Flashlight Power Button Fried?

[jrego7]

So. My batteries were beginning to die and for some reason I let my girlfriend change the batteries. She placed them in backwards..... The flashlight then would not power on. I began to play with it and it powers on when i connect the spring coil with the battery and the body of the light which is not anodized. I believe that she fried the damn switch!! Damn women!!! Touching stuff they know nothing about... What do you guys think? She fried it? It was a click switch that provided 50% and 100% output.

 

[John_Galt]

Wat kind of light is it? It sounds like a light that dod not have reverse polarity protection, and you've probably fried the driver, and LED, not the Switch...

 

[bfksc]

So. My batteries were beginning to die and for some reason I let my girlfriend change the batteries. She placed them in backwards..... The flashlight then would not power on. I began to play with it and it powers on when i connect the spring coil with the battery and the body of the light which is not anodized. I believe that she fried the damn switch!!

So if you bypass the switch it works normally? If so, then yes I would agree the switch is toasted for some reason - which is odd because most clickies are just activation switches that provide power to flow or stop and they don't care about polarity. The brightness level is usually controlled in the head with the driver circuit. Can you order a new tailcap switch?

 

[jrego7]

An assembled light i bought off DX. Cree MC-E. But there is a resistor on the switch board. Could that be fried?

 

[Purpleorchid]

Sorry about the light, but she's not totally to blame. You did say you let her change the batteries. If there's no indication of how to insert the battery, she had a 50/50 chance to get it right.

 

[mvyrmnd]

A resistor on the switch would be odd...

A diode providing reverse polarity protection would be useful, though.

 

[gswitter]

A resistor on the switch would be odd...

It's common for 2-stage switch implementations.

 

[mvyrmnd]

Ahh. Ok