This is me trying to mod my first light. It’s a little Nebo Redline I got as a gift a few years ago. I’ve now caught the flashlight bug and had purchased some Samsung 18650 26f’s so I thought I would give this a go as my first mod after some research here on the site and on the Manker G.B. spring bypass talk.
First I needed to tackle this.
So I took apart the tail with c-clip pliers.
Lots of places for corrosion and resistance!
So I got rid of the cap over the spring and I ground down the white plastic spacer that held the switch. I tried a spring bypass hence the solder on the switch connection….(no room for a spring at all) so I just left a solder pool on the switch. That gave enough room for the 18650. This little thing was working petty good and making some heat in my hand. Not a lot but enough to know I had definitely helped out the amperage!
Then I took a small chunk of copper wire and turned it into a little coil and dropped it into light so I could get the positive of the flat top battery to connect to the board and took a tail cap reading. This is almost triple what I got with 4.24V out of the 3AAA! (Maybe I took my first reading wrong but oh well.)
This is where I ran into trouble…… Instead of that chunk of stranded wire I dropped in I wanted a little solder hump for the + on the 18650.
After doing this I noticed some gunk around the LED so I picked it out with my knife. Then tested the setup. No light…. …I know very little about drivers I took a resistance read from + to - on the back of the board. Once I turned to 20k I got like 5. something. So I figured some life was still in there somewhere.
I put it all together without the lens and dug around the LED with my dmm probe. Poof! It came on…… I did some more digging…… No more workie…… :~
Question is what did I smoke? I know it was because I’m used to this smell when something burns up in equipment when I’m at work.
Is it worth bothering or just chalk it up to a learning experience? If I smoked the Led any ideas what I could replace it with?
I’m not in love with this light. I just wanted to learn and it seemed like it would be cool to make this light take a rechargeable battery and gain some lumens
Maybe other newbs can learn from this. Don’t go probing around with metal leads when you have your battery installed!!!
<p>Have you tried opening the led part? Not sure if we have similar model, but the led with pcb on mine is sitting</p><p>On a plastic shelf, actually no thermal contact in the metal body. But yours might be different. You can test the led first by putting the meter in resistance mode and connect the leads to the led contact points. If it lights up, then your led is ok. </p>
Yes that last pic is the head but it’s kind of fuzzy. And I did reverse the leads. Thank you for that pic. I’m thinking I must have shorted one of those little wires going to the led as I had dedomed this a few weeks ago.
Well…. the fist time I took it all apart I started to pick at this little plastic dome that was really just glued over the led and it fell off. I didn’t really feel like fixing it. It was more of an accident than a dedome but that glue is probably what lead to this demise. I shouldn’t have said I’m not in love with this light because I kinda do want it working again… Thanks breinrules for your help. I’m gonna get an order going from RMM. I may have to sacrifice a cheaper flashlight to get another led and test it.
Finally figured out how to take the head fully apart. Retaining ring pressed in from top. But look what I found. Could be a knockoff I don’t know led is too small but the star says cree.
its an xr-e.not fake or Chinese.just old tech.
easy to upgrade to a more efficient led.20mm board.
mtn has plenty of options.
and tearing off the dome killed it.
Thanks! I have found in stock an xp-g2 in 5a in my shopping cart at rmm. Just need to get my paycheck as it was hard not to throw a few other items in!
I realize that some folks don’t like zoomies but I have some gb lights coming so figured I would try and learn a little bit of modding on this one.
Should be a lot brighter when I’m done! I’ll keep this going with pics. Hopefully it will help people in the future.
Zoomies are nice for their size and versatility! I love the smooth beam you get when working up close.
I have to wonder what sort of "driver" these have in them? If they're like a lot of alkaline battery lights they rely on all of the resistance in the batteries, switches, and wires to keep things in check. When you decrease that resistance you can blow a lot of LEDs on aluminum MCPCBs.
Ooh good to know RMM. I was wondering if it was worth it to replace the little 24? gauge wires to the star as I’m not really trying to direct drive. And when I’m done the driver is really gonna limit things. But now I only have one mode so I must have messed up the mcu as well.
I was going to take a pic of the driver for you (I still can if you want) so I zoomed way in with the camera on my tablet and noticed the fet was smoked lol! So I removed one from a board that I got from a laptop pull! I have modes now! The switch is pretty finicky however. Thanks again for your advice! I hope I’ll be OK now with the noctigon?
The Nebo Redline is notorious for killing its emitter, even in stock form with alkalines. You probably just killed it faster by giving it more power. The new LED and Noctigon should help quite a bit, though extra heat sinking might be good if you see an easy way to improve it.
Overall, it’s about on par with the popular SK-68, but with a higher price and 3xAAA instead of 1xAA.
Well I think I shorted one of the leads directly at the emmiter to the little cup that held the dome because I was trying to pick glue out with my dmm lead while the 18650 was still in! Duh!
Question. Seems like the positive runs to a resistor, then led, then all controls and resistance are in the path of the negative after the led? So essentially I d.d.’d the led overdriving it and the fet?
Well I’ve been pulling transistors out of some of my laptop pull boards. I’ve got the light working but no modes. Some of them seem like they would output to the mcu but I think I’m getting them to hot when I’m salvaging them.
…I know very little about drivers I took a resistance read from + to - on the back of the board. Once I turned to 20k I got like 5. something. So I figured some life was still in there somewhere.
