LED-ENGINE-UV365nm shuts-itself off after ~40seconds

djozz · 2019-10-26T10:12:00.000Z

The next best thing is to buy a cheap UV drop-in from FT or KD.

In principle I agree with Henk. If a CustomLites drop-in is not bomb-proof anyway, you may as well get a cheap KD drop-in. The Ledengin led was a bad led anyway, very expensive, big die that was even badly centered, lots of visible stray light. There was not much better at the time, but nowadays there are much better 365nm leds.

Edit: a quick search does not find a P60 drop-in that uses one of the better Nichia, Seoul Viosys, Luminus or LG leds, so the best is to have someone (other than Nailbender ) make it for you.

kennybobby · 2019-10-26T10:26:50.000Z

It appears to be a thermal issue and not a defective component. If the board is potted with epoxy then troubleshooting will be difficult until the epoxy is removed. Epoxy has a high thermal coeff of expansion, it moves and grows quite a bit due to temperature change.

There is likely a bad solder joint that is being pulled by the expansion of the epoxy which is causing the circuit to open.

If it works for brief periods to scan currency then it may still be useful to you; if you need a longer duty cycle and the cutoff is not acceptable, then it will need to be repaired or replaced.

Who does repairs? seems to be plenty of smart guys on this forum.

Lexel · 2019-10-26T10:45:42.000Z

repair with a 10 pound hammer —> get a good light or drop in with a modern LED

So they sell products at a premium price with no support after 30 days?

Best is to get a Convoy or similar light its dead simple ON/OFF, you may even replace the driver with one with same AMC amount and modes running biscotti
Or even go with a Bistro driver that can thermally throttle when the light gets warm or hot

aL1 · 2019-10-26T10:58:22.000Z

djozz:

It sounds like a response to a not so nice email that they got from you (but is not shown), or else that he was not having a great day to begin with. But apart from the tone, and from CustomLites written warranty statement, from a builders point of view he does have a fair point. UV leds are a sensitive type of led that do not like to be driven very hard and are known to fail/detoriate much sooner than white leds. If I would sell such drop-in I would not like to warrant it for years (but I would also warn about the sensitive nature of UV leds). Maybe yours does have a fault and failed without heavy use and without ever overheating, but the builder has no way to know apart from what you tell him. And he clearly is not the type of seller “lifetime warranty no questions asked”.

@djozz

Yes djozz, your intuition is very good, my email to them was a bit 'frosty', because it wasn't the first time that I emailed them about this problem.

I do understand they have a '30-Day Warranty'.

All I asked was if I could pay for them to troubleshoot and/or repair it, as it was not a budget lite, or at least that they give me a clue or a little help where to begin to look for the fault.

I didn't ask for a life-time warranty or a free repair or replacement.

All I asked for was some courtesy and a reply that was 'Professional' from a builder that sells not-so-cheap lites.

djozz, you're 'The Man', THANKS!!

ConvoyS2+NichiaUV365mm

Henk4U2 · 2019-10-26T11:44:32.000Z

Okay, didn’t directly think about a third option. How about THIS.

https://illuminationgear.com/products/sportac-p60-led-module-two-mode-incls-adapter-ring

It comes in all kinds of flavours, IR UV red blue green, just pick one.
Not as cheap as a FT or KD one, but a lot better, and it has 2 modes so you are not obliged to toast the thing.

I own a SF with Sportac 1-mode drop-in for 5½yr now. It is recently promoted from EDC to nightstand light.

djozz · 2019-10-26T12:10:05.000Z

What led do they use?

Henk4U2 · 2019-10-26T12:13:55.000Z

djozz:

What led do they use?

Isn’t mentioned anywhere. But my experience with their CS dept. is very good. If they know, they will tell.

aL1 · 2019-10-26T13:29:17.000Z

Henk4U2:

Okay, didn’t directly think about a third option. How about “THIS.”:https://illuminationgear.com/products/sportac-p60-led-module-two-mode-incls-adapter-ring https://illuminationgear.com/products/sportac-p60-led-module-two-mode-incls-adapter-ring It comes in all kinds of flavours, IR UV red blue green, just pick one. Not as cheap as a FT or KD one, but a lot better, and it has 2 modes so you are not obliged to toast the thing. !{width:80%}https://isteam.wsimg.com/ip/14a4abd0-407b-11e6-a5a4-14feb5d39f58/ols/81_original/:/rs=w:600,h:600! I own a SF with Sportac 1-mode drop-in for 5½yr now. It is recently promoted from EDC to nightstand light.

Believe it or not, I bought two of them when they were first released and were single-mode only.

Not sure, but I think they are now 2-mode....

BlueSwordM · 2019-10-26T15:45:12.000Z

@aL1, have you thought of asking them what kind of MCPCB, what kind of LED, and what kind of current they are running the LED at?

RobertB · 2019-10-26T15:57:27.000Z

Never heard you mention the type of battery(s) you’re using. I have a few lights that if the battery discharges down to 3v they will just shut off.

BlueSwordM · 2019-10-26T15:58:23.000Z

^ That is a possibility.

chops728 · 2019-10-26T16:15:17.000Z

First off I would take the Drop In out of the host and wire it directly to make sure it’s the Drop In itself and go from there—I’ve had ground issues athe the head and also around the switch

RobertB · 2019-10-26T16:16:56.000Z

BlueSwordM:

^ That is a possibility.

Should be the first thing to check, IMO. Battery and dirty contacts

aL1 · 2019-10-26T22:08:10.000Z

BlueSwordM:

@aL1, have you thought of asking them what kind of MCPCB, what kind of LED, and what kind of current they are running the LED at?

They were not very helpful with any info.

aL1 · 2019-10-26T22:23:23.000Z

RobertB:

Never heard you mention the type of battery(s) you’re using. I have a few lights that if the battery discharges down to 3v they will just shut off.

BlueSwordM:

^ That is a possibility.

I used an OPUS BT-3100 to test the batts....both fully charged....

As it turns-out, two new batteries seem to have resolved the issue, time will tell.

BTW, the batts that appear to be the cause were (almost never used 16340 KeepPower 700mAh Protected Button Tops), replacing them with CR123's looks like the charm.

aL1 · 2019-10-26T22:18:29.000Z

chops728:

First off I would take the Drop In out of the host and wire it directly to make sure it’s the Drop In itself and go from there–I’ve had ground issues athe the head and also around the switch

Did that too-

aL1 · 2019-10-26T22:23:42.000Z

RobertB:

BlueSwordM:

^ That is a possibility.

Should be the first thing to check, IMO. Battery and dirty contacts

See Post #23 above-below??, both batts were fully charged and the contacts cleaned.

RobertB · 2019-10-26T22:43:43.000Z

aL1:

RobertB:

Never heard you mention the type of battery(s) you’re using. I have a few lights that if the battery discharges down to 3v they will just shut off.

BlueSwordM:

^ That is a possibility.

I used an OPUS BT-3100 to test the batts….both fully charged….

As it turns-out, two new batteries seem to have resolved the issue, time will tell.

BTW, the batts that appear to be the cause were (almost never used 16340 KeepPower 700mAh Protected Button Tops), replacing them with CR123’s looks like the charm.

Good deal. Sounded like batteries to me. I never use protected cells, especially with a device that has LVP like your’s apparently does. Those KP’s must have been voltage sagging like crazy. Vapcell has nice 16340s. I use a pair of them in a high powered laser

Maybe the protection circuit on one of the batteries was cutting off. You can strip the protection circuits off those cells

moderator007 · 2019-10-26T22:44:29.000Z

aL1:

RobertB:

Never heard you mention the type of battery(s) you’re using. I have a few lights that if the battery discharges down to 3v they will just shut off.

BlueSwordM:

^ That is a possibility.

I used an OPUS BT-3100 to test the batts….both fully charged….

As it turns-out, two new batteries seem to have resolved the issue, time will tell.

BTW, the batts that appear to be the cause were (almost never used 16340 KeepPower 700mAh Protected Button Tops), replacing them with CR123’s looks like the charm.

They could have high internal resistance in which they want produce much current without the voltage sagging alot. Are they old cells or fairly new.
I have had lights that wouldn’t run but maybe 30 or 40 seconds because the battery voltage under the load dropped below low voltage protection.
Changed to higher current batteries and problem solved. The batteries I ran into the problem with was 16340 sized. I bought and tested several different brands. The best for high current that I have tested is the Vapcell 16340 800mah.

Sirius9 · 2019-10-26T23:43:03.000Z

djozz:

It sounds like a response to a not so nice email that they got from you (but is not shown), or else that he was not having a great day to begin with.

But apart from the tone, and from CustomLites written warranty statement, from a builders point of view he does have a fair point. UV leds are a sensitive type of led that do not like to be driven very hard and are known to fail/detoriate much sooner than white leds. If I would sell such drop-in I would not like to warrant it for years (but I would also warn about the sensitive nature of UV leds). Maybe yours does have a fault and failed without heavy use and without ever overheating, but the builder has no way to know apart from what you tell him. And he clearly is not the type of seller “lifetime warranty no questions asked”.

I strongly disagree.
From builders and sellers point of view, there is no excuse to treat customer who paid a great deal of $ for your product in such a manner, even less excuse is having a bad day.
If you ever built a product in batches or 10-20+pcs of identical or very similar product (and I believe you did) then you exactly know what are the week spots of that product and what situations can happen during use of the product.
When someone calls me and say “hey this happened” I know exactly what he did that lead to failure.
Also as a builder that wants to sale his products you have to take in consideration that not everyone that will use your product is familiar with it, or that they will read manual or that they will care about the product at all, you have to predict as best you can all the things that may affect your product in negative way.
Someone may insert battery reversed, ok, you can either make reverse polarity protection or not but you know what will burn if this situation happens, or someone may put 2 small batteries because hey, years before they had flashlight that used 2 x CR123 batteries so they thought it will shine more if they put 2 batteries insteda of 1 18650 and the working voltage of the product is up to 4.5V. Either you will make product more expensive by designing it to be able to handle this situation or something will burn and you will know what was done to it.

Either way, buyer offered to pay just to diagnose the problem and give their opinion, maybe it is fixable, maybe its not, it is your product and you know that even without having it in your hands.

If the product is potted and there is no way to get to vital components without causing irreversible destruction then that’s what you need to explain to customer, and not act like customer is stupid and does not understand what 30-day warranty means.

When someone calls me and says “I have Acebeam…” with this or that problem, first thing I explain is that Acebeam is heavily using glue to prevent opening their lights, I can try to open it but that will probably cause some damage to the product (I always try to prevent this but I make sure that customer knows it may happen) on top of that if I open it and find the problem, it may still not be fixale (or I will not be able to fix it because I do not know everithing, im not EE).
After customer knows all this it is his choice if he will accept my terms or just keep the faulty product as a paper weight.

All in all, if you don’t want and dont know to deal with customers with problems (because sooner or later you will have unhappy customer) than get a job that does not involve interaction with people.