Welp, my 30Qs arrived today. Threw them in my M6 and… as soon as they connected, it turned on.
I assumed my fix for the reflector shorts broke, so I checked for shorts there… but nothing. Just to be sure, I removed the reflector, and eventually pulled the driver completely out of the light. I double checked all the pinouts for the driver, including probing it out with a DMM, and compared it to the Anduril version I flashed - no issues there. I’m not sure what path current is flowing through. I eliminated the single-7135 channel by removing it. It’s probably the FET, but in my test rig the 15x7135 channel is probably just doing direct drive too, and I’m not sure how to test which gate is being opened with a DMM.
And apparently, all I had to do was give up and post here. I went over every solder joint on the board that I could see… But just now, typing this, I decided I’d double-check that the issue wasn’t somehow with the MCU/firmware (by removing it). I’ve got a silly quick way to do it, by laying the tip of the iron across one set of legs and rocking it up, then doing the same to the other side. But just now I gently applied flux to each quartet of legs. When I first laid the iron across the legs, I noticed how the visible portion of the solder joints got a lot neater… And on a hunch, did the same to the other side. Re-tested and it appears to be giving me the “blink for on”.
I think the most frustrating part of all of this is that the light was working without issues yesterday with the single 30Q out of my FW3A. All it did was sit on the desk, empty (no batteries) since yesterday evening. I’m going to go fully reassemble the light and make sure it still works.
Tested more, seems to be working. Re-assembled… Still working. Definitely the brightest light I own now, though I have no way to actually measure. But ceiling-bounce around the room compared to my L6 definitely gives the M6 a slight edge. It also gets hot way faster on turbo. But the difference between “10K” and “7K” lumens (this is what my M6 and L6 should be doing, but again - I can’t actually measure) isn’t impressive. Probably because the way the eye sees it, it’s less than 20% increased perceived brightness (perceived brightness is doubled when lumens are quadrupled).
I don’t think I need to build any more high-lumen lights, unless I find a way to do about 40k lumens at this point. And, judging by what Acebeam and Imalent are doing, that just means stuffing as many 70.2s as I can in something, which doesn’t really sound any more interesting than my M6.