BLF A6 FET+7135 Light Troubleshooting and Mod thread

I sourced a switch of the same shape, but orange in color, from a Xeno E03. I hope it will endure the amps, but the E03 supported 14500 cells so I hope it will do the job.

Uh oh... I'm sure they must have improved on that at some point, but that orange switch was the weakest link of the Xeno03 back when they first came out three years ago .

I believe this one will fit right in.

I got my new tubes today but they didn’t fix the issue. Anybody else have this happen? I thought this was the fix if your light seems to be ok otherwise.

It will fit, but the thin trace from the middle of the board to the switch lead will have a hard time with the 4+ amps that this light is drawing, the corresponding trace on the BLF-A6 tail board is way wider. I would go for soldering a new 1288 Omten to the existing board.

I’m on the weakest possible connection with a rather weak smartphone, and have no PC, would you help me sourcing it from one of the usual vendors?

http://m.aliexpress.com/item/1074362774.html

Oh I didn’t realize that. Perhaps he can bypass the trace like Dale does.

My post #199:

Or try the solder blob/paper clip method.

Penetrating oil, rubber, cardboard and pliers did it. Needed rubber again for the driver retaining ring. No sign of problems. Just wired the springs and added heat sink compound around the driver.

Wow, I’ll sure take you up on that offer. PM coming your way.

FWIW, I tried legoing the anodized and bare versions today. The bare ones were recent, of course, and the anodized ones were from the very first batch.

Everything lego’d fine except the bezels. The bare bezel didn’t work on an anodized head, because the bare threads were too big in diameter and slipped easily over the anodized pill without any need to twist or screw it together. The anodized bezel worked on a bare head though.

At least this much works:

Nice TK! I didn’t try the bezel. Interesting look huh?

I didn’t get my A6 head replacement today, was hoping I’d come home from work to find it but mailman didn’t even deliver it along with my junk mail…

Ok, so I went ahead in the quest for troubleshooting. Clickie as said is trashed, but I checked function by manually linking battery negative to flashlight body.

Now this is weird:
Modes seem to change in succession, but after highest setting, instead of cycling back from lowest, it emits a single flick and turns off.

It also whines on the higher modes.

In my opinion, the vendors should find out how to mail something as “junk mail” that way it would ALWAYS get through…. E-packet or J-packet… Nuts on your non-delivery, perhaps your Saturday postal carrier will give you a surprise…

@ chenko. Yes alot of ours do that. I think tk and pilotdog were discussing how they deal with it. But yours has no moon right? So your getting the flash and then off.

Chenko, seems like it’s the 7135 chip causing that issue. Try touching your soldering iron to each of the legs and getting a better solder joint on the chip… that should clear up the issue.

The whining could also be coming from the chip being cold soldered. If you could place the entire driver on a hot plate (after removing the spring) and re-flow the whole thing at once your issues should be solved. Seems like they’re using a high temp solder paste and then not getting the re-flow hot enough to get good liquid connections.

Exactly, no real moonlight mode. And yes again, it flashes and shuts off. So it is aaaa diffused issue? :frowning:

While waiting for the supposedly coming replacement head, curiosity got the better of me when I read about the difficulty in taking off the head. So I opened the head without any trouble. That is good news. The problem was that in opening the head, the led “spacer” dropped off and in subsequent closing the head, it de-domed the led. So I put together again without the dome and found out the real trouble. There is no light, not even the few modes I had before the head opening. No light when connecting battery negative to body with paper clip. Everything is tight, even the two retaining rings in tail cap and head. What’s the next troubleshoot step?