Is it the first batch version or later ones? I hear that the later versions were having unreliable quality.
Definitely sounds like the signal tube accidentally shorted. With that short, the driver thought you were holding the button down so it ramped up to turbo and stayed there.
Some tips:
- Remove, clean everything, reassemble. Check alignments when reassembling.
- Make sure the tailcap retaining ring is slightly loose. That ring is just there to prevent the tailcap guts from falling out. If you leave it a tiny bit loose the tailcap pcb is able to free-float and may actually connect better to the signal tube.
- You can prevent the issue of accidental ramp-up burning a hole in your desk by reflashing the firmware to upgrade from Anduril to Anduril2. Anduril2 has a safety feature to prevent this kind of thing happening. With Anduril2, if your signal tube malfunctions and the light ramps up to max it will pause there a couple seconds then ramp back down to min, turn off, and put the light in lockout mode.
IIRC that safety feature was added already to Anduril 1 shortly after the release of the FW3A.
That sounds quite unacceptable to me and a bit dangerous. My old man response would be to either retire that light (remove battery) or else return it to the original 18650 tube. I guess I no longer have the patience to do a bunch of investigating and repairing to make it reliable.
Ah.
Good to know. My first and second run FW3As, my FW3 Ti, and my EDC18 all lack that feature. I just tested them.
Also IIRC Lumintop didn’t update the firmware for more than a year after the fix…
Barring a software bug or unlikely corruption of the ROM, software lockout should guard against this. Given the flaky nature of the FW3As switching I use it whenever it’s not in my hand. Thankfully I’ve only had issues with it activating while clipped to a pocket whenever I’ve neglected to lockout - presumably because that switch is all too easy to bump.
Yep, I use the e-lock all the time.
ALL the time.
I have little need for an instant on all the time. That’s me, though.
It is an early one. In particular, this is the one with the ToyKeeper icon on the switch. My full size 18650 had this same trouble very early on and was resolved after cleaning and reseating the tube. Hasn’t happened again since.
Thanks. I did clean everything before, which should’ve taken care of the problem… not sure how to “check alignments” as I can’t see inside the tube when closing up. But I did not know about that tailcap retaining ring tip. This one does have a retaining ring, unlike my other FW3A. One of these days I will see about flashing firmware, but right now I’m not set up to do it. Good to know that Anduril 2 has a failsafe to mitigate that problem!
Hi everyone! I’m new here, but reading quite a while.
Just got my fw3a sst-20 4000k from aliexpress and wonder how to check did I have a “full version” with all the power channels or missing some.
Head inside looks just like on the left (I mean photo in the first post). What else can I check?
I hope you have fun here, Alexxey!
Thanks a lot 
Mainly just count all the 7135 chips. There’s 6 on the back and 2 on the front, but the front side might require unsoldering the 2 main wires to look at it. You can check that the brightness when ramping up or down is smooth.
There should be a short dip in power as you ramp between the 7135 chips and the FET. The newer firmware might be different though. Let’s see what other folks say. (My light is a very early one)
All 6 are in the back, but don’t want to unsolder anything to count those on the front.
Ramp is all smooth and there are two ‘blinks’, one on the high and one in somewhere in between.
I checked mine. When ramping up there are two short blinks. One when it switches from channel 1 to 2 and another from 2 to 3.
I’m still not sure that’s a guarantee you have 3 channels in yours. I’m not even sure which software version your light has. Hopefully someone can give you a more concrete answer.
If the ramp is smooth I wouldn’t even worry about it.
Is it safe for leds, driver etc? Won’t affect flashlight lifespan?
[quote=JasonWW]
[quote=Alexxey]
Ok thank you nice to hear.
The led and driver components get heated to over 200°C during assembly. They are quite robust.
But only once and with a very specific heating profile. Otherwise they will get damaged. 80 °C is a pretty safe temperature, though.
They can actually handle higher heat than that, but briefly and people have ran the leds to the point of the heat melting the solder. My point was that 85° is a good upper level to not exceed due to the battery. Then there is a huge gap from 85°C to 200°C. So no one really needs to worry about the led or driver components. Worry about battery heat first (and not burning your hand). Don’t waste time worrying about the driver and led. They are quite robust.