JetBeam M1XM Died

Brigadier · Feb 22, 2013

So, I was outside tonight using my M1XM to harass a raccoon that was wandering thru the neighborhood when it suddenly just quit. I was running it on turbo, and figured I hit the low voltage limit of the protected AW18500's I was using to power it. I take it back inside, put the batteries in the charger, and grab a pair of IMR18500's and install them. Nothing. Grab 3 CR123's. Nothing. Clean and lubricate all threads. Nothing. Try the tailcap and the AW 17500's from my Surefire M3. Nothing.

So, it looks like my M1XM is dead.

Now, the reason I like incans is if this had happened with my M3T/M3/M6/G3/E2E, etc., all I would need to do is replace the LA and I would be up an running again.

Just a quick reminder that LED lights are not foolproof. And when they fail, it is usually for good.

YMMV.

Brigadier · Feb 23, 2013

Anyone have contact info for JB? I bought this off the sales forum, but it might not hurt to contact JB about repairs.

Brigadier · Feb 27, 2013

Well, it seems I am SOL on this light. Too bad. It was a nice light, but JB has no CS in the states anymore, and this has totally turned me off any new light purchases from offshore companies. Too bad, cuz I was in the market for a big 3X-XML light. But if all you get is 3-4 years out of them then they are $200 paperweights, I'll pass.

At least with my present stock of SureFire and Lumens Factory lights, I can replace parts that fail.

zs&tas · Feb 27, 2013

HI, i feel ya man, my 3 year old nitecore extreme died recently. i have had several lights die actually but they were all quite new and all the companys have fixed them. contact jetbeams factory CS, get a returns number and post it too them, hopefully thel fix the board and ship it back..... do they have face b o o k page ? try contacting through that and they will bend over backwards for you to not get bad press- sounds silly but many companies are regretting joining facebook for this reason !

gd luck !

Brigadier · Feb 27, 2013

Maybe I should put up for sale on the forum really cheap. Some modder may love to tweak it.

Darkwall · Feb 28, 2013

Sorry to hear your M1XM fainted... Not sure how to explain this, but my Jetbeam M1X v4 also fainted on me couple years ago. I also thought it had died. I was using mine on the user setting when it fainted. I could not belive that it just quit on me, so over a week or so i kept trying to get the flashlight to work. Eventually it did start back up. Not sure if the circuit board has some sort of protection also...after getting it working again, I continued to experience problems in the 'user' mode. So i only use it in high mode now, and it still works fine to this day... so as a suggestion, keep trying to get it to turn back on. Also i run mine on 18650's.

One other mention is to make sure the battery at the LED end of the light has the button top on it, and that it is for sure making contact with the metal inside the plastic ring. My M1X has a small ring to prevent backward insertion of the batteries from frying the LED. My M2S has a large plastic ring, making it more difficult to fry the light. But also if the button on the battery is not long enough it will not turn the light on. (figured this out first hand, as the redilast buttons are huge on their batteries -deep enough but way to large of a diameter- and dont work in the M2S).If you think this might be an issue you could try a tiny piece of metal to finish the contact to see if the light will work, just dont bang around the light or leave the metal in the flashlight other than to test this theory...

I see you have been around since 2008, so when you posted that you "Clean and lubricate all threads" i prob can assume you used the correct kind of lub..

Good Luck.

Cataract · Mar 1, 2013

My experience with the M1X is so terrible I swore never to buy from JB again. I bought 2 M1X (gen.4 according to the pictures) - one for myself and one for my cousin. First thing we noticed: if you shake the light just enough (nothing extreme) the spring compressed enough that the batteries stop making contact for a fraction of a second. That means the light goes off and on. It also means that if you walk with a little spring in your heel, it goes into programming mode if you're not on high. Not cool!

Then my cousin's light died. I sent it back to the dealer and it took 2-3 months before it came back because they were waiting for the part (I just know it was the pill). It came back working the same as before, but I didn't expect the dealer to solve desing issues. Then mine died too. I sent it back with a long note on the battery contact problem. The dealer sent it straight to JB that time. I waited for so long with no news whatsoever from JB that I decided I didn't care if I never saw it again. About a year after I last saw it, my light came back. I worked, but it still flickers if I shake it hard enough. I'm about to put it up on the market place.

If your light is still under warranty, contact your dealer, it seems to be the only way to get any kind of service from JB.

jcw122 · Mar 1, 2013

IMO Jetbeam as a company died years ago when they stopped making those programmable lights that they used to make.

Darkwall · Mar 1, 2013

Cataract said:
My experience with the M1X is so terrible I swore never to buy from JB again. I bought 2 M1X (gen.4 according to the pictures) - one for myself and one for my cousin. First thing we noticed: if you shake the light just enough (nothing extreme) the spring compressed enough that the batteries stop making contact for a fraction of a second. That means the light goes off and on. It also means that if you walk with a little spring in your heel, it goes into programming mode if you're not on high. Not cool!

