BLF A6 FET+7135 Light Troubleshooting and Mod thread

The current reflector is approx 20mm in diameter by 12mm in depth.

dudunphy,

Infreakingcredible thread…. This thing just keeps getting better… Your time and dedication on this thread are doing many people much good in helping with not only the BLF A6 lights, but any others they may have problems with…

The problem is never the problem, SOLVING the problem is a always the actual problem, and this thread is a huge help…

Wouldn’t be possible without some of the organizers/developer’s showing up here! Standing on the shoulders of giants as they say! :wink: Thanks RemanG!

I don’t think an optic will give a tighter spot but a smaller emitter should. It’s possible there’s a deeper reflector with the same OD but the head might not screw on all the way.

I think I’ll try that TIR lens and look for a SMO reflector, or maybe a longer head and reflector I can lego on. This is my first 18650 tube light and there’s nothing else about it I want to change in the least way. I’m not the kind to put a moustache on a Mona Lisa :bigsmile: If I go further in this direction I’ll get another host. Thanks to all!

Phil

(Adding- I just noticed Dudunphy is collating the spread-out info into the early part of this thread for easy access- that is MUCH appreciated!)

I found an optic that nearly doubled throw, but it was quite a chore making it fit in the A6. Smaller emitter would help most, be easiest to accomplish, but only the XP-G2 would be feasible as this is a direct drive light and an XP-E2 would fry. So a de-domed XP-G2 would be about the best you could hope for, throw being an element of die size combined with reflector/optic diameter the small tube lights just can’t compete.

I’d rather alter an added part than the light itself and IIRC you posted about that here so I’ll check it out. I’m not quite up to speed with mini-electronics without the proper tools, eyesight, or bench setup for that yet so I won’t try an emitter change till I toast a few cheaper lights and parts as I learn. This one deserves a better fate than that and I have a work rule I follow religiously: If I am not very very sure that I can make it better, then I’ll leave it alone since I might make it worse trying. It’s been a decade since I tried doing fine soldering and I’m rusty at it. No sweat with drop-in parts though, those can always be as easily changed back if I screw up.

Yeah, I do understand the diameter limiting what can be had (as does the reflector length and die size). I’m not expecting a C8 style throw, just wanting more of a defined hotspot in the middle even if that takes a little from the edges. It won’t take a lot to make me happy and besides, who is ever completely content if there’s a decent chance for more or better? :bigsmile:

Phil

Putting a new emitter in this light is actually quite easy. The shelf the emitter sits on is right up top, not down in a hole, so it’s very easy to get to when the bezel is off. Get a de-domed XP-G2 from Richard when he gets back, on a 16mm Noctigon, and simply swap it out. This just takes a touch on the pad of each wire to release them with the soldering iron, put the new one in and again touch the wires to solder em on. Done. Not a skill set there. I mean, yeah, you have to be somewhat careful not to smash the dome or something, but it’s not ittty bitty stuff or really tedious. Pretty sure you can do it and it doesn’t entail taking the driver out or anything.

Give it a go! :slight_smile:

Had to post quick. O.m.goodness I’m nerdin out here. I got my stuff from Richard today. Did some finagaling and got my triple a6 together. Holy crap what did I check first? The amps! 12.7a and climbing! Then pzzzzzffffp. It melted the negative off of the star and the carclo lens legs. (Probably not the best heat sinking going here….) But holy heck it was cool while it lasted! D.B. had mentioned to me how cool the first triple would be and it’s really fricken fantabulous. I’m not sure what else I fried…. Will update soon and hopefully get some beam shots.
:smiley: :party:

Well…. Still having heat sink issues. I had ordered a copper spacer from mtn. But those are for a convoy and I couldn’t bring myself to hack almost 9mm off of it to fit in the a6. (nor do I have the tools at home) So I had coiled some solid #12 wire up to make the spacer. I’ve since melted the positive off of the star and again the negative. So I may have to bring my spacer to work tomorrow so I can get a nice straight cut on it. :slight_smile:

Goes to show why heat sinking is so important and I believe we’ve also found a new method of thermal protection! Albeit permanent for those who don’t solder. :wink:

Fwiw it made the ui pretty funky. Lost strobe and after one cycle bike mode goes to moon. Hmmmm.

Could you describe the funky UI in a bit more detail?

I’m investigating some issues which only happen at high power, and I’d love to know if what you’re seeing is the same.

@ToyKeeper. Yes I believe first and foremost timing was changed. Super fast clicks would cycle forwards but erratically. I could reverse to turbo but reversing again to the hidden modes was tricky. I got it into battcheck mode quite a few times. Only once was I able to get into strobe but it was very slow I let it sit there for a while just to make sure it wasn’t batt check. I could get into bike mode with the right click timing but it would cycle back to moon on its own. It would also jump lower or flicker once I got to mode 4 or 5. Getting into config was very difficult - however a series of very fast clicks would get me into it. But it seemed that it had almost put itself into 4 mode sometime before I ever tried to config it. I also reinstalled the old led and it was working fine. One thing I want to try is a weak laptop pull but that seems to defeat the purpose of a triple.

