Fasttech has them for $6.56, is this a good price?
http://www.fasttech.com/products/0/10002694/1200101-rewin-snap-ring-plier-with-4-changeable-tips
What other uses would they be good for, i don’t like having single use appliances around taking up space and no point spending almost as much as the light to open it
I don’t think FT is a good place to go to buy tools. Look at this pic, from their own website of some drill bits.
Needle nose pliers .. Or hemostats they already have a curve to them . I also use small older dull shears opened all the way depending on whether it;s a pill or a tailcap. You might look for a piece of steel the correct width (grinding wheel) to span the entire gap and grab and twist with vise grips .Make bigger slots in the pill, use the wire holes , You may want to take it to a talented friend with every tool ever made .. or maybe just quietly put the light back together again and act like you fixed it .
I was busy torturing my little yellow wallbuys 1.99 zoomie..making grooves and grinding off edges ....and decided to finally open it up and peek inside ....I tried like hell to get that sucker apart and finally just quit caring.
I'll get back to it later with a bigger gun .... you'd think a 2$ light would be easier to break into
Good luck
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.
I use these for a lot of pill removal where other tools don’t fit.
The bigger the pill, the larger the nails.
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 don’t think the tweezers would be able to apply enough force in my case, i wonder if mine have loctite or were maybe tightened with a power tool
The tweezers I use are similar to this:
A bit more of a point though, 1.5mm thick on the legs, 1mm on the point. I think they may have been previously meant for eyebrow tweezing? idk.
They're extremely sturdy and resilient, made it through many plier applications with nothing more than a couple nicks and scratches.
I don't think the "industrial super strength steel" extremely thin with sharp point tweezers would work.
They are small braiding bands for horses.
Hehe
Get a dental pick while you're shopping ..invaluable
Thanks.
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.
With sk68 clones the first thing I do is drill two 2mm holes opposite on the top side of the pill, if they wear out, repeat.
Oh, and I have a 'long nose plier ' like this one from fasttech, I filed the tips narrower to fit the 2mm holes.
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.
Large paperclip works.
Take a standard large paperclip. Unfold it and bend it in half so it’s similar in shape to tweezers. Align each of the points so they fit into the slots or holes in the pill. Then grip both sides of the paperclip firmly with long-nosed pliers held perpendicular to the light. Turn the pliers. The pliers should allow you to get a good enough grip to keep the paperclip from bending out of position, while giving you plenty of leverage.
Can you post a pic or two to show how you are holding them? I wasn’t ever able to get paper clips to work.
May work most of the time, but it sounds like Bort’s case is harder than that. With the one I have at hand, the head is in the way of getting right up to the holes with the pliers.
Some came with the pill so loose that it came off if I turned the head counter clockwise.
Do you have any digital calipers… they work well as a lens-spanner… which is the proper tool for the job.
I do have one, though i would be concerned about damaging it with too much force but i will try it later at moderate force