Nuwai QIII mod gone bad

Got a Cree star and did the swap out in a QIII. Pretty easy. Unsoldered the Lux and resoldered the cree. Drilled out the reflector. After I got everything back together the light did not turn on. I finally figured out what was wrong, the bottomside of the circuit board was not making good contact with the light body, so it was not getting a good ground. There was also some glue in some places that was also causing bad contact. It is working now, but it is dim. During troubleshooting of the problem I applied some power from a battery to see if I could figure things out. Big mistake. I saw smoke come from the boost board. I assume that I fried some part of the boost circuit, and now it is just running on direct drive. Anybody know where I can get a replacement for the QIII circuit board? I would rather stay with the original circuit and not get a new style boost board. Do any of the dealers sell replacement parts like this?

Thanks

Get yourself a flupic for the Q-III. You will thank yourself later.


Thurmond

I agree! I did the flupic on my Q3 with cree! Dont forget to update the heat sink.Some one here was selling a nice copper heatsink all ready to drop in.

billsea said:

I finally figured out what was wrong, the bottomside of the circuit board was not making good contact with the light body, so it was not getting a good ground. There was also some glue in some places that was also causing bad contact.

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Did you put that wavey copper ring in that goes under the circuit board? That helps make the ground connection from the circuit board to the body. I left it out once and got nothing when turned on. I know you say you fried the board, but I thought I'd point that out.

Mirage_Man sells a heatsink for this mod.

Yes, a different circuit board other than stock would be better.
Every now and then, the stock Q3 board will go kerflooey for no apparent good reason.

+3 on the flupic with Cree. I have one modded by Mosport. Love it.

Thanks for all the replies on the flupic. I guess I will have to go that route. But, it cost $20 plus shipping, and more for the heat sink. Oh well, nobody said this hobby would be cheap.

Nake wrote:
"Did you put that wavey copper ring in that goes under the circuit board? That helps make the ground connection from the circuit board to the body. I left it out once and got nothing when turned on. I know you say you fried the board, but I thought I'd point that out."

I did reuse the wavey copper ring. The problem was that when I drilled out the reflector so that the Cree would fit inside, the pressure that the reflector puts on the board was reduced, and the wavy contact spring was not compressed. I had to add a washer between the wavy spring and the light body to make up the difference. My version of the QIII does not have the threaded piece that holds the star into the body. Too bad I didn't figure this out until after I smoked the board.

Still looking for a QIII board if anyone has one they want to get rid of. All of you guys that did the flupic replacement, any leftover QIII boards?

Bill, make sure you put something non-conductive between the Q3 reflector and Cree(thin plastic washer etc) - that is why it fried ?

PaulB wrote:
"Bill, make sure you put something non-conductive between the Q3 reflector and Cree(thin plastic washer etc) - that is why it fried ?"

Thanks for the input. I made an insulative washer by sticking two pieces of Kapton tape together, and then used an X-acto knife to cut a hole in the middle. It fits pretty well over the Cree and keeps the reflector from shorting out on the top pads of the Cree emitter. The reason that the board fried was because I was stupid about where I put some test voltage.

I think I have a stock Q3 circuit at home. I will get back to you...

mudman cj said:

I think I have a stock Q3 circuit at home. I will get back to you...

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i have an extra if mudman does not.