wquiles
Flashaholic
If you have used LED drivers from Taskled (www.taskled.com), you know that these great drivers require a normally open, momentary switch as the main and only input. Problem is that the standard switch in the Maglite is not momentary, and it does not allow for the battery power to reach the driver all of the time (also required by the driver).
I have seen some tutorials about how to do this here in the forums, but I felt it does not hurt to have another guide/tutorial, specially since I LOVE posting pictures!. Note that you can "skin this cat" in many possible ways - I am showing here just "one" way to do this
For this tutorial, I am using my most often switch, the standard switch from a "C" size Maglite:
Now, use the same Allen wrench you used to remove the switch to open up the switch:
Then take a thin/sharp knife to pull appart the switch. At first, all we are trying to do is to remove the extra "top", so don't go too fast as there is a spring inside and we don't want to try to "recover" parts flying everywhere!:
Once you remove the spring and the two metal pieces that go with it, we need to modify the small plastic piece to make it non-latching:
Now we start doing some "electrical" work. We need to break the electrical connection between the positive battery contact and the lower switch contact:
Here is the contact already cut:
This is how the switch should look like once we put back the lower contact:
We can now temporarily re-assemble the switch (without the spring or white part) so that we can drill a small hole which we will use to route the positive battery contact to the top of the switch:
Now we re-open the switch:
We now need to clean up the interior from all of the debris. Note that the drill "must" miss the circular center region of the switch - there is another spring there that will get messed up if you don't (I wonder how I know this!):
This is basically the goal:
We now have to re-make the battery positive contact with the piece we cut earlier:
The idea for this solder blob is to be raised as some cells have a flat top - this raised solder blob solves that "problem":
This is how it should look like:
Now we work on the negative contact. We need to shorten it, and solder a wire to it:
We now need to add a solder blog to the top of the switch, and solder a wire to the blob as shown here. The drivers from Taskled do have two inputs for the switch, but one is grounded - the other one is open, and it is this wire at the top of the switch the one that gets connected to the open switch contact in the driver:
We are almost done, but not quite. We now need to solder a wire to the bottom switch contact, which we will solder together to the ground wire. The easiest way I have found to route this wire is to use a small set of cutters and "cut away" a little bit of plastic to route the wire as shown here (of course, make SURE there is no short circuit between this contact and the battery contact!):
The photo is not very clear (sorry about that!), but this wire from the bottom contact is now soldered to the negative contact shown here on the left of the switch:
To finish, we re-assemble switch with the spring an internal pieces, then make sure that the switch button is moving smoothly, and of course NOT latching. If this is not good, open the switch, rotate the white piece and 4-star piece a little bit, and try again.
Once everything is moving smoothly, close up the switch again, then use a voltmeter and test that between the top center to ground there is no connectivity (open), but that as soon as you press the button, you get connectivity (short circuit). If this works well, we are almost done.
We now epoxy the new battery top in place, which will keep it secure:
While the epoxy is curing, you can carefully put something "heavy" on top to keep it in place:
Once cured, when you re-install the switch inside the Maglite, you should have 3 wires coming from the top = battery, ground, and the switch contact (from the middle of the mag switch). It should look like this:
Well, that was not "that" bad, right? :devil:
Will
I have seen some tutorials about how to do this here in the forums, but I felt it does not hurt to have another guide/tutorial, specially since I LOVE posting pictures!. Note that you can "skin this cat" in many possible ways - I am showing here just "one" way to do this
For this tutorial, I am using my most often switch, the standard switch from a "C" size Maglite:
Now, use the same Allen wrench you used to remove the switch to open up the switch:
Then take a thin/sharp knife to pull appart the switch. At first, all we are trying to do is to remove the extra "top", so don't go too fast as there is a spring inside and we don't want to try to "recover" parts flying everywhere!:
Once you remove the spring and the two metal pieces that go with it, we need to modify the small plastic piece to make it non-latching:
Now we start doing some "electrical" work. We need to break the electrical connection between the positive battery contact and the lower switch contact:
Here is the contact already cut:
This is how the switch should look like once we put back the lower contact:
We can now temporarily re-assemble the switch (without the spring or white part) so that we can drill a small hole which we will use to route the positive battery contact to the top of the switch:
Now we re-open the switch:
We now need to clean up the interior from all of the debris. Note that the drill "must" miss the circular center region of the switch - there is another spring there that will get messed up if you don't (I wonder how I know this!):
This is basically the goal:
We now have to re-make the battery positive contact with the piece we cut earlier:
The idea for this solder blob is to be raised as some cells have a flat top - this raised solder blob solves that "problem":
This is how it should look like:
Now we work on the negative contact. We need to shorten it, and solder a wire to it:
We now need to add a solder blog to the top of the switch, and solder a wire to the blob as shown here. The drivers from Taskled do have two inputs for the switch, but one is grounded - the other one is open, and it is this wire at the top of the switch the one that gets connected to the open switch contact in the driver:
We are almost done, but not quite. We now need to solder a wire to the bottom switch contact, which we will solder together to the ground wire. The easiest way I have found to route this wire is to use a small set of cutters and "cut away" a little bit of plastic to route the wire as shown here (of course, make SURE there is no short circuit between this contact and the battery contact!):
The photo is not very clear (sorry about that!), but this wire from the bottom contact is now soldered to the negative contact shown here on the left of the switch:
To finish, we re-assemble switch with the spring an internal pieces, then make sure that the switch button is moving smoothly, and of course NOT latching. If this is not good, open the switch, rotate the white piece and 4-star piece a little bit, and try again.
Once everything is moving smoothly, close up the switch again, then use a voltmeter and test that between the top center to ground there is no connectivity (open), but that as soon as you press the button, you get connectivity (short circuit). If this works well, we are almost done.
We now epoxy the new battery top in place, which will keep it secure:
While the epoxy is curing, you can carefully put something "heavy" on top to keep it in place:
Once cured, when you re-install the switch inside the Maglite, you should have 3 wires coming from the top = battery, ground, and the switch contact (from the middle of the mag switch). It should look like this:
Well, that was not "that" bad, right? :devil:
Will
