I was wondering if anyone knows how the rear tail cap spring PCB is fixed in Astrolux/ Mateminco flashlights?
I’ve got a Mateminco A1S and Astrolux FT03S that I want to bypass the springs on- but can’t work out how the PCB the spring is mounted to can be removed.
It’s glued with strong glue, maybe silicone adhesive. You’d need a heat gun (hair dryer doesn’t get hot enough), or heat the spring pcb with your soldering iron, but I dont recommend that. I tried (ive bypassed a couple of these) and i just do it with the pcb in place.
Yip, glue. Not cyanoacrylate though.
I’ve removed them by heating the tail cap on a hot plate.
If you’re just doing a bypass you may be able to do that in situ.
Okay, thanks. I might need to try doing it in situ.
The FT03S has double springs which make it harder. I was measuring the tail cap amps on it and got 16 Amps the other day- it also seemed a lot brighter at the time (using a wire loop and inductance meter.) Hence my interest in doing it. It’s got double springs both ends of the battery too.
The stock setup isnt bad. The inner spring is steel, but the outer is non conductive copper alloy. I only did it to shorten the spring since I use 21700s more than 26650s
I’m just going off the current test I did. The output seemed a bit lacklustre with it all assembled, but with the wire bypass it seemed to improve the output a lot.
I got the A1S done last night. It seems to have made an improvement- it now gets very toasty sooner. It wasn’t too difficult.
I took the FT03S tailcap off to tackle it, the more I look at those springs the less I like the set up. Both springs seem a bit on the light side given the current an SFH55 can draw. I left them alone for now, doing a bypass isn’t feasible with the dual springs. I feel a single stronger spring, that is bypassed, would be better. I only use 26650 batteries in it as it didn’t come with the 21700 adapter tube.
Finding a decent spring is another matter though…
I decided to just do external bypasses last night on both ends in the FT03S. This is the driver end- if should be fine like that. (Especially as there’s no need to remove the battery to charge it.)
I just retested with the driver’s springs bypassed (as in the previous pic)- I’m getting 25 Amps at the tail cap now!! That’s with a Vapcell P54 26650, a GoLisi S43 26650 is slightly lower - around 22 Amps.
So the SFH55 should be hitting close to 7000 Lumens now- going off the graph in this thread 
LED test: SFH55, 6500k
Run it with a 30T or P50B or JP40 and that thing will come alive. It easily pulls 30 amps with a low iR battery, but throttles aggressively.
I’m pretty happy with what the Vapcell P54 managed. I know there are way better cells out there, I’ve been pricing some P50B for my Q8 Plus. They’re expensive to buy here in Australia.
It’s interesting I came across a Youtube video of a person in Vietnam (?) who had two FT03S and modified one - it appears they replaced the spring on the driver (changed to a single spring) and did a bypass. They got virtually the same before and after currents- using some massive battery and wiring it straight to the driver. It’s this video at 3:00 minutes.
I might try measuring it again- the wire I used had one end soldered, and that soldered end got rather hot. So there was some resistance in that connection. I also tried one of Convoy’s 26800 batteries and got the same 24 to 25 Amps.
I think there would be smoke coming from the driver/ LED wires way before it hit 55 Amps. Even 25 Amps is a lot to get through a relatively small driver.
Edit: thanks for all the tests you do too. It’s crazy what some LED’s will survive.
The Mateminco/Astrolux driver has a theoretical limit of around 35 amps. I’ve never driven one past that (even in quad xhp50.2 Ft02s on a 30T and spicy Nightwatch battery), so if anyone else has (in a mostly unmodified host) I’m all ears. To get more, you’d have to swap the FET in the driver to a lower iR unit, change the led wires to 18 gauge, bypass all the springs and use the stoutest battery around like a JP40 or P50B. You’d srill struggle to get past Maybe 40 amps?
Most amps ive measures in a flashlight was the Astrolux MF07, at a hair under 63 amps and thats a quad with 20,000 lumens.
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