Hi, about the high-pitched whine some people reported… I found a really easy way to measure it today.
The method is simple: connect an LED to a DMM, put the DMM in frequency mode, and shine a light at the LED. It works in reverse, converting photons into current.
I measured PWM speed on two production BLF-A6 units, and got the following: 15.49 kHz, 13.35 kHz (nominally 18.75 kHz)
So, there is a lot of variation and some of it is easily within the audible range.
Also, I measured my new attiny25 test driver running the blf-a6 code: 31.74 kHz (nominally 31.25 kHz). That’s plenty fast, and I might step it down to a slower clock speed to get it to 25 kHz.
Question about contacting the “Professional Guy” —- will they listen to me if I’ve opened up the driver to look at the solder?
Or should I contact them first about the temperature sensitivity — or is that just one of those things for us in the first round to get used to living with?
If it’s the parts used, I guess I’d expect to get used to it.
If it’s bad soldering, I’d rather know that — and be able to ask them to replace it, or try to fix it and then ask them to replace it …. or, heck. it gets really confused at this point about this issue.
Banggood can’t fix the temperature sensitivity. That’s more of a medium-term project, with research and testing and samples, and eventually new drivers.
The temperature thing was 80% solved before production, but the remaining 20% is quite a bit more difficult. (initially, when frozen, the medium-press time was 10x as long as normal, but on the production units it’s about 2x instead… and the best we can hope for is about 1.15x)
I don’t know much about circuit design or hardware in general, but DEL has been very helpful so far.
Just to let you know about customer service responsiveness, I wrote three days ago an email to the address I had of Neal, which is zhanghuaihong [at] banggood [dot] com and no answer so far.
For those who are having the "7135 problem" & have a soldering iron;
Try touching the hot iron with a small amount of solder on it to the ground tab of the 7135 for a second or two. You should see the flux on the board around the 7135 bubble a little.
Just doing this was enough to reflow the 7135, & fixed my driver issue.
.....Of course, I took the opportunity to add thicker wire & spring bypass while I was at it :)
Some people have talked about getting a different clip and some have asked about Olight clips specifically. I checked my Olight S20-L2 clip last night and it does definitely fit the A6 host. However, there is a problem with the Olight clip. It doesn’t hold on very well. I had always wondered why if I bumped into anything, there was always a good chance the light would drop. Now, I think I understand. Comparing the Olight clip with the A6-SE clip, the Olight clip doesn’t wrap as far around the circumference. So, a bump can cause the clip to let go of the light. I’d forgotten about that until I bumped the door of my car getting in last night, and the A6-SE fell to the ground!
By the way… I’ll be putting out my review hopefully in under a week. I’ll include video runtime tests for modes 4-7 (which I finished yesterday). Everything looks nice and stable. Again, great light to all involved.
I just saw mention of “adhesive butterfly centering” in the other thread
timestamp Thu, 09/17/2015 - 18:32 (clicking the link works if you’re set to see 300 items per page, otherwise it just goes to the top of the thread I think)
I’ve never come across an adhesive version. Sounds like a good idea.
As we know, the A6-SE clip was custom made by/for Manker for this light. Lots of people have reported the clip breaking easily. Other than where cracking is already visible around or near the bends, could the clips be tempered to make them less brittle? Has anyone tried it? I don’t know anything about metalworking, but I’m looking for a solution that doesn’t involve buying another clip. I’ve already tried the Olight clip. It does fit, but it doesn’t stay on when bumped, so it’s not a solution for me. I looked up tempering metal and found an instructables.com article about making a knife that includes these simple instructions for tempering:
I have done many spring bypasses inside the spring but whenever there's room outside I do that because it is easier and there's less bending stress on the silicon wire.
Would someone who has a brittle clip be willing to try re-tempering to see if it helps? If you have broken your clip in half, it’s obvious that you have a brittle clip. But, in that case, you may not want to waste your time and electricity baking an already useless clip. However, if you have “snapped” the tabs off the clips, as some have said that they did, you also have a brittle clip! Would you please be willing to try baking it to fix the temper? I put mine in the oven like the quote I posted above, and it is still baking right now. But, I just realized that I didn’t verify that mine was brittle to begin with, so I can’t tell whether baking it will help or not. Someone?
Mine seems brittle but we won’t really know unless we break one right? I did bend the little ramp down on one of mine very gently without snapping it. But how would you go about checking it David?
