I received a light today as a sample ( I did have to pay a portion). For now I am not going to mention the brand as I am trying to allow them to explain and/or correct the problem.
As soon as you see the picture below you will see the problem...
As you can see the tube takes 4*18650 cells and as you can also see 2 of those are set way too low to ever make contact with anything.
I have already checked and the tops of the cells do not touch the bottom of the board at all. The other 2 cells work just as they should. The light level is even a bit above what is claimed using only 2 cells.
This next picture is where I got lost. You will see all of the solder and by the way these springs are the 2 that sit too low.
That's a very good thought that I did not think of. It would also explain the excess solder. You can't see it in that picture but there is actually tiny balls of solder in the bottom of the tube. Enough current could do that.
They have actually emailed me back already. Maybe 10 minutes total. They don't really have an answer but seem willing to investigate it.
Yep... Light output is actually a bit higher than claimed. I am just really wondering what would happen with those other 2 cells. It looks to be a parallel set-up.
It is a 3 emitter light and I got almost 3k lumen with 2 of the cells doing nothing...
Amongst others, UF sells these models with 3 to 7 led’s. Could be that someone tried to force in batteries that were too long. So the springs were compressed byond their elastic range. Other thought is that the short springs were never hardened or were overheated and lost their “springyness”. BTW that’s one messy soldering job. Should look like this:
Yeah I have concerns about that as well... The light you posted (I only recently found this out) is made or at least sold by a couple possible 3 different brands.
One of those has the light output at about double the Ultrafire model. From what I understand it is pretty close to the mark. I checked Youtube and videos are pretty easy to find... None of them had a battery tube issue like this. With all 4 cells going I can see it possible to hit 4k lumen from 3 X series emitters...
I am wondering what may happen if I attack a couple of magnets to the bottom of a couple of cheap cells and see if those 2 tubes even work now. Like you said that soldering is really bad. I have seen that happen from way too much current but normally from a power supply not from a cell.
I got it..... The bottom did not seem like it would come off but it does. I pulled out the bottom and just removed the springs then re-attached them. It looked like they just let it get way too hot. Might have been teaching someone to solder.
the springs look to be gold plated,
to get those oxidated you need temperatures over 500°C
of course the base metal gets soft and sags permanently
How it happened to only 2 springs
someone inserted 2 batteries one in reverse
so they get a guranteed short
30-50A depending on which high drain cell you got are at least present
like 50-70% of that heat is generated in the springs
Klarus XT12GT springs meltdown from boost driver shortening
I have never melted a spring by overheating it. Even the small spring on a nanjg driver. I think it would have to be a short. High currents cause over heating to wires and springs causing them to melt.
Just replace the springs they look to be a standard size. You probably can still use them but they will have a higher resistance.
After a few emails I found that the tail cap does come off even though it is very tight and does not look like it would. Once I got it off it was pretty easy to see that someone must have been training with the soldering iron, 2 springs are very nice, the two in the picture you can easily see that it is from someone that either did not care, did not know what they were doing, or just wanted to screw up some stuff.
I de-soldered both the springs and cleaned them as best they could be leaned. Wicked up all the excess solder and got a ton off of the springs. Stretched them slow over about 2 hours and soldered them back into place correctly.
I have a replacement battery tube on the way but the clean up actually worked out pretty well.
Problem is not it is full on daylight so no fun trying to see how much light I can get.
I will run it through the integrating sphere and tube in a little while and see if output went up any. Curious about the current now that I know the tail cap comes off. LOL gotta figure out how I might try that.
