I will try that, thank you. The battery only rattles a tiny bit when I shake the torch aggressively. But, all my lights do that, and some more than others.
Ok, I cautiously used needle nose pliers on the springs top and bottom. I will see if the problem goes away, but like I mentioned, it happens occasionally, so if I go a month with no issues, maybe it worked.
Any time you get it working by fiddling with the contacts tells me it’s something to do with the contacts. I would go through and clean all contact points. Both ends of battery tube, end of driver spring, edge of driver, pull out the tail spring and clean both ends, clean the tail cap outer edge plus the notch the spring fits in. Dirt, powder or just oxidation at one point can cause a small amount of extra resistance. You might have 2 or more points of extra resistance and are only cleaning some, but not all.
Also, make sure your springs are pressing tight against the battery. I push my tail cap down 1/4” before the threads engage. Then it compresses more as it threads down so I know it’s got good pressure. I don’t feel the battery sliding at all when I shake it hard up and down.
It certainly can be a problem. Lumintops ODF30 is also a boost driver light and it’s tail spring design used a metal tab. This tab was not very springy and if the light is bumped it gets a weak contact point and you loose Turbo. A lot of folks had this issue. Bending the tab back to get tighter contact fixed it.
The Rofis MR70, also a boost driver light, had issues with not going to Turbo. It was just an issue of weak battery springs or dirty contacts. Sometimes it was the Rofis battery which was protected. Later Rofis switched to an unprotected cell and Turbo lasted much longer.
I think once boost driver lights become more common people will start understanding them better. Just like with FET lights people learned to do spring bypasses to get more lumens.
BTW, spring bypasses help on boost driver lights as well. It gives you more total, cumulative, run time on Turbo. Anything that can keep the voltage higher at the driver will help on a Boost driver light.
Too soon to be certain yet about the spring as it worked well last night but the battery just came off the charger. Getting stuck in moon and failing to cycle through levels also comes and goes. But my battery was shaking around and now it is not. Fingers crossed.
The reason is chemistry. Aluminum oxide is an insulator.
Every aluminum surface exposed to the atmosphere has a thin layer of oxide on it, that wears off with friction.
The exposed aluminum surface then oxidizes within seconds.
That’s why flashlight threads accumulate black stuff that interrupts the electrical channel until threads are cleaned.
I don’t know. There might have been something wrong with the driver from day one. Maybe the MCU is not going to sleep for some reason?
I can see it developing a drain later, especially if it was dropped. Ceramic filtering caps do have issue of shorting internally when they are physically stressed. Sometimes they seem to go bad over time for no apparent reason. A shorted cap might be more than 3mA, though.
No, my SP33v2 was never dropped. So it probably just went bad over time for no apparent reason… so fixing this parasitic drain requires ordering a new SP33v2 driver?
I just ordered one of these from their site on February 21st. It’s currently being ready to be shipped out by China post (enough movement has happened for me to believe it’s actually shipped). I didn’t notice though if it was the updated version though… All the references I have to my order don’t say upgraded next to the name. If I got the older version, I guess I’ll have to make do with 2500 lumens. Strange how that was fine when I ordered it, but knowing if I waited two weeks I’d get a slightly more powerful one now makes that number a touch disappointing.
Also see this mentioned in the specs: “Switch Mode: High/Middle/Low”. The sequence used to be L/M/H, not? And what does “Function: Hard Light” mean? “Light Source: LED Bulbs”??
Just wish most sellers/producers would write their spec sheets a bit more accurate.