Just finished the first runtime of the Wurkkos TS26S and put the light on the charger. The USB power meter I had inline kept powering down and up and the light wouldn’t charge. I unplugged it to try another cable without the tester and the light was really warm. After unscrewing the tailcap to pull the battery, I could smell the magic smoke. The battery was also really hot and read 2.21 volts. I tried another battery and while threading the tailcap on, heard the sound of crackling sparks and smelled ozone so I knew I had an issue. Jumping the tube ground to the battery - produced more sparks and magic smoke. RIP TS26S. So, next step is to tear it down. It comes apart easy. Unsolder the LED wires, and remove the mcpcb. The driver has light glue, but a couple taps on the inductor using a wood dowel through the hole in the shelf and it popped out. It’s a t- shape driver.
The failure was easy to find. Something failed with the charging circuit and either the buck circuit IC failed or the inductor. Both are toast.
I ordered a TS26S a couple of days ago, but after reading this, I will be more carefull with it once I get it. I normally tend to charge the battery outside a flashlight, whenever I can, but with the TS26S I will certainly do so.
Hopefully this is an isolated incident and not a structural (design) flaw.
This one is probably the worst failure and only the 3rd light i can remember to have issues. The Fenix LR80R had a failure in the thermal sensor and melted the reflector, but kept working.
A driver swap is the fix and it’s an easy one. All you need is a soldering iron and basic know-how. Compatible drivers would be nearly impossible to find though so maybe Wurkkos would send another?
A driver swap would not be an issue for me, since that should well be within my skill set. Finding a compatible driver would indeed be more of a problem, certainly if you want boost driver like the TS26S originally has (and which is one of the selling points of this light), so Wurkkos themselves are probably indeed the best option for that.
Did you charge the battery (with the build-in charging) before or did it fail on the first attempt/use?
The failure happened after the Turbo runtime. As part of my testing procedures, I do an onboard charging test for current and volts and measure battery capacity. This wasn’t the first time I charged the light using the onboard charging. Like I said, I very rarely have issues with this.
