I was able to get the drivers out of all three Emisars. I made all three of the changes below at the same time, so I don’t know for sure how much each of them contributed to the success:
- I used a blow dryer to heat up the driver.
- I carved a chopstick down so it just fit through the hole in the head - this was sturdier than the skewer I tried previously.
- I used a pair of pliers to tap on the end of the chopstick.
Unfortunately, the D4 driver was damaged in the process - I broke off the R5 resistor. Having no SMD soldering experience, I didn’t have any luck reattaching it. After a few tries, I noticed that both the end contacts had came off the resistor, which means there was nothing for solder to stick to. You can see one of them still on the solder pad in the pic below, on the right pad.
I contacted Richard at Mountain Electronics, and he had a single spare driver on hand he was willing to sell me, so I will be getting the light going again soon. Richard mentioned that his MTN-22DDm driver works in the Emisars as well - good info in case anyone else breaks something removing their driver. Richard mentioned he had some difficulties getting the drivers out as well; he had to reflash about 150 lights from the first run of the D4, and he ended up with 4 non-working drivers.
The D1 and D1s are both running (a slightly tweaked) Andúril now, and hopefully the D4 will soon join them.