Just when you thought Palight BOSS1 emitter shelf is disappointing, my niteye R28 gave me a nice surprise.
After receiving it and being a bit let down with the overall output (throw is great btw), I gave it to a friend for Christmas. In the second day he dropped it to the floor from about 2ft high and it stopped working. I decided to take it apart and found a rather unconventional way for mounting mcpcb and driver.
Unlike 99.9% of LED flashlights in the market, this one doesn’t use a pill or have a shelf underneath, but neither is a floating mcpcb. It uses a “reverse shelf” in which the head touches the mcpcb in the same side as the LED. Better heat transfer you’d say? Not at all, the MCPCB is actually a sandwich, top side with a regular dielectric layer with a copper coating on top, and underneath there is another layer with the microusb port and some charging components. The driver has two holes allowing the mcpcb to be screwed into the head.
Notice how minimal is the contact area, probably only 50% of the mcpcb. This is why this light doesn’t get hot, despite drawing 3A in turbo.
The “real shelf” is not very useful either: it is only about 2mm thick and is there only to support the mcpcb/driver, it was clearly not desiged to soak any heat.
Now, the reason why this light stopped working, the only rigid support to the driver are two tiny legs which also serve as the LED wiring. Black and red wired are actually USB input. When the light was dropped, the weight of the 18650 pushed the floating driver and one of the tiny legs bent and came loose, if you look closely that is a cold solder joint. I wonder if it can withstand another drop.
After a quick soldering job it was able to work again, but should I report it to the seller anyways? I feel like it’s going to waste my time and effort (you guessed right, I got it from GB).
