So for Christmas, I received the WK50, and in under an hour of putting the battery in, it died. (started flickering, flashing, wouldn’t go into lower modes, then it outright died, total run-time less than 5 minutes)
I hadn’t even opened it up to see what I could do to mod it yet.
I made sure it was not the tail-cap switch (simple wire from battery to body), and that was not the problem.
Does anyone have any experience with xtar’s warranty service, or where I should start?
I haven’t been on BLF in quite a while… I have had driver failures almost exactly as you describe from when the reflector dish shorts out against the LED solder pads. IIRC “reflector short” is what BLF’ers commonly call this. I am merely speculating as to the root cause, although I do think it sounds like a driver or LED failure… not in the switch.
I would contact the retailer for an exchange, or if that doesn’t work Xtar for a repair/replacement.
Some pics of the LED slug in this thread here: WK50 review