my leadlight is acting up

my laser all of a sudden got pretty dim and i noticed that the batteries seemed to be moving around alot more than usual. when i point the laser straight up it almost always goes out completely and when gently shaken, i can see it get brighter and dimmer rapidly. i'm guessing the spring has been compressed and there is a weak connection causing this behavior. i would like to avoid disassembling it so are there any suggestions on what to you use to pull on the spring and stretch it out?

try long tweezers if you can't find any you can temporary use alummium foil at the tail cap.

Personally I don't think it's such a good idea to start pulling on something that has already started to become lose, but maybe that's just me hehe.

If you do want to give it a pull how about just using some heavy wire with a loop in the end. I would be careful though as you might be putting quite a bit of strain on the solder joint and the assembly in general.

it's not loose, it's just compressed, and i really don't think the spring is that stiff because it compressed with jsut the weight of the batteries. i wouldn't think there would be too much pressure needed IMHO. thank you though. good suggestion

You could also try inserting an extra small spring to take up the extra space. Might be hard to make it fit right, but it's worth a try.

One of my older lasers used to do that a long time ago. It turned out to be the battery spring, which was deflecting to one side, and would touch the very edge of the battery (where the label folds over). I tried NUMEROUS times to bend the spring back to center, but I just didn't have enough room inside that barrel to make it stay.

look down inside the back end of your laser with a flashlight and try to determine if your spring is off-center. If it is, you are better off to not stick anything down there to try and force it. You could end up bending the diode leads by putting force on the driver board. If you break a diode lead, you won't be happy. It's 100% replaceable, but if you are new to this type of repair, it could really stress you out.

I ended up removing the module from the barrel, removing the spring with a soldering iron, then resoldering it to the board with fresh solder (you should always use fresh solder). Springs don't generally like to bend into a new shape. It's a "spring". It likes to go back to how it was!