Because i must take apart everything i own and improve it i am attempting to remove the pill, but it is stuck in good, i assume they have an exact fit tool to super tighten it. I also want to get it out without scratching it up.
My needle nose pliers are too big to fit and precision screwdrivers that can fit don’t give the leverage to get it unscrewed
Snap ring pliers are best if you can get some. You might also try some heat on the outside to expand the tube a bit if you have to work with what you have.
the pill unscrews out of the body, all you have to do is in those two knotches on top put a small flathead screwdriver in the knotch and turn counter clockwise it will unscrew, all the ones I have ever gotten were snugged down in but would come out with a small bit of force.
What other uses would they be good for, i don’t like having single use appliances around taking up space and no point spending almost as much as the light to open it
Needle nose pliers .. Or hemostats they already have a curve to them . I also use small older dull shears opened all the way depending on whether it;s a pill or a tailcap. You might look for a piece of steel the correct width (grinding wheel) to span the entire gap and grab and twist with vise grips .Make bigger slots in the pill, use the wire holes , You may want to take it to a talented friend with every tool ever made .. or maybe just quietly put the light back together again and act like you fixed it .
I was busy torturing my little yellow wallbuys 1.99 zoomie..making grooves and grinding off edges ....and decided to finally open it up and peek inside ....I tried like hell to get that sucker apart and finally just quit caring.
I'll get back to it later with a bigger gun .... you'd think a 2$ light would be easier to break into
I’ve had success using tweezers on every flashlight I’ve disassembled; for the ones that are extra tight I make a little shim of out tissue paper to shove up the tweezers which allows them to be set to the proper width of the pill slots. The tissue shim also prevents the tweezers from closing if it happens to slip out, which could damage the dome if the shim wasn’t used. I then take pliers and grip the tweezers about midway and apply downward pressure to avoid slipping. A bit of force to turn and it’s loose!
Used this method several times on cheapie pills that were screwed in with incorrect O-rings that had gotten jammed.
Nice tool crx. Did you use any particular type of rubber band for binding the nails?
Personally, I use the $2 tweezers sold at IOS lot these days. They are beefy and work well, you can see a couple of pics of them in towards the beginning of my SK68 teardown post. I bought that particular pair of tweezers specifically for pills and tailcaps, but they are good all around tweezers on the workbench. I also own snap-ring pliers and found the tweezers vastly superior for this task. The tweezers fit more sizes of slot/hole AND reach much deeper into a light than the snap-ring tool does. For larger rings you end up having to hold the tweezers further open than normal (push them open).
I have to echo unknown00101: solid tweezers have never failed to work for me. This is a “right tool for the job” situation. When I tried using precision screwdrivers and similar in the past I had tons of frustration and no results. I tried nails too, but I didn’t properly bind them like crx showed. I suspect that if you just had a good tool in hand the pill wouldn’t seem very stuck at all!
I agree with unknown00101 that fine tweezers (such as these) are a bad idea. You’ve got to have tweezers solid enough to withstand the twisting motion (without twisting themselves).
The pill I just tried to get out has no holes or grooves in it, and I can’t see how I could cut any without destroying the light. (For others, I use long needle nose pliers ground narrow at the tip.) Maybe snap ring pliers would do it?
Maybe I will try putting it in the freezer first. The outer part will warm up first.
The exposed edge of the pill is narrow, but maybe if I don’t mind cutting a bit into the head. Maybe you have a drill press and vise.
I think a file did do it, but I said “ground” above.
