My COMETA is a POS - does not connect with tailcap spring - burned my finger [Hobby Ending - Enough is Enough]

If you got one of those cheap pair of rubber-like textured gloves, they work wonders - I use them all the time on lights. Best first option before strap wrench's, etc.

+1 Do not pry it, it is threaded. Use anything rubber to get a grip and unscrew it

I don’t think that strap wrench will do anything in this situation as the retaining ring is flush and there is nothing to put the strap wrench around. He needs to use either needle nose or snap ring pliers.

It was not real clear but they were not talking about the Pill they were talking about the anodized cover the guy above was trying to “pry off with a screwdriver”. :person_facepalming:

So far on all mine I have just grabbed the thing and screwed it off. Maybe his was on tighter or something

Noted by Tom E. in the other thread, he “used one of the ”19 mm 3M isolators”:http://www.mtnelectronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=122&search=3M&description=true for the batt+ end problem” — cut the center opening a bit wider and it fits nicely over the exposed metal.

Yea, the BASEN cell has about a 15 mm wide metal cap, so the 18.8 mm or so of the isolator should cover it easy. I used cutters to make the center hole a bit wider & rounder. Did a ton of them like this when I was mod'n Super Shockers ().

Nope. Unscrew the zoom part from inside the head a ways, and the retaining parabolic thing will emerge from inside the outer shell so you can grab it easily.

I had to use well-padded-and-taped ViseGrip pliers the first time, the thing was cranked down so firmly.

Jeansy made a breakdown/fix video if you’re having difficulty.

Thanks for the feedback. Looks like I’m going to have to go down the replace or refund route sadly. Unless the 2 fundamental safety flaws of the Cometa will be fixed in an updated version, I’ll probably be the latter option. :frowning:

(BTW Banggood did kindly send me an insulating disk in request, but that is now irrelevant.)

What was the third again?

[quote=stephenk]

I’m confused here. As I look at my light, and that cover thing in my hand, it looks like when I screw it down that the solder points will miss landing on the top portion of that covering ring, but would instead be in that deeper middle area. Is that where they should be, so as not to cause any issues?

thank you.

patrick

Patrick, don’t trust it never to cause any issues.
You might shake it, or drop it.
“Do you feel lucky?” isn’t the right question to ask for li-ion cells.

Put some tape or other insulator under the black thing so the solder blobs on the end of the black and red wires can’t contact the black parabolic screwin thing, even if the board with the LED floats up out of place. The LED board is not held down by anything except pressure from the black thing as it screws down, and the black anodizing can scrape off.

And add a homemade insulator around the battery spring contact on the other side of the pill too.

And check the tightness of the retaining ring that holds the driver in place.

And look through the retaining ring and see if the driver looks centered, not off to one side.

Wear safety glasses. Work outdoors… Don’t inhale if it smokes. Your luck may vary.
No advice here is a promise that you will be safe from anything.
Be wary of grues.

Yeah I tried screwing it off and It wouldn’t budge, looking at it one side was flush the other side had a small gap. So I thought maybe it doesn’t screw in and it’s just wedged.

Once you all confirmed it was in deed threaded, I put a shop towel on it and used channel locks to get it off. No clue how they got it so damn tight.

It was rubbing on both solder blobs, I think it only wore trough the anno on the negative tho.

Good , ya’ got it off. :slight_smile:
Insulate them both, do not trust the “anno” to do it… :wink:

And check the tightness of the retaining ring that holds the driver in place.

And look through the retaining ring and see if the driver looks centered, not off to one side.

thank you for your comments. I have a couple of questions:

In this picture, is the outer brass colored ring with the 2 holes in it, is that the retaining ring that holds the driver in place? I guess it isn’t cu I can’t see thru it as u asked me to do. How do you see the driver?

arrrggggg!

The outer brass ring is the head of the pill - a big heavy chunk of brass. Use needlenose in those 2 holes, and you can unscrew the pill, CCW. When the pill is removed, it's easy to get to the driver on the underside of the removed pill.

Two different ways, right?
— if you use a wide-button cell, a short from spring to pill across the button, curable with a homemade gasket
— mismatch between width of hole and width of driver, so driver can slip sideways under the retaining ring, and if it happens to slip toward the positive wire connection, a short there, curable — how?

I’ve been looking for a little half-millimeter or thinner insulator I could drop in around the edge of the driver to keep it centered. Meanwhile I’ve been lucky …

All the furthest most outside SMD's on the driver are batt- ends anyway, like the 7135, C1 cap and bleeder resistor for example. I looked it over carefully and find it hard to understand how a ground out could occur, maybe though. But they clearly did some sloppy design/measurements work there, leaving all that wiggle room.

It's so depressing seeing slop work where it's done better in <$10 budget lights.

> leaving all that wiggle room.

On other lights I’ve had driver retaining rings that had an inverted-L cross section — so the threaded part was somewhat thinner and a wider part overlapped the ground ring of the driver.
Got those on the Convoy lights and I think I also bought some from somewhere, maybe FT.
(I was able to notch the wide part of those to avoid pressing on Qlite chips, without filing into the threaded part.
Hhere’s a picture of that in the MtnE thread:

The retaining ring in my Cometa is equally thick all the way through, so it doesn’t have overlap and the thin threaded bit fitting down around the outside of the driver board at all, just presses on top of it.

Maybe replacing the retaining ring would keep the driver centered.

I notice the driver has the rough fiberglass (?) teeth on both sides where it was broken off from the rest of the board and not filed down. Maybe they were counting on those for centering, but they’re not long or even enough to do that.

Hello, I was really excited about this light… But now I am concerned…

Im wondering if when I get the package… should I refuse it so that the mail man sends it back to the sender so that I can get my Money back?

I really want a powerful thrower that can zoom out to flood aswell… :confused: