Now those are quality ones :+1: I’d love a set of those, but they are like £30 or maybe more for 1 pair here.
Thanks SYZYGY. I will try some oil. And those pliers do look high quality. By having only the last bit narrow they look really strong.
I will also try replacing the screws with thick, unbend able, pointy concrete nails, or get around to taking a dremel, or angle grinder (are they the same thing?No. I will be using an angle grinder) to my cheap pliers, in emulation of SYZYGY's pliers.
I also wonder if I could solder the 12 LED board that I have, to the cheap 20USD 3 LED light.
These are my homemade snap-ring pliers based on those of SYZGY. It was a 5 minute job with my angle grinder, wearing safety glasses and just reducing the surface area of the top of my 100 yen shop pliers, by grinding down the non face three sides and then making it a bit more circular. It really fits the holes in the driver retaining ring well, and I can apply quite a lot of torque, but it still will not budge.
I have hurt my left arm carrying firewood so I am going to wait till I have a vice, in a tool room where I also have WD40 or the Japanese equivalent.
I wonder how likely it is that the retaining ring is reverse threaded, and I am doing up the retaining ring, as suggested by Henk4U2 above?
nice job! if that tool you ground down fits it well (and you can apply torque), then something is wrong..
the thread direction is worth looking at. you can visually inspect the thread to determine if it's right hand or left hand thread. if it's too hard to see, then use a toothpick or something to 'feel' the direction. carefully run the pick along the thread in one direction and see if you move upwards or downwards. it will be noticeable after a revolution or so, but go however far you need to go.
if you're trying to turn it in the correct direction, and oil doesn't help, then something is really wrong. i wonder if galling has occurred. for example, if the retaining ring is made of stainless steel, and the flashlight is made of aluminum, then will happen. good luck unscrewing it in that case.
Maybe glued ?
I tried tweezers but they bent. I only tried them in the conventional direction.
If the retaining ring is reverse threaded then I have really done it up tightly.
There is no thread that I can see to put a toothpick into.
The ring, and the body of the torch, are made of aluminum.
I have no idea whether or why the ring might be glued.
The pliers are cool and i would recommend this method to anyone. You can really get quite a lot of torque into your twist.
Success!
I was trying to unscrew the head of the flashlight from itself!
I put the light in my vice, gripping the thin barrel of the light and immediately succeeded in unscrewing the head of the light from the barrel. On the other side of the head, on the spring side of the driver, there is a retaining ring with two holes which I quickly and easily unscrewed using my adapted pliers.
The two holes in the photo above are not in a retaining ring but in the head itself. No wonder I could not unscrew it. I was holding onto the head and trying to unscrew the head from itself!
The driver is 26mm in diameter.
I wonder if this will do. I am thinking to get the two mode driver since I don't need it to flash.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001683924359.html?
Before I order I will connect the LEDs to a power supply to make sure it is the driver, and not the LEDs that are burnt out.
Well done! Reminds me of when I made a similar mistake with the Sofirn SP32A, which had an integrated shelf. Attacked it for ages with tweezers in pliers before I realized it was part of the head.
In Sofirn’s case, they tend to not have a retaining ring (the driver is glued in), so your light has a somewhat more convenient design.
Thanks. I am glad to know it is not only me.
I wonder if reverse polarising my LEDs will burn them out. The power supply I have to hand does not have polarity, and I don't have a meter here. I think I will just order the driver and hope for the best.
I just had mine arrive this morning fantastic tool, stainless steel too. For £9.99 it would seem a bargain to me as it has so many uses.
