Bring out your dead. What flashlight have you killed and how?

1. Foursevens Mini ML : Head came unscrewed at work. For context I work outside, at night over a large area (that is now well lit :frowning: ).
2. Ultrafire 501b Got really, really, hot.

So how did you kill yours?

Tank007 TK-703. I was trying to mod it into a tiny aspheric thrower and accidentally shorted the emitter leads frying the driver. Since repaired with a replacement driver though...

Sunwayman V10A with XPG R5 — The flashlight was less than a month old and in absolutely perfect condition. During a battery change, I dropped the head from a height of 1m onto a hardwood flood. It hit bezel down.

The outside of the head was completely undamaged. Not even a nick in the anodizing. But when it hit, a component on the driver board popped off killing the driver.

I tried to solder the component back on, but wasn’t sure if I got it in the correct orientation. Regardless, it hasn’t worked since the drop.

Arc AAA that never worked right + heavy hammer = one satisfying pancake >) :party:

Sk68 died down. And since I’m not a modding guy it will stay dead…

hamfisted breaking of the bulbs in old minimags. I bought half a dozen decades a go during a big rebate sale where I failed to read the fine print of one rebate per address. The rest, failure to remove batteries prior to unintended longer term storage and leakage.

Nothing fried yet, maybe something fixed to death, but I don’t recall what.

3AA Mini-Mag LED, Alkaline batteries (before I started buying NiMH or modding lights), nuff said.

DQG - S2 it was the forum special. I had it less than a week and my toddler son got ahold of it. I found it behind the couch cushions. Switch was on and it was burning hot. Bye bye light.

Two days ago I killed my Eagletac D25A clicky Ti 2013. It was in perfect working condition but I could not stand the first gen. XP-G (neutral), I wanted a Nichia 219B 92 CRI in it. So in the process of unscrewing the brass pill (glued very very tight!) while simultaniously heating the head up with a blow torch, I first killed the driver by shearing off the contact plate from its solder pads , then I cracked the brass and deformed the pill . In the end I got it out though . I tried to bend it all back and repair the crack with a pool of solder, but it will have to be done again with a small brass band-aid on the inside. The light will live in the end (with the 219b and BLF15DD driver ), but it has turned into quite a project now...

lol - Yeah, done that a few times, usually with things that were fine in the first place.

Killed my group-buy HD2010 by turning it on the first time.

Ha, yeah I’ve had that happen too with my very first LED “tactical” light I bought for too much…

Killed, none, however I do have quite a few non working patients waiting for some transplants of one kind or another :bigsmile:

Cheers David

3x cheap no brand crappy flashlight, died them from impact, fried the led or driver by running on li-ion instead of AA or AAA
Crelant V01A, fried by 10440
2x Olight O’Pen, both die from impact, broken glass and bend, dented bezel head. flickers before it fully dead.

Damaged a #3 zoomie driver while trying to run it on 3xAA. Used tube from a broken magnifying glass (the type that comes with a LED), it has the right threads but no switch; the inductor (spool looking thing) on the driver blew apart, separated in the middle now but held together by its wire. Regardless, the light was still working last time I used it (is taken apart atm). Ripple current?

My experimental liquid cooled conversion came apart just after I got enough current to get the alcohol to boil. It demonstrated the principle but was not a useful light. The alcohol softened the epoxy. Next time I will use silicone glue everywhere.
I junked a $3 SK-68 when I found there wasn’t enough tail cap thread to taper it enough to keep it from cross threading.
My first Yezl t9 quit while I was figuring out the user interface of the driver. I was screwing and unscrewing the tail cap, which had partly anodized threads. Apparently the driver couldn’t take the rapid switching. My second Yezl t9 worked until I put the battery in backwards. Both are now working with new drivers and shorter focal length (thicker) lenses and are among my best lights.
My Smiling Shark SS-902 swivel head zoomy had a port on the side to power the LED directly from the outside. Since I use it as a directional desk lamp, I tried an old supply I have. The supply has a knob to set the output voltage. I tried it on two different settings with different brightness. Then I though I would try the next lower setting. But it was already on the lowest setting, so that jumped it to its highest setting. The light got blue and dimmer for a second or two and went out. It now has a two group Nanjg 105c in the space below the old driver, using the old driver as a connection board, and a neutral white XP-G. It was not convenient to re-connect the external port, so it is safe from a repeat accident.
When the new pill of a Smiling Shark SS-5039 is too tight, I break the lens (more Properly window) trying to push it back out. This has happened maybe three times, so the lens is the only part I don’t have spares of.

Sunwayman V10R

I damage Sunwayman V10R by putting the battery the wrong orientation. It was only in for about a second, but that was enough to permanently mess up the dimming ring.

It still works, but 90% of the ring’s travel just goes from off to dim moonlight. Then over about 1-2 mm of turn it brightens to 100%. The light’s still usable but anything between moonlight and max is pretty much unusable.

Jetbeam RRT-01

I destroyed the driver on this by failing to disassemble it in the proper order. It is critical to disconnect and remove the driver before dissembling the rest of the head to get to the ring. Doing it in the wrong order will result in torquing and destroying the rather thing driver wires.

Even worse: the driver is a small sandwich. The driver wires are attached to the the lower board inside the middle of the sandwich. The wires then pass through small holes in the upper board and out of the driver. Due to this sandwich construction it’s impossible to get a soldering iron to the driver wire bondpoints, so I cannot replace the wires.

A K2 TFFC light that ran DD with 3xAAA. Amps. Lots of amps from running it DD with an 18650.
Killed another of the same with a failed dedome.