jk037
Newly Enlightened
Greetings all, thought some of you might be interested to see what's inside the K-106! There's some close-ups of the driver board for those who like that kind of thing, and also of the emitter.
Please note: all pics are clickable - originals are 7mp
My K-106 is one of the 5-mode versions ("NKoray" on DX, SKU 28456); I've had it a few days now and have generally been impressed with the performance. However, I had noticed that the driver board in the head of my K-106 appeared to be badly installed - it was sat at an angle rather than flat and the two solder blobs holding it in place looked very weak and one was starting to fracture.
The board sits in the metal "pill" which also contains the emitter, and this pill screws down the barrel of the head to clamp the reflector, lens and O-ring against the lip at the end of the head. Since the positive pole of the battery presses against the back of the board, it really needs to be firmly fixed. So I decided to have a go at removing it and re-soldering it, in order to set it at the correct angle and also to strengthen it.
First job was to get the pill out of the flashlight head. To do this I put my thumb over the lens and my forefinger down the barrel, and "pinched" the pill/reflector/lens assembly between them. I then could turn the casing with my other hand to unscrew...
Once the pill was out I heated up the two rather weak solder blobs holding the board in the pill, and lifted the board out (leaving it connected to the emitter via the 2 wires):
Here's a look at the head, reflector, O-ring and lens:
Some pics of the Cree Q5-WC emitter:
And here's some close-ups of the driver board:
As you can see, the circular driver board has 2 flattened edges; however, these were rather rough and prevented it sitting properly in the pill:
so I took the rough edges off with a file before soldering it back in.
Originally it was held in by 2 solder blobs, but since this had clearly been a little weak I decided to use four. To do this I had to get quite a lot of heat into the pill itself before the solder would take to it. I was using my Nimrod Solderpro 120 gas-powered iron which produces a LOT of heat - with lights turned off the tip can be seen glowing a dull red. :devil:
When I was finished the whole pill was extremely hot so I quickly pressed it into the frost inside my freezer - where it was hot enough to make sizzling noises when it first touched the ice!
:eeksign:
End result: board held in nice and flat by four good solid solder blobs:
Once it was nice and cool I replaced the O-ring, lens, reflector and pill back into the head, screwing it in as tight as possible between my finger and thumb.
I reassembled the light, and turned on... hoping I hadn't messed anything up with the heat from soldering... woohoo!!! Light! I haven't broken it! :twothumbs
And, just because I had the camera to hand, here's some entirely gratuitous pics showing the thing working - high first, then med, then low:
Apologies for the rather low-quality pics, the reasons for this are:
(1) my camera is crap (Olympus mju-700, using what passes for a macro mode and forced into ISO400 for the beam pics)
and (2) I forgot to turn the kitchen light off before taking pics of the K-106 in action:duh2:
Please note: all pics are clickable - originals are 7mp
My K-106 is one of the 5-mode versions ("NKoray" on DX, SKU 28456); I've had it a few days now and have generally been impressed with the performance. However, I had noticed that the driver board in the head of my K-106 appeared to be badly installed - it was sat at an angle rather than flat and the two solder blobs holding it in place looked very weak and one was starting to fracture.
The board sits in the metal "pill" which also contains the emitter, and this pill screws down the barrel of the head to clamp the reflector, lens and O-ring against the lip at the end of the head. Since the positive pole of the battery presses against the back of the board, it really needs to be firmly fixed. So I decided to have a go at removing it and re-soldering it, in order to set it at the correct angle and also to strengthen it.
First job was to get the pill out of the flashlight head. To do this I put my thumb over the lens and my forefinger down the barrel, and "pinched" the pill/reflector/lens assembly between them. I then could turn the casing with my other hand to unscrew...
Once the pill was out I heated up the two rather weak solder blobs holding the board in the pill, and lifted the board out (leaving it connected to the emitter via the 2 wires):
Here's a look at the head, reflector, O-ring and lens:
Some pics of the Cree Q5-WC emitter:
And here's some close-ups of the driver board:
As you can see, the circular driver board has 2 flattened edges; however, these were rather rough and prevented it sitting properly in the pill:
so I took the rough edges off with a file before soldering it back in.
Originally it was held in by 2 solder blobs, but since this had clearly been a little weak I decided to use four. To do this I had to get quite a lot of heat into the pill itself before the solder would take to it. I was using my Nimrod Solderpro 120 gas-powered iron which produces a LOT of heat - with lights turned off the tip can be seen glowing a dull red. :devil:
When I was finished the whole pill was extremely hot so I quickly pressed it into the frost inside my freezer - where it was hot enough to make sizzling noises when it first touched the ice!
:eeksign:
End result: board held in nice and flat by four good solid solder blobs:
Once it was nice and cool I replaced the O-ring, lens, reflector and pill back into the head, screwing it in as tight as possible between my finger and thumb.
I reassembled the light, and turned on... hoping I hadn't messed anything up with the heat from soldering... woohoo!!! Light! I haven't broken it! :twothumbs
And, just because I had the camera to hand, here's some entirely gratuitous pics showing the thing working - high first, then med, then low:
Apologies for the rather low-quality pics, the reasons for this are:
(1) my camera is crap (Olympus mju-700, using what passes for a macro mode and forced into ISO400 for the beam pics)
and (2) I forgot to turn the kitchen light off before taking pics of the K-106 in action
:duh2:
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