Hey There - Well a noob killed another light. After waiting to get in all the parts I built my first P60 drop in. Soldering the LED on was a little tough, I couldn’t find any reference to the orientation so I guessed the little speck on the top plate was the positive side. I dropped it down and it soldered off 15 or 20 degrees and definitely not center. I then tinned the two contact points for the wires and then arctic alumina-ed down the base to the top of the pill.
Then the driver soldering was another comedy of errors. I thought you might need the negative hole in the top to be soldered to the pill to ground the negative wire, and then I wanted the 2nd star to be soldered for 100-5-strobe. Soldering the bridge from the outer ring to the star wasn’t easy. Then reflowing the small spring off there to add the larger spring took like 15 minutes. But I figured it out. So then I turned the pill over and the LED Emitter dome has a chunk taken out of it and it looks like it took too much heat or… the easy hand clamp mistakenly got clamped down on the dome. Needless to say the thing produced nothing but a faint poof of smoke from I think the arctic glue heating up when I tried to fire it up. The little spring also got stuck in a depressed and damaged type of way. I just tried the light and clicked it once and super quickly. I used an insulator from another drop in I have.
Problems
Destroyed emitter by being careless and rushing.
Poor soldering, the soldering paste helped, but I suck at soldering - just have to learn.
Did I ground the driver correctly? The modes aren’t a big deal, & it’s a bad pic but was that right to change the modes?
Any help would be great. There are tones of bits and pieces of info online but I just need a ABC, Sesame St. type of tutorial I guess.
Emitter with ugly chunk taken out of it. Makes my eyes moist up to see such an ugly and $$ thing.
Driver with soldering. Not too sure what I’m doing or thinking on this but I think it was right.
Again any help or insight would be great I only have one more chance with another emitter/base/driver and I can’t ef that up.
The driver regulates the current flow on the negative wire from the LED, so if you ground that it will bypass the driver and go direct drive full current all the time. LED negative has to go to the LED- pad on the driver, nowhere else. The positive wire to LED is from the pad on the driver that's connected straight through to the battery positive.
Hate to say but it should be obvious that particular LED is dead, even if the dome damage didn't kill it. What kind of cell did you use in it?
The deformed spring you mentioned is usually a sign of a dead short and too much current which overheats the spring and it loses its temper, and no longer springs back. Sometimes they even turn bluish-black.
After you put the next one together, check it with a multimeter BEFORE you try it with a lithium cell which can give a pretty amazing amount of current! Check ohms from the LED- pad to the pill, should be open circuit. Same for LED+ to the pill. Should read continuity between LED+ and the battery spring. If any of those isn't right, do not try to power it up. Also helps to check each connection as you make them, rather than getting it completely assembled and then finding out you have to take it apart again.
DO NOT leave the iron on any part of the driver or pill for more than 10-15 seconds, it's very easy to get it too hot and have the LED wires come loose from the driver on the inside where you can't see it or even have some of the components fall off the board. If the solder doesn't melt almost immediately, STOP, clean & re-tin the tip, apply some flux at the base of the spring, and try again after it's cooled back down.
Thanks so much man. I picked up a $5 power meter from Harbor Freight but am a little green in using that too. I will research polarity of the led emitter and the correct solder points for the board and how to check for open circuits with my meter. I’m going to break this down to save the base and see if anything did fall off the inside of the driver. I used a fully charged 18650, which I’m sure melted the spring. Thanks for your help comfychair I really appreciate it.
Matt
From one newbie (me): When I first started doing this stuff, not very long ago (like a couple of weeks :laughing:, I originally thought it’d be better to solder the leads to the emitter first, and then try to secure the driver to the pill.
However, at least for me, I’m finding that securing the driver to the pill can be a major pain, whereas soldering the wires to the emitter is relatively easy, thanks to tips provided here (use a flat screwdriver to hold the lead in place while soldering it :)!), and I’ve messed up a couple of emitters as part of that experience (scratching the dome, etc.).
I don’t know how others do it, but, because of this, my recommendation would be to get the driver mounted on the pill first. Of course, you need to get the leads from the driver through the little holes on the top of the pill BEFORE your start securing the driver!
Don't worry about making a few mistakes, we have all done it at some point or another.
As ohaya noted, it is much easier to do the connection to the MPCB (star) last, after all else is secure.
You definitely want to pre-solder the connection points before affixing the MPCB to the pill, so it requires relatively little heat to re-melt the solder already in-place. Pre-tin the wire leads as well.
Ahh - thanks so much for the help today. I have one more set of parts and my uncle who know more about soldering than me is going to help later in the week. I’m going to do a take down on the star and slvage what I have. I’ll post a follow up and we’ll see how things go.
Thanks!
Tinning a few spots around the rim of the pill at the driver opening when the pill is still empty can also make it a lot easier when it's time to install the driver. It can take a lot of heat to get solder to stick there, no risk of melting anything off the board if you do it while still empty.
Or you can use one of a few methods to make the driver a press-fit rather than attached with solder. Either small dia copper wire, or braided solder wick.
Great advice - that is what happened I worked on the star and glued it in place and then turned over the pill to work on the driver and had the iron on the driver for a pretty long time working on the edges, + spring and the covering the star. Then I turned the pill over to look at the emitter and it was damaged.
I’m looking forward to the next build and paying attention to everyone’s points and comments.
One tip I might add is, do yourself a favor and buy some silicone wire. Silicone wire doesn’t melt like the plastic insulated wire does and its very flexible and easy to use. When you make that bend up around the led PCB and solder to the pads on the PCB the plastic wire melts (creating exposed wire) when soldered to and can create a short directly to the aluminum PCB which is probably grounded. Silicone wire will not melt when soldering the connection. You can find it at about any hobby shop. Online I have bought silicone wire here and here if your not in a hurry.
Thanks for all the great tips everyone. I got my $4 hemostats off of eBay today and we are going to try again tomorrow. I’m excited plus If we make it work my uncle will get a new Solarforce LP2 in bronze and a XM- L2 6500k module. He’ll be stoked.
Matt
