so here’s an out-of-warranty Nitecore MH25 that just suddenly stopped working so i figured why not take a crack at it generous threadlockers were used throughout. even the driver board was GLUED to the aluminum body required some advanced techniques to disassemble
first thing i noticed was the PINK teflon wire that goes to LED+ wasn’t connected to its solder pad on the PCB. this was probably what caused the flashlight to stop working…
but as i poked around one leg of the inductor also came loose. this only means one thing: COLD SOLDER JOINTS
very disappointed with the low-quality soldering. will look for more bad soldering and will attemp to fix tomorrow. will update soon…
Also, actually, though it’s not 100%, it looks like that inductor lead was not soldered at all? Also to the left and up, there’s another inductor lead that is just in the through hole, but doesn’t look like it’s soldered either?
EDIT: Or maybe those two leads are just there to mount the inductor to the PCB, i.e., just mechanical. It’s kind of hard to tell for sure, but it looks like they’re a different color (silver) than then actual windings on the inductor (copper colored)?
hi! well it just stopped working. never been dropped. not even a single scratch.
the inductor legs are actually soldered on the other side of the PCB but was done very poorly. will try to take a pic later. btw these are electrical connections to the inductor. the ends have been stripped of the lacquer coating
on the bright side those R050 resistors seem like they’re sense resistors. perhaps a resistor mod is in order to boost the power
Apparently it is USB chargeable and has the ability to act as a USB portable power unit…so one of those boards is more than likely the control circuitry for all that.
XM-L2 on sinkpad/noctigon and bonded well to shelf on the head below the reflector (make sure you insulate the solder joints)
Solder in some 22ga wire
Solder in that inductor good on both sides
either add another R050 on top of one or both of those (they look like the current limiting resistors, you could bridge them but not sure if that will be too much for the electronics of the driver)
I would almost bet the wire was the culprit, if that inductor was soldered on the other side it might not have needed it on the top, but a little blob there probably couldn’t hurt
Hey all, I have had the same issue it seems, although I cannot figure how to take apart the final piece from the casing to expose the conductors and wiring inside… Can anyone help me out please?
Hi, I have a MH25 Nitecore and it was working very good during several months. Tomorrow it started only to work in low light. All the functions work (strobe, sos, etc), but all with a low level light. So a openned it. Is hard to take the reflector part off, it’s glued to the body o the MH25. To open it, unweld all the wires, take off the screw, and with a small screwdriver, in the openning of the USB charger, where you see a small piece of the blue PCB, hit a little hard. Then you will see the board coming out of the body. After all, my problem was the led, a cold weld in the two contacts of the led chip.