by a 60w equivalent ceiling light to make me squint when I touch the fwd clickie tailswitch.

Been wanting to get NO-OX-ID but never think bout till I could use it. Buddy uses it in his Auto repair for bad connections. It eats up the green. But he said its pricey.
I did also use an M2.5 tap to clean out the tail holes and get glue and anodize out. I did find the sand powder in the driver screw holes. The 1/8th in drill works well for the driver holes and the screws aren’t bottomed out before tight on that size hole.

Thanks Jtm94, now I recall the user name. Can I have my 45min back?

I’m Not Crazy!

I’m Not Crazy!

I’m Not Crazy!

Really… I’m not.

Unscrew the cap off the back end, 4 Phillips screws and it falls out.

Has anyone with pcb design experience considered designing a replacement switch board? It might be the quickest fix. Option of 2 or 4 emitters would be nice and would help reduce apparent uneven output and allow color blending or additional switch lighting features like battery state indicator with a supporting driver/firmware. I’ll be ordering I ordered a 10 color 200 piece lot of 0603 emitters so I’ll have a few to spare.

I ordered a couple of multi color packs a couple years ago. I've been doing these indicator LED's for years now in flashlights. If you want to independently control multiple LED's, that requires some extra hardware - we are I/O pin limited, each LED would take an I/O pin, unless you can add some sort of multiplexer perhaps.

My tailcap and driver screws were screwed on very tightly.
They came off easily after I touched the heads of the screws for about a minute with the tip of a very hot soldering iron.
I also found stuff on my tailcap screw threads which was removed with a fine wire brush.
Since I do not have a tap I reinserted the screws and removed them.
More stuff came out and was cleaned.

I stuck a piece of tyre inner tube to the base of the light with silicone rubber to protect it when tail standing on rough surfaces. e.g when changing tyres.
I used silicone because the rubber can be removed without damaging the Q8.

Updated the Q8 thread OP with:

TWEAK

On some Q8 lights there can be a sandblasting powder residue under the tailpcb and in the screwholes for the tail pcb mounting screws.

On some Q8 lights there can be some sort of glue residue in the screwholes for the tail pcb mounting screws.

No worries it is not conductive, but that does mean there can be bump in output achieved when removing and cleaning it. The screws are very tight, USE A MATCHING SCREWDRIVER AND RUBBER BAND BETWEEN SCREW AND SCREWDRIVER TO AVOID STRIPPING!

Thorfire will clean better during the rest of the production.

CHECK

Answer. yes some lube is very likely required, please add your favorite flavor. Good point about tube, please use file and/or sandpaper to smoothen things out if too rough for your liking.

Again, some screws are clearly stripped before you even touch them. I've encountered a couple screws stripped in both directions, more stripped only in the CW direction. Overall though, it seems more are good than bad. I have a large sample size (9 pieces) to review.

This is the condition they were in as installed, all 4 on the right, left one is good for reference:

This is the glue remnants:

After cleaned up:

…Even the ‘good’ one on the left looks bad to me… No wonder they get stripped - there does not seem to be much surface area for the screw driver head to act properly?

That’s part of the problem. It looks like a phillips that is a little wallowed out. Reports are that it’s actually a JIS.

I found as well glue on the tail in the threads and one light the surface between PCB and metal the tother a big chunk of glue at the outer tube wall

I scratched the glue off and cut all threads again to get the glue out
now the screws get in without any resistance

my brass rings had also some black stuff on the outer diameter where the batteries make contact

Had some fun again last night. Had to use a rotary cutting wheel to create my own slot for a flat-blade to get it out - wasn't easy. The screws are so low, the board tracing of course gets cut a little but I was pretty careful, just took quite a while. They are gone now - all those are replaced with star drive pan heads now - M3 x 5mm (https://www.boltdepot.com/Metric_machine_screws_Star_drive_pan_head_Stainless_steel_18-8_(A-2)_3mm_x_0.5mm.aspx).

They barely clear the end cap, but I don't care - just want something reliable that works as it should.

It can’t be easy for the poor operators, trying to get the M3 screws started in the too-tight driver PCB hole. Then trying to get them started in the metal body, after they have tapped their way through the PCB, with no hole-clearance for alignment. Add in some sandblasting grit as well …

I can imagine the muttered curses, and time-pressure to meet productivity targets.

Then it seems some torches are having glue added (maybe old habits die hard, some are just doing what they were trained to do on standard mass-produced torches). Did we ask for them not to be glued ?

Perhaps the screws are laptop type with JIS heads but the screwdrivers are not, perhaps some screwdrivers are just worn out (should be regularly inspected and replaced as necessary, not just wait for an operator to ask for a new one) etc. etc.

Maybe final assembly is even sent out to a number of “piecework” operators (used to be common practice in China).

Result: chewed heads.

None of this matters much to me, as long as the threads in the metalwork are good, and I can get the original screws out, without too much bother. Heating screw head with a soldering iron first if glue is suspected is a good tip, particularly if you want to re-use them, and don’t want to risk chewing up a good head yourself. If a screw seems unduly tight I also give the screwdriver a good rap on the handle with a soft hammer first to try to break it free before bearing down and going for it.

Believe it or not, I'm seeing worse things with screws in Haikelites - there I get real stripped body threading.

At least for me a JIS J1 driver worked perfectly, but mine weren’t badly stripped at all to begin with.