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.
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.
Is a very remote possibility, but also check that your flashlights, with electronic power button, are not sensitive to radio frequencies. Let me explain: I, for example, have a flashlight that turns on if it feels the carrier of a walkie talkie; turns on, changes levels, all if I use the nearby W.T. As I repeat it is a remote possibility, rare, among all my flashlights with electronic button only one is sensitive to radio frequency, but I have only 5 or 6 different models (with electronic button) and I do not have the flashlights you are discussing
I haven’t had that happen on a flashlight, but I’ve definitely seen radio devices triggering a response in nearby electronics before. The most noticeable was a particular phone which would produce quite a bit of sound from nearby stereo speakers whenever it received a call… even if the speakers were physically unplugged.
For flashlights, I recall the old Olight S15 was notorious because it would turn on when pointed at a bright light like the sun. The current created by running the LED in reverse was enough to make it think its button had been pressed.
The light-sensitivity thing isn’t really a possibility for FW3A since it explicitly handles that with its “optic nerve” circuit. Radio doesn’t seem likely either, but it seems theoretically possible.
I feel like I remember reading something about the glow gaskets melting in D4s, but I couldn’t find it when I was reading.
I’ve also heard of lights running in turbo until things come unsoldered - is it possible for a short to develop that way? Usually I hear about the + and/or - lead coming undone.
I haven’t used the light in turbo for more than 5 seconds at a time. I baby my lights and mostly use them on moonlight to medium. I have 6 FW3Xs and I have glow gaskets in 3 and this is the first instance of this happening.
It may be a loose piece of metal from machining in there but it has the new retaining ring on the eswitch which I was thinking would be better but this has been my most finicky FW3.
Should I reach out to Neal?
I’m a low voltage electrician/ A/V integrator so I am very familiar with Radio Frequency and EMF/EMR interference. This light has acted up multiple times on me but I just figured it was like my original run FW3As and needed the eswitch to be perfectly positioned in the tailcap to work properly.
Edit
So the version of Andruil that comes on the FW3Xs from Lumintop does not have LVP? I definitely wasn’t aware of that or I would never leave a cell in it.
Just read ToyKeeper’s response and I guess I read it too fast. The driver was likely bypassed by whatever is causing the short. That makes complete sense. I’m guessing it’s just a bad light. It happens. I’m bummed that the optic, glow gasket and trits are fried but I’m guessing Neal/Lumintop will make it right.
I will pull the eswitch apart soon and send pics.
How hard is it to flash the new firmware to all my FW3xs? I believe the newest modded one I got has the newest firmware since it has a Lexel aux board and I can control the aux LEDs.
What is the battery voltage?
It showed 0 on my charger but I will test it with my dmm tomorrow.
Which Crown Caps? Any link?
i’m running my fw3a on the Anduril build from 6/2 and it doesn’t seem to have this.
i think it is a very nice safety feature, so i will need to do another update:D