maxhawk
Newly Enlightened
My 20-month old Nitecore EA4 failed last night and I'm reaching out to see if anyone else has run across this issue.
The light behaves as if it's detected a low voltage condition -- it comes on, but only at one level that's probably no more than a lumen or so. I get the same behavior whether I do a hard press of the switch for high, or soft press to get to the lower brightness modes. It was working fine in high mode when I got an intermittent blink a couple of times. After the third time I thought maybe the batteries had died since it shut off. I swapped in some fresh batteries and found that it only operated in the aforementioned manner.
I've confirmed that the voltage on the batteries are ok (~1.37V on each AA). The light was not hot while in use since I operate this light only for 60 seconds max at a time on high with a diffuser to use a lint roller on my bed to get the cat hair off. I see no damage to the contacts on the rear cap. Sharp hits with my hand doesn't make the light work normally, so probably no intermittent connections in the circuit.
I'm an EE so I don't mind taking it apart but I no longer have access to test equipment, so troubleshooting will have to be limited to looking for components with apparent damage or poking around with a DVM. How does one access the circuit inside? It looks like the silver ring on the bezel may unscrew, but I didn't want to attack it with slip ring pliers until I know it's supposed to come off.
Thanks for any suggestions.
The light behaves as if it's detected a low voltage condition -- it comes on, but only at one level that's probably no more than a lumen or so. I get the same behavior whether I do a hard press of the switch for high, or soft press to get to the lower brightness modes. It was working fine in high mode when I got an intermittent blink a couple of times. After the third time I thought maybe the batteries had died since it shut off. I swapped in some fresh batteries and found that it only operated in the aforementioned manner.
I've confirmed that the voltage on the batteries are ok (~1.37V on each AA). The light was not hot while in use since I operate this light only for 60 seconds max at a time on high with a diffuser to use a lint roller on my bed to get the cat hair off. I see no damage to the contacts on the rear cap. Sharp hits with my hand doesn't make the light work normally, so probably no intermittent connections in the circuit.
I'm an EE so I don't mind taking it apart but I no longer have access to test equipment, so troubleshooting will have to be limited to looking for components with apparent damage or poking around with a DVM. How does one access the circuit inside? It looks like the silver ring on the bezel may unscrew, but I didn't want to attack it with slip ring pliers until I know it's supposed to come off.
Thanks for any suggestions.
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