FW3A Troubleshooting / FAQ

I’ve posted before about my fw3a stepping down to soon @40-50*C. , well I undid the bezel & took the optics out & noticed a discoloured led ,when the light is on moonlight it was showing a blue tinge , & I’ve been noticing it getting extremely hot to the touch whilst on turbo but also only reading 45*C when cold & about 54-55*C when warm when the thermal regulation turns the light down sharply ,now I have the optics off I can now see the FW smoking quite badly , I’ve emailed neal & told him. I thought I would take a video of it to show him & whilst I was videoing it I managed to catch it stop working ,it’s actually melted the solder on the black wire. Here’s the video

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MOXaQUa2t-4

I’m getting this error when trying to view it:

“An error occurred. Please try again later. (Playback ID: nhuq-WC4H53FCJPL)
Learn More”

So am I , I don’t know what I’m doing :person_facepalming:

Change the video tag from
video:http://youtube.com/watch?v=https://youtu.be/MOXaQUa2t-4
to
video:http://youtube.com/watch?v=MOXaQUa2t-4

I just did , thanks :+1:

No problem.

Regarding your flashlight: oof, that looks sketchy. Can you share a picture of the MCPCB?

Was that ‘candlelight mode’ Nev??
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Complete with smoke…… :person_facepalming:
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Something ain’t right for sure…… :frowning:

See, this is what happens when thermal paste application isn’t adequate.

Factory step down temp is 45°C.

On turbo it will get very hot, very fast. Mine steps down after 15 seconds with a 30Q. It stepped down after 12 seconds when the stock ambient calibration was off.

You never want to run a light (any light) at high power with nothing pressing the mcpcb to the head. The pressure is needed to transfer the heat and prevents the leds from burning up.

The smoke in your video is probably the flux or maybe the wire insulation burning because the mcpcb over heated due to insufficient pressure to the head.

Your original issue of a blueish led on moonlight is quite odd. It might have been due to that led not being reflowed properly, but it’s hard to say for sure.

It was Turbo.

Paste has nothing to do with it. You have to have pressure pushing the mcpcb into the head. No pressure, no contact.

I feel like we’re living in the early years of a world in which everything we use has a user-programmable operation interface.

It was my attempt at a joke… :wink:

It’s great, huh? :confounded:

I was just looking at a bmw motorcyle (F750GS Adventure Tourer) and the dang thing has push button preload adjust on the rear spring. Push the handle bar joystick and the darn bike raises and lowers hydraulically! Crazy! Not to mention the big lcd screen with all it’s fancy features. Geez, my bike is from 1986. Lol

It helps that computronium has recently become relatively small and cheap, and so has circuit printing. Many tasks don’t need more than a few MHz on the control chip, or more than a few KB of instructions, so all it needs for a brain is a fifty-cent chip the size of a small toenail.

Yes it was turbo but you can see it was only on for a few seconds before smoking & the light was cold at startup , it’s actually melted the solder on the black wire , mine will ( would have ) always step down when it reached 45*C from cold & 55 when warm whatever thermal limit I put it on , out of the box the step down was almost instant. The dodgy led has only been happening since 24 hours ago ,since the dodgy led ,although it still did work you could clearly see that only two of them works on full power ( like car head beams)

Very interesting, my flashlight lives his own life, it can turn on an off without me. Happend a few minutes ago, it stood on the table near me and suddenly swithed on. It’s kind of…disturbing.

I had the exact same thing happen with my fireflies rot66. Two or three times it just decided to turn on, and then eventually it changed to the switch just being always on which makes the light inoperable. I would email Neal and see if he can send you a replacement switch since it is easy to replace on the FW3A. Hopefully Neal/Lumintop have better warranty support than fireflies.

:open_mouth: . That is somewhat “disturbing” for sure. Keep us posted on any more ’magical events’… :person_facepalming: … as well as the outcome. Good luck finding the cause… :+1:

@ Random Dan….

It had slipped my mind but your post above about your Fireflies rot66 jarred my memory.

One of my Fireflies E07’s turned itself on a couple of weeks ago. I just happened to be looking at the lit up Auxiliary LED’s one night as it lay on a bedside table & the light just magically came on … :open_mouth:

I was surprised to say the least & started right then manually locking out all my E07’s.

So I’ll be interested as to what causes this as well. :+1: