HWAWYS Ultrafire repair question?

darkstrike · May 21, 2011

Hey all,

New poster here :)

Essentially posting on behalf of my brother. He just came back from teaching English in China for a year (loved it) and brought back a nifty little laser pointer/flashlight with him. I'm a big fan of LEDs and this little flashlight of his is very bright! (He's had it for about 2 years now...was over to China for a month the other year and that is when he first got it.)

The problem is, upon his return from this trip teaching for a year, his flashlight and laser pointer will not work. Things break, we know that, but he is quite fond of it and it has proven to be a tough little gadget as he carries it with him everywhere. I took it apart and, not sure how, but two of the wires are disconnected. We think one of this students may have gotten ahold of it while he was in China and maybe took it apart and ripped the wires out without him knowing. I have some experience soldering so I thought I would try to fix it, but there are so many contact points inside the business end of the light I have no idea where the wires are supposed to attach to in order to get it working properly again.

I was hoping somebody on the forum may have an identical light which they could kindly take the end off and take pictures of so I can see where the wires are to be connected...? :)

I have no idea of the model; all it says on it is the UltraFire logo with the HWAWYS logo above that. I would take a picture but my camera's batteries are dead and I don't have any fresh batteries here at the moment (sorry!) It is a 7-LED flashlight with 5mm LEDs (no fancy LEDs such as Crees, Luxeons, etc, just regular LEDs). The LEDs are arranged in a ring and don't really have any reflectors as such. It has a laser pointer built in as well, which is located in the middle of all the LEDs. Inside there are 2 blue wires, a red wire and a black wire. The Black runs from the LED circuit ring to the laser pointer and one of the blues runs from the switch to the LED circuit ring. The red wire and the other blue wire are attached on one end to different points on the power switch, but the other ends of both are the aforementioned detached wires. I THINK one goes to the Laser module, but I am not sure which.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

brted · May 21, 2011

Ultrafire makes a lot of lights, but I haven't heard of that one. Pictures would be very helpful. Also, you may see this post moved to the Budget Light subforum.

Lastly, welcome to CPF!

darkstrike · May 22, 2011

Thanks! I will try and get some pictures later today if I can...not busy today so I should be able to pop by the store and get some batteries.

Sorry I had posted in the wrong section! :)

Yeah, from what I've learned in my research on it, they do make a lot of lights, especially with the way the same designs get made by multiple companies. As I can't seem to find this light anywhere online...pics, info or otherwise, I'm beginning to wonder if it's an older model that has maybe been phased out.

Pics later this afternoon when I get a chance...

Cheers and thanks!

darkstrike · May 23, 2011

Alright....a bit late with my post, but here are a few pics. I can take others if these don't help.

Sorry for the crappy quality, I was in a rush when I took them...also didn't take them when it was assembled, but you should get the gist of what it looks like with it assembled from the one where I placed the end "lens" next to the casing.

The gold cylinder thing is the laser pointer, which is usually tucked in the center of the LEDs in that hole there; I just have it pulled out to try and see what other wire attaches to it. There are three contact points on it, and the black wire that runs to the LED circuit ring is the only one connected. Pretty sure there were only ever two wires attached to the pointer, so either the loose blue or red wire goes there, I am just not sure which one. So I know one wire goes there, the issue I have is I have literally NO idea where the other one goes. That black cylinder near the LEDs is actually just a plastic, hollow ring. There's an uncovered, soldered, metal "stick" (for lack of a better term - think paper-clip style metal wire-ness) connecting the LED circuit board and that middle circuit board. I had to bend it a little to be able to move the middle circuit board to peer inside the black plastic ring.

Picz:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/155/img8886c.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/151/img8887n.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/855/img8888.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/35/img8889m.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/848/img8890d.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/153/img8891ux.jpg/

brted · May 23, 2011

Wow. Thanks for the pictures, they help, but I'm still not sure exactly what is going on. The outer ring of the circuit boards are usually negative. Where the two blue wires and red wire are, it looks like the red and one of the blue wires is still connected. So the only place for the loose blue wire to go is either the little pointy solder blob or the outer ring. But I think the solder on the outer ring seems to be where the black ring came off.

darkstrike · May 24, 2011

brted said:
Wow. Thanks for the pictures, they help, but I'm still not sure exactly what is going on. The outer ring of the circuit boards are usually negative. Where the two blue wires and red wire are, it looks like the red and one of the blue wires is still connected. So the only place for the loose blue wire to go is either the little pointy solder blob or the outer ring. But I think the solder on the outer ring seems to be where the black ring came off.

Ok, I will try to explain again to the best of my ability :P

There are three wires running from the power switch; 2 blue and a red. ONE of the blue ones AND the red one have somehow disconnected, I don't know where they solder to (although I THINK one of them solders to the laser pointer, I just don't know which of the two it is). The other blue one goes from the power switch through a hole in the middle circuit board to the circuit board the LEDs are mounted to. There is also a black wire running from the LED circuit board to the middle solder point on the laser pointer. That thin, metal ring just gets compressed between the casing and the end cap when you screw the end cap on, and AFAIK does nothing but act as a spacer. I am guessing the black wire running to the laser pointer is a ground, but I have tried turning on the power switch and touching the disconnected red and blue wires to the remaining solder points on the laser pointer without getting it to come on, so I am thinking maybe the blue wire has to be connected to somewhere first. That's about as much as I can guess at the moment!

You might be right though, there does seem to be a "pointy" solder blob on the LED ring board right next to the black wire for the laser pointer. If the black wire is a ground for the laser pointer and that is a solder point next to it, it would make sense to me for the red wire to connect there, don't you think? Usually everything is color-coded so it would be odd to find two blue wires going to the LED circuit board from the power switch...? I'll have to try connecting the red wire there and see if I can at least get the LEDs to light up, if so it shouldn't be too hard to try and get the laser pointer working with only one wire left to figure out!