Nitecore D4 burnout, anyone else ??

mr.sneezy · Jun 9, 2015

Hi other flashlight addicts.

I bought a Nitecore D4 last year and it has been a good charger, but about a week ago it started playing up while charging normal NiMh cells. It now stops charging after a minute or so and the LCD screen goes blank till you cycle the power...

I opened it up and found Q8 and R44 burned.
Q8 is marked A79TF and might be a SOT-23 P-Ch fet.
R44 was marked R500 (like others on the charging channels).

Anyone else got a dead D4 they'd like to discuss repair of ?

I have some photos.

Martin

ChrisGarrett · Jun 9, 2015

mr.sneezy said:
Hi other flashlight addicts.

I bought a Nitecore D4 last year and it has been a good charger, but about a week ago it started playing up while charging normal NiMh cells. It now stops charging after a minute or so and the LCD screen goes blank till you cycle the power...

I opened it up and found Q8 and R44 burned.
Q8 is marked A79TF and might be a SOT-23 P-Ch fet.
R44 was marked R500 (like others on the charging channels).

Anyone else got a dead D4 they'd like to discuss repair of ?

I have some photos.

Martin

I'm sorry that yours died and I only have a lightly used, working i4 v2, but I think that it's great that you can open these up and diagnose them to the specific failed part(s).

Is it still under warranty? Some of these surface mounted parts/PCBs are impossible to solder stuff off and onto, from my understanding.

I'm a vacuum tube HiFi guy, with very limited skills. My big project coming up is to splice a USB 'male' connector (from a cannibalized cord) onto a cord with a 3.5mm barrel connector!

Wish me luck and good luck to you.

Chris

mr.sneezy · Jun 10, 2015

I'm not sure if it's under warrantee but frankly I don't tend to bother doing that with OS purchases, from past experience has not be worthwhile.
So I'll be doing DIY repair if I can be sure what the burned transistor is.
I think there may be others around here with faulty D4's, and we can pool repair info perhaps.
I'll get time to have another look at it in a few days.
Martin

subwoofer · Jun 10, 2015

I'm curious to follow the outcome of this thread. I have 2 D4s and a D2 and use them heavily for li-ion, but having some dedicated NiMh chargers with capacity monitoring, don't use the Digichargers for NiMh.

What type of cells do you charge most, or is it a mix of li-ion and NiMh? It might be that one type of cell loads the circuit more.

mr.sneezy · Jul 30, 2015

I eventually found an Ebay vendor who sold lots of 10 of the burned out FET Q8. I replaced it and the burned 0.5 ohm resistor on the first cell channel. The unit still failed to work correctly, the charge indicators showed charging going on on slot 1 with no battery inserted. Clearly some hidden damage, maybe in the charge controller IC on the other side of the PCB.
I've cut my losses and the charger is binned.
Time to find something better than the D4.

One comment I'll make on what I found inside the charger, it's not very high quality. The electronics are fairly lightly built (and burned out, supporting that I guess) and mechanically the battery slots and contact construction was rather poor for a $40 charger. The inside of say a Hobbyking Accucell 6 at lower cost is much better (but it's an RC battery charger).
Bye for now,
Martin

kreisl · Jul 30, 2015

mr.sneezy said:
Time to find something better than the D4.

What about the I4? It's quite a legendary model in our scene and i can't remember heaving read about many failures. The original I4 got improved in 2014. I liked mine quite a bit!

Btw Nitcore has generous warranty terms. I would bin their products only after the warranty period has expired.

PoodleDon · Oct 31, 2019

mr.sneezy said:
I eventually found an Ebay vendor who sold lots of 10 of the burned out FET Q8. I replaced it and the burned 0.5 ohm resistor on the first cell channel. The unit still failed to work correctly, the charge indicators showed charging going on on slot 1 with no battery inserted. Clearly some hidden damage, maybe in the charge controller IC on the other side of the PCB.
I've cut my losses and the charger is binned.
Time to find something better than the D4.

One comment I'll make on what I found inside the charger, it's not very high quality. The electronics are fairly lightly built (and burned out, supporting that I guess) and mechanically the battery slots and contact construction was rather poor for a $40 charger. The inside of say a Hobbyking Accucell 6 at lower cost is much better (but it's an RC battery charger).
Bye for now,
Martin

Hi. Blast from the past, but same exact thing just happened to me. The R500 is obviously burnt out and Q8 is either out or just horribly soldered on with flux still all over it...
The charger behaves the same like your failed one, charging a phantom battery

It seems like it's really not worth trying to repair...

What charger have you used since and how does it compare? I'm thinking Liitokala 500s or SkyRC MC3000 (if Santa finds himself cash heavy this year

Cheers and thanks for probably saving me a lot of time...

Nitecore D4 burnout, anyone else ??

mr.sneezy

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ChrisGarrett

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mr.sneezy

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subwoofer

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mr.sneezy

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kreisl

Flashlight Enthusiast

PoodleDon

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