BLF A6 FET+7135 Light Troubleshooting and Mod thread

Both of those batteries are excellent and I own and use both and there very little difference. I typically go with 30qs when I have a situation when I need them in series because they are readily available in button top form. For single cell applications there is almost no difference.

Thanks, that is what I thought too.

By the way, does anyone know of a decent 17500 battery I could try? I have a AA flashlight that I want to mod with one of these drivers, but it actually has a 17mm x 100mm battery compartment so it would be perfect for two 17500 bats. Right now I use two eneloops in a 17mm OD tube. The flashlight has a 2012 XML or XML2, I cant remember, but the reflector and lens are of high quality and the driver of my own design. It also had spring bypass surgery. Thinking of a BLF A6 and XPL, but not sure any decent 17500’s exist…

does anyone know where i can get some clear tail switch covers for this light? can only find 16mm ones and i believe i need 14mm

you need 16mm ones like Convoy
the threads and tail boards in both light have same diameter

the hole might be a tiny bit smaller than Convoy, but the switch cover is flexible

A6

S2+

KD has the translucent caps
14mm(D) x 8mm(H) Silicone Tailcaps - Transparent ( 5 pcs )

Thankyou Lexel i did try one from my convoy C8 and found it did fit, but sort of bulged out the top. would prefer a better fit but will use the convoy ones if need be.

Can anyone tell me the Bin of the XP-L used in the A6?

Bin is unknown, but tints are known:

Rather than reading all 883 posts I wish to ask about a problem I have. The light was functioning quite well for maybe a month when all of a sudden I was no longer able to shut off the light via the tail button. I took off the tail and saw what looked like a small area of thread in the tail cap that seemed to be missing some anodyzation OR it had a very small piece of metal shaving debris now wedged firmly between some threads which I cannot get out. I cannot say if this is the cause of the light now not being able to be turned off normally or not.

Any ideas and/or solutions please?

Thank you in advance.

The shortest way

https://www.fasttech.com/p/1576100

One of the comments for that tail switch says:

It is reverse clicky, not forward clicky, so, there is not momentary-on. 17 mm diameter, a standard size.

It seems this may present a problem with the A6, right?

The original switch of A6 is reverse clicky

If your A6 still has the original switch, the biggest problem you will have is changing it
You take out the one you have and put this one in its place
After the change it will work in the same way

The switch mounted on the FT set (Omten 1288) is of better quality than the original A6
The negative is that it comes with a only spring and the A6 has double

All right, I understand. I will buy it and install it and report back on the outcome. Thank you for your help!

New switch arrived today and it was installed. My light now works properly again! Thank you g_sintornillos!

Hi, hoping someone can help.

My A6 is immediately going into low voltage protection mode with a fully charged battery. I’ve tried a couple of Quality batteries (LGChem, Samsung Q30, Panasonic) and they are all the same, so i’ve ruled out a bad battery. I’ve also double checked the voltage of the batteries with a multi-meter and they are ~4.1v so near enough fully charged.
Tried removing the tail cap and directly shorting battery to the tube to turn it on. Still does it so it’s not the tail cap.
I considered replacing the driver, but can’t work out how to get the LED board out (is it call the STAR?)

It seems like a great flashlight and it was for about 2 weeks before it started shutting down constantly.

Any suggestions on how to solve the issue or how to disassemble the light?
Don’t want to throw out a near new flashlight :frowning:

The only thing I can suggest is to make sure the driver retaining ring is tight, the spring in the head is not oxidized, and the body tube end is clean. But you’ve probably tried all that. Other than that, I can only think it’s something in the electronics. Unscrew the retaining ring and take out the driver and replace it?

It is a great budget light. My only complaint about it, which is the same complaint for almost every budget light, is that it is not regulated and dims as the battery voltage goes down. For me, that means that most FET-driven lights are really only good for the top 50% of a battery charge, essentially cutting my battery’s useful capacity in half.

