Samsung 30Q Found Dead in my FW3TI/CU

At least the mystery part of this has been resolved, though. A lesson to all to learn from.

I found my FW3A on in my pocket after hanging up my pants at end of day, several times, on low, before I developed the habit of unscrewing the head a half turn every time I put it away.

“Why are your pants glowing?” is not the best question a flashlight fan can hear from a stranger.

Fw3a has no lvp?

I guess not. Is there a way to tag someone in a post? I’d like to ask TK

’oogled that:

Interesting that the LVP failed here

From the heat?

should measure that bat with a DMM

if there is an issue with the LVP, thats pretty inportant

so whats the standby current drain

How do I do that? It’s a mule right now so I have access to the LED terminals. Just put my multimeter on them?

If the cell got hot enough the internal safety cutoff could have been triggered.

CSI Florida??

Unscrew Tailcap and meaure current between tube and negative cell terminal.

But it’s unlikely this drained the cell imo.

Yeah, the melted optic and glow gasket tell a different story but I’m curious to test it though.

I messaged ToyKeeper with the hopes that she might be able to tell me if I have a bad light.

It seems to be working now but maybe I will keep it mechanically locked out as I thought I had electronically locked it out last time I used it.

That light can’t be mechanically locked out. All that does is cut off the switch control, but the rest of the light (i.e., the mcu) is still powered and functional.

Maybe it’s just me, but if this light melted down on you, I’d want to make 100% sure that it was something careless I did, and not something the light might decide to do on its own again.

I recall there was a “melting down” problem with the Emissar D4v2 in muggle mode, which runs the same firmware. Perhaps this is related? Let’s hope not.

Whoa. Good thing it didn’t catch fire and spew toxic chemicals all throughout your entire house!

It was in the door of my truck. I’m still not 100% sure of what happened because I think I locked it out.

I’ve had that switch get stuck before but it was usually right when the battery went in. The LVP or thermal stepdown should have prevented what happened anyway though so I’m worried about that light now.

:smiley:

(@Watermanchris - inside joke)

Like the man said:

and the question is thrashed in more than a few subsequent comments in that linked thread, including a warning about having a loose sliver of metal in the wrong place cause a rapid battery discharge.

Wellp, I’ve certainly had a few incidents of hot-pockets before…

I’ve also had lights that perfectly locked-out with the slightest turn, suddenly have “gaps” (ano probably worn through) where it’d still make contact at various points of unscrewing.

What I tend to do is put the light on, then unscrew to where it just turns off, then give it a further fractional-turn unscrewing, and wiggle to make sure it doesn’t turn on, then switch off at the switch. That’s with mechanical switches. All bets are off with eswitched, as they might be reconnected to power, just not automatically turn on.

A multimeter will be needed to get any useful details for diagnosis.

First is measuring the cell voltage to find out how far it was discharged.

If the cell got below ~2.8V or ~2.7V or so, there’s probably something in the light bypassing the driver and allowing current to flow even while the light is off. This has happened a few times that I’m aware of, with a stray bit of metal connecting parts which aren’t supposed to touch. Basically, if the factory didn’t keep things clean enough, this can happen.

So next would be putting in a good cell and measuring standby current. This can generally be done at the tail end with the tailcap off. One probe goes on the back of the cell, and the other goes on the body tube’s threads. Standby current should be 0.030 mA or lower.

About the melted parts, that could have happened while unattended if the button was pressed, or it could have happened during normal use in a turbo mode, without noticing until later. It’s hard to say. I don’t actually have any glow gaskets, but it may not be a good idea to use turbo with one of those installed.

Whatever happened though, it’s not at all related to the issue the D4v2 had with muggle mode. That was never relevant to anything except one specific batch of the D4v2.

It would still be nice if Lumintop used newer firmware though. As mentioned earlier, a stuck-button protection feature was added, and it might have been helpful in this case.

Lol. Yeah, then he could sue for a new phone.