My Inova XO is a two-stage light!

I just bought an Inova XO on Sunday and have of course been playing with it as soon as it gets dark. I noticed that if I barely push the button, or if I carefully screw the tailcap down I can get it to come on very dimly. It actually has about 2 dim modes that I can get to stay on as long as I don't bump or turn the tailcap. Is this normal? Does it cause any harm to the light or regulator? I at first thought that maybe there was some internal resistance in the switching mechanism but I'm just guessing. Any help is appreciated.

My XO3 does the same thing.

I guess it is normal then, I didn't know if it would cause any problems to the electronics.

Technically, i don't think it's supposed to happen. That probably was never on the drawing board. That said, it shouldn't damage the circuit/led etc. What's happening is at that low output point, the tailcap just has a really bad connection to the flashlight body (imagine a resistor in series), so not much power is delivered to the circuit. The circuit will see the low power, think the batteries can't sustain the regulation anymore and will switch to direct drive.


I think that's what's happening

Oh yeah, my X0 does that too.

Thanks Delvance, I won't worry about it then.

Yea, my red X5 does that badly, its kinda annoying and I have to tighting it all the way for it to stay bright. Might send it once one of these days.

Yeah ive noticed that the X series has a hard to press switch that can depress the electrical contacts to a certain degree.

fireball920 said:

Yea, my red X5 does that badly, its kinda annoying and I have to tighting it all the way for it to stay bright.

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Sounds like the contacts are getting really dirty. Try cleaning the contacts on the batt tube, the tailcap and the head really well. That should take care of it.

youngcollector is now bodygaurdlight due to recent changes in computer settings (dont ask)

My contacts can't be dirty I just bought the light on Sunday and noticed it the same day. After taking it apart and looking into the thing I noticed that the tailcap button is not a switch, the switch is down inside at the front of the light, I think the button just pushes the batteries forward to push the plunger. I thought maybe there was a resistance in that mechanism. I also notice that the button is really flat and hard to push unless I just barely back off the tailcap until the lights goes off and then I can apply a little pressure to make it come on. I would rather see a more pronounced bump in the button, like a Surefire has, to make it eaiser to push.