Hows it going everyone. I’m knew here. Still trying to figure out the search function. But anyways. I never had much need for high powered flashlights. Which is odd considering i live on 100 acres of family owned property in up state New York. Recently my German shepard got loose. Well that’s when i realized those cheap flash lights i have been buying from walmart just didn’t cut it. Seeing 10-15 feet when you are searching 100 acres just doesn’t help.
I have a old cyclops thor x 10 million candle light power. I bought around 15 years ago. Since then the batteries have gone bad, even when they were new the thing only stayed on high for about 35-40 minutes. So i had to use a car jump start battery box and strap it to my back and run leads to the flash light to have enough light to find my dog. After searching about 2 hours my back was killing me. Ended up taking 3 days to find him. All is well there now.
So i did some looking around and ended up ordering two flashlights.
It came with the newest driver. RLD-20120102. I also ordered 4 panasonic 3100MaH protected batteries. So the flashlight came in. (8/23/13) I opened the cap and noticed the contact points were seriously scratched to hell. So i put the 4 batteries in. The flashlight started to smoke. I quickly opened it up to make sure the batteries were facing the correct way, and they were. So i took the batteries and tried them in my buddies Ultrafire flashlight. It lighted right up.
So i took the front of the light apart to check the driver to see if anything looked burned up. Well i found something that was so burned up, it was flaking .
I borrowed this picture from a member here. comfychair, i hope thats ok. I put a red square on what is burned up.
So i am going to be trying to get a refund. What do you think caused it? Also, since i now know a little bit. This being the bad driver. Where could i possibly find a fandyfire/skyray king with the good driver everyone is talking about?
Again, sorry if some of these questions have been answered. Trying to figure the search function out and the rest of the site still.
After i quickly took it apart to ensure the batteries were indeed placed right sides up. I tried it again, this time no smoke. Tried to turn it on. Nothing, seems dead.
I’m very new to 18650 operated devices. But the protected panasonic batteries were placed in the right way. They were charged with a Nitecore Sysmax Intellicharge i4.
I will be trying to return this one. I just want to make sure i didn’t miss something before buying another one and having the same thing happen again.
Good call. That’s a tantalum capacitor and those are polarized - and it appears that its orientation is wrong. The orange polarity band of the cap designates the anode, but I see a minus on the silkscreen of the board.
Good call. That’s a tantalum capacitor and those are polarized – and it appears that its orientation is wrong. The orange polarity band of the cap designates the anode, but I see a minus on the silkscreen of the board.
Looking at the underlying traces, it appears that the side without the "-" mark is the negative side. The trace on the side not marked "-" appears to be going to the edge of the driver which makes contact with the tube body.
But if it is installed backwards on the one in the pic, it doesn't catch fire when power is connected. That driver converted to single channel (only altered the output section of the board, didn't mess with the MCU or any of the input side stuff) and running 5 XMLs in parallel is currently assembled & working with the cap unchanged from how it is in that pic.
I have a black SRK from CQG with 3C/5000K XMLs, it's the nicest one I have seen and the only light I own that hasn't been taken apart to tweak anything (yet). I don't know what's different about it from the others, but the light output/beam pattern looks nearly identical to a good single emitter light instead of the usual 'wall of light' floody SRK beam and I'm afraid I'll only make it worse if I mess with it.
Alright i just got an e-mail back from the ebay seller. The only option they are offering me is. I send them 7.95 for postage for a new flashlight, and i get to keep the broken one as well.
In the ebay auction you can clearly see the photo shows a different driver, the contacts on the one pictured is different than the one i got. I will be including the picture and asking them to send me one with that driver in it.
Got the other skyray king in today. After they promised to send me the skyray king with the driver i wanted. I got another one with the same crummy driver. It’s not impressive at all. The trustfire 3800 lumen is much brighter.
So i paid the original 39.00, plus 7.95 for postage for a new flashlight, and then sent the same flashlight again.
“Dear friend,
I promise the new one we send to you is the same one in the auction pictures with the same contacts and green o-rings. OK? And the payment of the $7 postage has been sent to your pp account. Once you paid it, please send a message to let us know, so we can arrange it for you ASAP.
Is the "good" driver you wanted even in any of the SRK's sold these days? I have'nt kept up. There are 2 versions I know that have been coming with SRK's now a days. The one you got is the better of the two. It's not a bad driver. You can amp up the power per emitter by just adding some resisters.
