Oh boy. Both mine came out with just using a needle-nose, but it took some force to get it moving from the "stuck" position. Think I used my HomeDepot rubber gloves to get a good grip though - finding these invaluable. Here you can see the holes are fine after removing the pill:
Finished the mod to the first one. Put in a Nanjg 2.8A with adding 3 350mA 7135's, so total is 3.85A, custom programmed with modes: moonlight-6%-32%-100%, XM-L2 U2 1A on a 16mm SinkPAD, 22 AWG wires. The SinkPAD is sanded down to about 1.2mm (from 1.55mm) so it's closer to the stock 1.0mm thick aluminum star, for focus, and then it's screwed down. The stacked 7135's are on the battery/spring side because of lack of space in the pill, so I left the stock Nanjg spring to protect the 7135's. It's doing about 900 lumens @30 secs now in full flood, tailcap measured at 3.7A at best. I copper wired the tailcap spring which helps, but still can not obtain max output for the switch.
Couple of noteworthy things with this mod:
- Not able to achieve ~3.90A out of it (doing just a test of the bare pill), just 3.7A or so. I think I got an emitter problem - maybe the reflow, maybe damaged from the reflow
- in full zoom-in (for max throw), there's a weird shaped bright spot in the corner of the beam pattern near one of the 2 wires on the phosphor. I proved it's not reflection or property of the lens, so again, seems like something wrong with the LED.
- Even with the copper wired tail spring, the tailcap assembly loses output. I can swap in my Sipik SK73 tailcap and get higher output #'s, about 950 lumens.
I'm getting convinced the new XM-L2 U2 1A has some damage. I know I rushed the reflow by using a torch from underneath the SinkPAD. I should swap it out - thinking this is causing lower amps from having a higher Vf than normal, and the somewhat higher resistance in the tailcap effects it.
I tried a replacement cheap switch from FastTech (clicky-switch) that made no difference. I even dis-assembled the switch, adding some solder thinking it will increase the flow path, but also made no difference. Wish I could measure resistance under load...
Still for what this light is doing, 900 lumens in full flood, and the nice set of modes, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm using it with the SK73 switch and it's doing pretty good.
I wish I could fit this switch: omten-15a-250v, but it would require some work, and may still not fit. This proved to be a better quality switch when I used one in the SupFire F3-L2 zoomie (https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/28084).