I used the procedure described here to change the reflector to a TIR:
Now the flashlight doesn’t work. I have no idea what could have gone wrong.
The LED was probably twisted by the TIR and needs a reflow, or the dome came off and broke one of the tiny wires.
How can i check if that happened?
First check that you put the battery tube back with the correct (non anodized) threads at the driver side.
Did you leave out the spacer? On first sight you might think you can do without it because there is a square hole at the base of the TIR. And that takes care of centering the LED. But you need the spacer because it also acts as a bearing between the LED (which is more or less fixed attached to the pill) and the TIR-lens.
When you screw in the pill, there would be no problem if the TIR could freely rotate against the lens. But that is hardly ever the case. When you have decided to leave out the lens, the TIR will be fixated to the bezel (through the O-ring). In the latter case you definitely need the spacer to act as a bearing between LED and TIR.
Yes, check that and, if the tier is shorter than the original reflector, and you did not add a spacer to make up the extra hight, the pill would have threaded farther into the head so the battery isn’t making contact.
PS: the white plastic locater is not needed with a tier lens.
I don’t think the battery tube is the problem, in both ways it doesn’t turn on. I already tried putting the original reflector back.
With the ohm setting of my cheap DMM I see there is connection between the solder of the red wire and the spring on the driver, I can’t find a connection between the solder attached to the black wire (negative, I suppose) and the outside of the driver, but i dont know which part should be connected to it.
Check if there is any connectivity between the wires and the pill. Touch one end to the wire and touch the other to the side of the mcpcb and the pill. If you don’t have any shorts then the next thing to do would be to touch both pads with leads attached to a battery to see if it lights up.
I forgot to ask if you tested it by by unscrewing the tailcap and shorting across the battery and the tube with a wire (test lead). If the light comes on, it’s a tail problem.
There is contact between the spring of the driver and the solder attached to the red wire. I already checked and doesn’t appear to be a tail problem.
I tried to connect the negative end of the battery to the solder on the black wire while the positive end is touching the spring of the driver but there was no current in the amperimeter mode.
Sorry if my english is poor, it isn’t my native language.
Thank you all for your help.
If it was me I’d try to eliminate the possible causes in this order.
1. Verify that the LED is working by connecting a ~3volt power supply or rigging up leads with a battery to touch the + on the mcpbc with the + lead from the power supply/battery and - lead to negative on the board. If it lights up the emitter is fine.
2. Connect the + lead to the spring of the driver and the - lead to wall of the pill. If it lights up the driver is good. If not it could be a shorted/broken wire inside the pill (I assume you already checked the connections to the emitter board) or possibility a bad driver.
3. With a battery in the tube short the battery with a wire. If it lights up it’s a switch issue. If not clean the connections to the head and try again.
You have checked that all the retaining rings are tight, right?
It’s way easier to verify the emitter is working by trying to power it skipping the driver.
Yes. We need to see if the LED is working.
You need to somehow attach wires to the + and - ends of a battery (maybe your test leads), and then touch the other ends to the + and - pads at the LED.
I realize if you don’t have alligator clips and magnets this is an awkward situation to perform.
So if you don’t have four hands, but another person is handy, one person can hold the leads to the ends of the batteries while the other touches the emitter pads. You can use 2 AA cells in series if you wish. I just use the 18650 for a quick test and have never had any problems. CR123, 18350, 14500.
I’m afraid connecting directly a 3.2v and a 4v improvised source (2xAA, 3xAAAnimh + lots of duct tape), by connecting to the solder on the pad, didn’t work, so either the connection between the pad and the led failed or the led itself failed. Dissasembling the pill to futher isolating the failure is not an easy think to do for me at the moment, as I don’t have access to a soldering iron at the moment.
Thank you for your help.
Replacing the led is a 15 minute job but unfortunately you need a soldering iron and solder to do so. Did you look at the led using a magnifying glass to see if the bond wires inside are broken? If not I would reflow it to see if that helps. You can do that using a stove top but you still need to remove the led from the light.
If you have a gas cook top you can change an led if that’s the problem using a soup can lid, a paper clip to hold the mcpcb on it, and tweezers to do the swap. Just a reflector/optic swap shouldn’t cause the led a problem with the led and it looks ok. What can happen if the mcpcb is installed with heat sink grease is that the insulation can get cut by a scissors action between the pill and mcpcb. It won’t show as a short except when installed. It’s visible as a cut in the insulation on the red wire(damage to the black wire insulation would still light but only on high). The black wire does not connect directly to ground so it should show a very high resistance(but not infinite)when measured with an ohmmeter between led and the brass pill. It’s also possible that the black wire is not well soldered to the driver or that there is a cold joint at the driver/pill connection. If lack of spacer is the problem try threading the pill only partway into the head so that you are sure the bare end of the battery tube is in contact with the brass pill before installing the battery and switching it on. At this time you could also try a paper clip between B- and the bare end of the tube. If that gives light then the switch is the problem, possibly a loose switch retaining ring or rubber button preloading the switch and holding it open if the retaining ring was installed tighter than it was before. Modern lights are much better made than most older ones but there is still plenty to go wrong even if much of it is fixable.
This.
Remove the white centering/insulating collar. You won’t need that with a plastic TIR. Also, be sure to remove the original glass lens & keep it with the reflector. While we’re removing, you don’t need the white plastic holder that comes with the TIR either. Just the O-ring, the TIR and the pill.
You can detect the cut red wire by checking continuity between the solder blob at the end of the red wire & the pill body (now that you’ve confirmed B+).
If your mcpcb can move when you tighten the pill, you can mash your finger or thumb against the TIR and turn it with the pill. If you have accidentally cut your + lead insulation, you can give the TIR a little extra turn just before you finish tightening the pill to push the red wire away from where it’s touching (assuming that’s the Root Cause) until you can replace the wire(s).
HTH…