Oh yea, the springs lol. ok so soldering should be fine too. thanks Tom!
Thanks TA!
Yep… removed the cap….cranked it up…… Full Turbo/Nitro and blew the little smd’s into outer space….heat the pads and pry the connector off…took me longer to bypass the 3 springs…
I want one for my Niece…I’ll set it up with Springs/Bypass’s and send it to her…
lol, that works too.
Just spent most of my Sunday afternoon reading this thread. Has some $$’s saved and haven’t purchased many lights lately so placed an order for silver WT90.
Thank you TA and Tom E for the design, testing and feedback and everyone else who has contributed in this thread.
Would be good if a batch of basic non charging carriers could be made.
Personally, I still like the charging feature. Am on holiday and have been playing with the WT90 (it sure is fun and impressive!) and afterwards I simply plug it in my phone charger, needed not bring a charger. When I’m home I will remove the batteries until next use.
Thanks for the explanation.
Yes, I like having the charging as well as a bonus as long as it doesn’t cause excessive parasitic drain. I would classify 2ma+ as right on the edge of excessive. I am not sure if I will remove the charging on my light or not yet.
They are saying that they should be able to update the charging to have a voltage cutoff at 2.8v to prevent over-discharging for future batches. Talking now about ways to reduce the parasitic drain. As expected it becomes difficult as the IC is not designed with ultra low parasitic drain in mind.
So lights with low parasitic drain and internal charging use a different charge IC? Too hard to redesign this board to accommodate this IC?
I have not seen a light personally with internal charging and low enough parasitic drain for me but then I don’t own a lot of lights with charging. The ones I do drain the batteries too fast for my tastes.
I was not involved with the charging myself so not sure what the exact options are. Just that most of the off-the-shelf solutions have high parasitic drain. So something more custom has to be used and that gets expensive.
There are plenty w/charging and low drain. Lexel's design that include USB-C charging have been low drain, mostly (1 case of it not but dunno if the issue was the design or parts, etc.)... But the charging circuit in this carrier is different from any others I've seen in that each cell is treated differently, has it's own sub-circuit, so maybe that's why it's more complicated.
Yeah, I have not really gotten or paid attention to lights the last 2-3 years so I am sure a lot has improved since then.
I couldn't get my small hex screws out of the carrier to do the mod yesterday.. ill take it as a sign that i'm just going to keep it for now. I like having the option for charging, and for now i pay enough attention to the light to not worry too much about the parasitic drain.. who knows that may change in the future and i may remove the charging circuit. I know i could hit the screws/carrier with a hair dryer to release the screws, but my small hex didn't fit perfectly either (its rounded a little) so im just leaving it alone. maybe someday when i buy that new Wiha micro driver set ill go back at it lol.
As a side note - the only good thing (i think) about this parasitic drain being in the carrier and NOT in the light (i think Astrolux EA01 and FT02) is that Wild Trail COULD redesign the carrier and sell it as a separate part on their AliX site in the future, when the whole mass purchase of WT90's subsides.. i would probably buy it, especially if it showed no or very little drain..
I'm leaning toward design decisions. For example, the zener diode we used wayyy back gave us the capability to run 2S or 4S batteries for 6V or 12V LED's, but the drain made it useless for e-switch lights. So, someone discovered the LDO, and it ended up being perfect for e-switch 2S/4S setups - no drain.
But like you said, who knows - design could be far more complicated and parts more $$$. But still think the complexity of the 3 cells in parallel, but charging/monitoring them individually (perhaps?) makes this carrier charging more challenging.
ArtieT59 - Ohh, you need a good quality hex head tool -- believe me I know. Stripped a few cheapies, and tolerance were horrible. I found the perfect kit that I use now. Had no probs with the 3 carriers I've taken apart.
This one: direct link to BG page. It's sold under various names. BG has it cheap right now. I paid $17 back in Dec 2019 on a deal too. One of my 'smartest' buys.
A mechanical DIP switch on the carrier would be nice to optionally cut off internal charging, subsequently parasitic drain.
Are those better than what home depot sells?
No idea - not familiar with what they sell.
Unfortunately those don’t have the current carrying ability, or would be overly large from what I know. Small switches are often rated for a few hundred mA at most.
I don't think they mean to switch main current, but rather some low amp input signal to the charging circuit, but I'm guessing here.
A switch on the carrier was something I proposed for this, if it could disable the charging and thus eliminate the parasitic drain in the carrier it would be an acceptable fix.