Soldered pill on S2+

I’m watching this tutorial on building a triple S2+: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxKxLvulnag

In that he’s assembling the pill for the head and then screwing it in and then it works. Both of the S2+ lights I have bought recently seem to have the head pill soldered in, there’s no way to remove it without desoldering.

What are the pros and cons of each of these two methods and which should I use if I was going to build a new light?

I believe that your pills are not soldered to the flashlight, but maybe the driver is soldered to the pill.
In that case, you can use some pointy tweezers or pliers, try to make them “fit” near the solder joints and the turn the head in clockwise movement to remove it.

It happenned to me when I bought a convoy S2+ with Biscotti driver with 8 x 7135 chips (4 on each side). I did what I mentioned above, I unsoldered the driver from the pill, cleaned the pill and driver from the remaining solder.

If you could post a photo from your lights maybe we could provide better advise on that, because if you want to make a triple, the way the driver is currently may have some implications for the modding process.

Thanks, this is one of them:

I can see tabs next to the solder points so yeah I think you’re right. I’m not going to modify this one though, I have another one on the way and plan to modify that one, just gathering information really.

Are there any particular drivers you’d recommend for a triple? I like the 12-modes function.

Yeah that’ll unscrew out of the head. The solder is there to solder the driver to the pill.

Driver recommendations really depend on what UI you want, and what power and regulation you want out of your light, and what LEDs you plan on using. There are many options really.

I need 5A for 3xNichia 219B. the 12-modes biscotti driver is a reasonable interface.

Drivers with 7135s on the spring side often didn’t have clearance for a retaining-ring, so had to be soldered into the pill instead.

1-4 had them on the component side only, vs 5-8 which filled in the remaining spots as needed.

Yup, like I suspected, that is the driver soldered to the pill!
These drivers with 4 chips on the back make it more difficult to use the brass retaining ring that these lights normally bring (see the brass ring in the image: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1715111464.html), because the ring is large and would make contact with the chips’s legs, provoking a short.

So, Simon opts to solder the ring directly to the pill, so that it makes contact and makes the electric circuit.

In case you want to modify that flashlight you’ll and use the same driver, you can opt for different things:
a) unsolder the driver from the pill and try to get a thinner brass ring from kiriba-ru, so that instead of solder you can use a ring there
b) unsolder the driver from the pill and try to modify the regular brass ring that comes from Simon (maybe you’d need to aks him to send it to you), you’d need to make it slimmer but still maintaining the grooves for you to pick the tweezers/pliers and screw it in. I would prefer the frist option, though.

As for drivers, you can keep that one in case you can perfom the process above, or you can check some other drivers from led4power or eventually from MTN Electronics .

My current favourite one is the H17F from MTN electronics :heart_eyes: But actually, the light I EDC has a driver from led4power.

BTW, the pill has to be rotated anticlockwise, not clockwise as i mentioned above ! :person_facepalming:

Sorry for the mistake!

This is odd, I tried to swap the heads for these two lights, which are both S2, and it seems that each pill will only fit the head that it came with. If i try to screw it into the other one is goes a bit and then jams, as if the threads don’t line up. Each pill is completely smooth in its original light. Are there different versions of the S2?

There are. Simon swapped the thread design a bit ago. How old is each light? Can you take a close up photo of each pill?

Ehh its ok I’ve put them back together now, that explains it though

Yes, there are. Some time ago Simon has switched from triangular to trapezoidal threads. This has been discussed on this forum on several occasions

Hmm that’s annoying! I wanted to swap the heads but the newer light came with square threads and the other one I have on order is probably the same. Oh well, more incentive to build a new one xD

If you get an S2+ with a driver retaining ring, you can easily grind down the inside of the ring to make room for the components on the battery side.

Here’s an example of one of mine:

Are the trapezoid hosts available for sale anywhere?

Maybe you can ask Simon if he still has them. There are different stores selling S2+ lights, but I’d guess it would be a lottery trying to find a specific one. So, maybe the source is the best solution :wink:

I thought the difference was

The Older S2 Grey or Black They had the bigger pill Slightly longer head

The Newer S2+ All colors ( labeled S2+ on the tube ) shorter pill

Almost correct :wink:

The older S2 has a slightly longer head, has a long reflector and a short pill (left)
The newer S2+ (that we know now), has a short reflector and a longer pill (right)

The left combo fits the S2+, but the right combo does not fit the S2.
The inside thread in the S2 head does not go “down” as far as the S2+ thread.

Simon apparently doesn’t have any hosts with the trapezoid threads.