But for $20 or $25, what can you expect? Personally, I’d just buy a new BLF A6 to replace it, but if you’re comfortable messing around with it, replacing the driver is a good bet to try.

It sounds like there’s some large source of resistance somewhere in the head end of the light, or between the head and the tube. As suggested, try cleaning and loosening/tightening everything.

On a different note, the first three modes don’t use the FET at all, so they don’t dim until the battery is almost empty. Anything over ~140 lm uses the FET though, at least partially, and will change brightness with battery voltage. Mode 4/7 only uses the FET a little, so it doesn’t dim very much. This means four of the seven modes keep pretty consistent brightness, and only the top three are really prone to sagging.

Thanks for the suggestions. I have done the “spring bypass” mod to try to improve/reduce resistance where i could. Initially I thought it had fixed it but the victory was short lived.
I’ll take it apart again and confirm the connections are firm.

It definitely steps down through the modes right down to Moon mode.

Update: relocated to its own topic thread: Morse code paddle integration with BLF A6 FET+7135

Okay I’ll start by saying I have ordered this flashlight blf A6 but I’m still waiting for it to come in so I don’t have hands on experience yet. I also ordered the USB interface so I can reprogram it if necessary.

What I’m trying to do is interface it with my Morse code paddle. A morse code paddle is basically a fast way to type Morse code. I’ll try to attach pictures; but long story short there’s two paddles, hold one down and it goes dit-dit-dit hold the other down and it goes da da da hold them both at the same time and it goes dit da dit da dit da ( dit = the shorter or . sound and da = the longer sound or - ) when it alternates it starts with whatever paddle you touched first. If that doesn’t make sense and easier way to say it is there’s two levers and with just two movements you can type any letter. I built this myself I’m not an electronic genius or anything I followed YouTube blindly soldering together what I was told and lo and behold it works. I also had help from Friends.

You’ll see a schematic below basically the paddles make a buzzer beep the morse code out there’s also a connection for headphones which is labeled external speaker and there is also a mosfet it is labeled U2 BS170 there is an auxiliary cable just like a headphone connected to that mosfet there is a picture I’ll attach that shows what it out puts on the cable for when it is keyed and when it isn’t that is making sound and not making sound.

What I’m hoping to do here is make the flashlight flash the code as I type it this is going to be sort of a niche novelty thing not every day so I really don’t want to majorly modify the flashlight or the paddle as it’s normally used connected to my radio for international coms.

What I’m wondering is can I connect the output cable from the mosfet to the driver and it just work that way or do I need to come up with something more complicated like figuring out how to connect the pic leg that drives the mosfet on the paddle directly to the mosfet on the board? I have a magnetic connector ordered I’m hoping to put it on the side of the head of the flashlight and use it to connect whatever wire I have to use so I don’t compromise the waterproofness. I can send more pictures if anything would help let me know and if anyone knows who would be able to help me with the driver interface here please tag them or let them know this is my first post so I really don’t know anyone. I want to thank you all for your help just by existing and sharing your knowledge led me to this moddable driver and the tutorial on how to flash it and that’s why I chose this light and this forum for this project.

Thanks for any help.
Rowe

PS if there are major modifications necessary to the paddles I can build a second board and dedicate it to the flashlight exclusively but it was kind of expensive mostly in shipping of everything so I would rather have something reversible or preferably just using the mosfet driven output switch that is already connected to the auxiliary cable.

Hi all.
I successfully build and flashed two different blf-a6.hex files on my modded c8 and on my triple s2+ to change the turbo timers, but I have an issue.
The medium and the long press require pressing the switch for much more time compared to what it should (0.5s-1.5s and >1.5s respectively). On stock firmware it works fine.
I also flashed the latest blf-a6.hex from the ToyKeeper’s repo and it works fine.
I suspect that it has to do with the off time capacitor values in tk-calibration.h file.
The thing is that I don’t know what values to use.
The drivers are the banggood a6 ones.
Any help will be appreciated. Regards.