At this point, it appears that the head has a plate in the middle with 2 holes. The star sits (glued or AA’ed to) the plate. I haven’t removed it yet, but the blue PCB in the pics in the OP is probably just a contact board, with the red-black wires going to the star.
I haven’t gotten the star out yet, but have only tried some “gentle persuasion’ so far, but there’s not much (like zero) slack in the red-black wires, so it seems kind of questionable how helpful getting the star unglued would be even, so I’m still thinking about trying just the heatgun.
I’m still sitting on the fence about trying to detach the star (lazy, yeah?).
What would be the main concern about using the heatgun (which I haven’t tried on this light yet)? I’m assuming that the wire coating is high temp, so probably the worse would be that the solder joints between the wires and the star pads might melt?
I tried to remove the XM-L, then reflow an XM-L2 onto the star, in place, using a heatgun.
It looks like the reflow itself went fine, but the light wouldn’t light after that.
I did some continuity tests, and it looks like there’s no longer any continuity from the positive contact of the contact board to the emitter + on the star any more :(!!
So it looks like (a guess) the emitter + wire is not connected to the contact board, INSIDE the head.
I think that I need to remove the contact board in order to fix this, but have failed so far, so if anyone knows how to remove the contact board, can you post about that?
I think that the ring is screwed in, but it’s hard to tell for sure. I posted a picture earlier, where I tried to show that there appears to be some sort of shiny white stuff (glue? Maybe AA?) between the ring and the threads that are inside the head. Maybe that’s what is going on, i.e., maybe the ring is AA’ed to the head threads? I have some BGA fluid so I’ll try that and see if that frees things up.
Other than that, I’ve been thinking about drilling two holes into the contact board, then soldering emitter wires to the brass ring and to the positive contact, then trying to pass those wires through the holes in the head platform to the emitter. Those holes are tiny though, so it’d be kind of tough I think. I suppose I could drill those holes out a bit to make them larger…
That (being only a contact board) is a possibility, but I’m not sure yet, since I haven’t gotten it out yet. I’ve considered what you mentioned (tear it out)… have done that with some Tiablos before, but just trying to do minimal damage first.
EDIT: Would be kind of funny though (in a sad way) to tear the board out and not be able to get the ring out, huh :)!???
Yea, I was thinking of options if that ring still won’t come out after the pcb has been tore out. Can you solder to the ring ok? I mean it might take a lot of heat since heat will be pulled off into the head. I was thinking worst case you could slot a new custom pcb in under the brass ring. Pcb would need to be two halfs, slot one half under, slot the 2nd under, solder (+ a bit of epoxy perhaps) to join them.
Often I start to look for unconventional solutions.
Ok, I finally got the board out, and it is NOT just a contact board! There’s circuitry on the other side. Also that ring appears to just be soldered to the edge of the PCB on the battery side and it DOESN’T appear to be threaded.
The way I got it out was to put the head in a vise, then heat it up with a heatgun, then spin the board via two holes I drilled. I think that broke the glue, but like I said, the board/ring wasn’t threaded into the head, so it wasn’t coming up. So, I stuck the ends of a pair of tweezers through the holes in the platform, and hammered (yes, with a hammer) and then the board fell out the other end.
It looks like they just shove the board down into the head and they have glue to hold it in place.
I had drilled two small holes on the edge of the board. Hopefully that didn’t mess things up.
I am going to solder some new wires to the board then test it with the XM-L2 on the original star, and if that works, try to put things back together again.
If you recall, after I heated the star to reflow the emitter, this MSA20 stopped working.
I haven’t had a chance to test the driver that I removed, but I was looking at it, and noticed this:
That 6-pin chip is unmarked, but it kind of looks like the negative emitter lead is shorted to the 6th pin.
Here’re a couple of more pics from different angles:
I still need to test, but was wondering if any might know/guess whether that black wire SHOULD or should NOT be shorting to that 6-pin chip?
Thanks,
Jim
EDIT: What I’m thinking is that when I heated the head with the heatgun, the solder joint for the black wire melted, and the wire fell close enough to the 6-pin chip to cause a solder bridge?
Thanks to you all for sticking with me on this. It was a pain, and several times, I was “that close” to trashing the light (recall it was brand new). I am SO glad that it’s working again now.
Yea… I was thinking thats a really nice new light…
But with new lights I always have a great urge to disassemble & look for places for improvement. Oh, just a little prying. Hmm, a little more. :~ Time for larger pliers. …… Where is my blowtorch?
…… Where is my blowtorch? 