The flashlight was made with a single spring so the front of the light could be designed to prevent reverse inserting of batteries. So yeah mine does the same thing if i hit it on my hand, or anything hard. They could of made a stronger spring, but obviously didnt... Flashlights today made with two springs for + and - contacts have their reverse poloarity protection on the circuit board.. the M1X does not.

Brigadier · Mar 2, 2013

Well well well. Since I started this thread, the light has been sitting empty in the box. So tonight I threw in a couple AW18500's in it and it fired right up. Go figure.

Kaban · Mar 3, 2013

Well that's good to know it works again. Any clue what happened in the first place?

Brigadier · Mar 3, 2013

Kaban said:
Well that's good to know it works again. Any clue what happened in the first place?

Nope. Can't figure it out. It still cuts out occasionally when on low.

Pöbel · Mar 3, 2013

a light you cannot trust in is as good as no light.

I got a M1X MC-E V2 and it has never let me down so far. One of my favorite lights. Unfortunately the changes which seemed to have happend at Jetbeam probably had a pretty serious influence on their quality.

skyfire · Mar 3, 2013

a friend of mine got a M1X with MC-E emitter. (this was years ago)
and in less than a few months it to started having problems. my friend used it as a work light, so it was mostly used on max. after a few months its output on max was about half of what it used to be. we tried reprogramming it, but it would never ramp up to its original max level anymore.

we tested the batteries and tried different batteries, and setups with primaries and li-ion. same results, and batteries worked fine in all other lights.
we tested the switch. no problem there, except that the tailswitch spring came apart rather easily. no big problem, as we soldered it back on.
thats about as far as we proceeded because he simply gave up on the light. but i think something went wrong the internal electronics, maybe because he uses high mode all the time, some soldered connections became weak either around the emitter or driver? the MC-E looked fine too. did not look like it was burnt.

jetbeam markets some of their lights as military, LEO, and search and rescue. but to me this is complete bogus. they havent tested these models to perform in such manners, yet still claim that.

Brigadier · Mar 3, 2013

I hope my RRT-3 Triple XML fairs better.

Cataract · Mar 4, 2013

Darkwall said:
The flashlight was made with a single spring so the front of the light could be designed to prevent reverse inserting of batteries. So yeah mine does the same thing if i hit it on my hand, or anything hard. They could of made a stronger spring, but obviously didnt... Flashlights today made with two springs for + and - contacts have their reverse poloarity protection on the circuit board.. the M1X does not.

Not only did they opt for a mechanical polarity reversal protection, but it also prevent the use of flat-tops AND the ring also broke off on mine. Wasn't a biggie for me to solder it back on, but it is a really bad design.

Brigadier said:
Well well well. Since I started this thread, the light has been sitting empty in the box. So tonight I threw in a couple AW18500's in it and it fired right up. Go figure.

I had a similar problem with my M1X: the head could be taken apart in 2 to reveal the pill. If I rotated the pill a few degrees to one side, it wouldn't come on 100%, more like 50% and sometimes I'd only get the programmable mode, no high. That was before the LED died on me, though. Could be a similar problem...

Pöbel said:
a light you cannot trust in is as good as no light.

I got a M1X MC-E V2 and it has never let me down so far. One of my favorite lights. Unfortunately the changes which seemed to have happend at Jetbeam probably had a pretty serious influence on their quality.

I read a lot of posts about the M1X and it would appear the V2 was the best one. Problems started with V4. No one understands why they ever changed the design so much.

skyfire said:
a friend of mine got a M1X with MC-E emitter. (this was years ago)
and in less than a few months it to started having problems. my friend used it as a work light, so it was mostly used on max. after a few months its output on max was about half of what it used to be. we tried reprogramming it, but it would never ramp up to its original max level anymore.

we tested the batteries and tried different batteries, and setups with primaries and li-ion. same results, and batteries worked fine in all other lights.
we tested the switch. no problem there, except that the tailswitch spring came apart rather easily. no big problem, as we soldered it back on.
thats about as far as we proceeded because he simply gave up on the light. but i think something went wrong the internal electronics, maybe because he uses high mode all the time, some soldered connections became weak either around the emitter or driver? the MC-E looked fine too. did not look like it was burnt.

jetbeam markets some of their lights as military, LEO, and search and rescue. but to me this is complete bogus. they havent tested these models to perform in such manners, yet still claim that.

I had the same problem with the spring too. For the brightness problem, see my response to Brigadier.

I sound like an M1X expert, but that's only because I had just about every single possible problem with that flashlight. I'll take the best offer for it

Darkwall · Mar 14, 2013

Brigadier said:
Well well well. Since I started this thread, the light has been sitting empty in the box. So tonight I threw in a couple AW18500's in it and it fired right up. Go figure.

Glad to hear it is working again. Like i said, i no longer use mine in the 'user' setting mode, only on high now, since it still displayed problems in the 'user' mode. Has worked fine ever since.

JetBeam M1XM Died

Brigadier

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Brigadier

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Brigadier

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zs&tas

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Brigadier

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Darkwall

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Cataract

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jcw122

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Darkwall

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Brigadier

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Kaban

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Pöbel

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skyfire

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Brigadier

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Darkwall

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