So changing the Vf or just the heat involved by doing this messes with timing? Also seems to mess with pwm?

What were your issues?

Okay back at it. I ditched the optic and the crappy home made spacer so I could get the copper spacer from mtn in. Much better! Pretty much normal u.i. now! Proper heat sinking makes all the difference. Now just need to find a way to squeeze the optic back in…… :wink:

Not sure if that helps you much TK. :~ We already knew the capacitor didn’t like heat.

Edit: Also batt check is at two blinks. So that’s kind of what I was wondering as well. If a weak cell would function better. ———— And yep throw in a fully charged 30q and strobe hates me. Goes straight back to moon. If I reverse click fast enough I can get to batt check and then to bike but bike would revert to moon until I had enough voltage sag to normalize.

It sounds like you encountered multiple different issues, some related to temperature and some related to current spikes. Maybe others too.

I can’t tell for sure if part of the driver might have been actually damaged. It sounds like it went out of calibration and never quite returned (battcheck being extra low, high modes stepping down by one, maybe the button timing too).

The button timing is probably a temperature thing, since no heat sink means the only direct connection is the emitter wires (so heat goes directly to the driver). Also, I found out they used X5R capacitors instead of X7R.

The thing you described about strobe going slowly, or about PWM slowing down… I have no plausible theory for that. That happens when the MCU is under-clocked, which requires changing the fuse settings. But if you didn’t reflash it and it recovered on its own, I have no idea what happened.

When strobe and bike mode fail and reset to moon, that’s the issue I’ve been trying to debug. It seems that big current spikes (or high sustained currents) cause the driver to lose power just long enough to reboot (so it thinks the button was pressed). But it only happens with really big spikes. I think it’s something about wight’s driver design when coupled with relatively cheap components. It doesn’t happen with top-of-the-line components or other designs.

I’m not an electrical engineer though, so it’s mostly Greek to me. :frowning:

Which “they” and where, as far as you know?
Wondering if this spilled over to the copies as well.

This is how it all goes, over time, I think.
One little variation plus or minus — any single change that would still be, maybe, barely in spec or almost.
Then another of some other component

A fiddle here, a diddle there, and eventually … what happens?

+1 hank.

@ TK. I think you’re on the right track. It definitely acts like a loss of power and with a triple the strobe is almost unbearable to watch. Even a bounce from a concrete floor was too much. I don’t have a big understanding of drivers yet but maybe some spikes like that plus heat are enough to drain the off time cap - putting it into moon. And all is fine with a weak battery. Honestly I’m probably better off with a laptop pull for this thing so I don’t fry any components. The darn thing smokes in turbo! I’m not sure what it’s burning off. My guess was flux.

The high amp problem sounds similar to the symptoms I've had on the Tiny85. Could be cap related, since I've been adding a cap (0.1 or 1.0 uF) close to the MCU Vcc input and it fixes the problems. Could be the 10 uF cap, as TK said - the X7R's are more robust.

Dustin - how did you get 12.7A out of a triple? If it's Nichia's I can understand. I recently built up a 219C 18650 tube light with a FET+1 driver and ended up backing off on the amps by using a higher resistance battery (LG 4.35V rated cells worked out well - LGABD1 or ICR18650E1) - even 10A rated cells resulted in over 6A with 22 AWG LED wires. With a high amp cell, the light's head would get quite hot within 5-10 secs.

Dang, I was about ready to try that myself.

I think we’re reinventing the flashbulb here.

I’m using a Samsung 30q and the new 219c triple from mtnelectronics. It is a cheap meter using my own 14 gauge leads. I guess i don’t really know how accurate that reading was. But prior to adding the triple it was at 4.7 amps with crappy leads. So the math kind of makes sense as we know the 30q is a 15a drain and triple the led’s in parallel. As sad as it is to say - it’s a little much and I may have to go the route you went with a lower amp battery only I don’t have a charger that will go over 4.2v.

For cells, you might want to try a 10A cell like the SANYO GA or Pana PD/PF, or even a classic Pana A or B. I'd check the draw though - maybe drawing near 10A on a 10A cell is bad for it??

You could do other things, like use smaller gauge LED wires and make them longer. Lots of guys use 18 AWG wires in triples - normally that's great, but for triple 219C's - watch out, probably better to use 22 AWG. To me it seems like 219C's get hotter than typical XM-L2's at the same amps, not sure if there's any evidence to that though...

Dunno if I'd fiddle with spring bypass's - good and bad: don't want to melt springs so the bypass's help with that, but doing the bypass allows higher amps draw from the cell... Maybe Dale or someone else has more experience with that. I always do spring bypass's on high amp mods - would not want to take the risk without doing it.