Burnt battery contact head torch autopsy. 

The auto exposure is a bit distracting. I think it would have been better with a lighter background.

Couple things, first, for anyone wondering, this is the exact headlight www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00OISBBXA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 To Clive: Grab yourself a bluetooth lapel mic and use that for the audio, IIRC, the best auto camera settings for benches like this are multi-point AF (if available), HDR, 4K (If available), then downsample in editing to 1080P, the video quality should be really nice, and the audio will be a lot more consistent and full, might want to put the treble down a touch, should be able to do that in the phone's audio settings. Could also get a Lytro camera if you've got the capitol, then you can worry about focus later. I can give you a couple basic editing pointers if you want, but I'm a computer tech by trade, so take any advice I give with a grain of salt, obviously. Cheers!

I'd like to see a tear down of a " Tens " machine, I have been using one that runs off a 9V battery for the last 9 months. Really helps with pain management . Keep up the good work Sir.

I also think the auto exposure adjustments (triggered from your hands infront of the dark background) are annoying. Would prefer it fixed and just suffer the exposure extremes.

I have the exact same model of headtorch, and it has been my "daily use" light for at least a couple of years now, so they sometimes are perfectly fine. I also have another one by the same maker, but with only a single LED, and that one smoked it's control chip after about 2-3 hours use. It's random what you get

"I've started so I'll finish" Clive that'll be on your gravestone...

Thank you for this, Clive! Now I don't have to take mine to bits! Although, I did have the lamps apart to apply dielectric compound to act as waterproofing. Cheers on another great video!

Your hands just look quite lovely with this camera setup.

Getting much better with the volumes! Yay!

I have 3 of these at home, they are great value for the light output. Perfect for freeride skiing or mountainbiking in the night, never had a problem with them. With some good lipos they last over 2 hours, about 1 hour with the ones that came with them.

I have been using 2 sets of these lights for dog walking over the last 4 years. No issues except one of the small lights lost its lens so the whole unit became difficult to use in wet weather. Yes it rains South of the Boarder too :) Great lights with fantastic beams that go father than most none HID headlights on cars or motorcycles will do. :)

You would need to look at the actual battery that was installed in the bay that shorted to the brass terminal. It seems that the short was between the Pos and Neg of the battery caused only by the brass terminal.

Ugh, the heatsinking in this light is BAD! Thanks for opening it up! :) The plasticy thingy used to focus the light is a collimator, the metal, cup shaped thingy from the center LED is a reflector.

I have been using this same lamp for about a year. The thing about these is the batteries go in the same way. If you put them in backwards they will short out. This is especially easy to do in the dark. The light will still work, its just the contact springs have lost their tempering. But at $9US I buy them in bulk.

i have this exact headset. works great and is really comfortable but the battery doesn't last as long as i would like but its not too bad. i really like that i can either charge it via ac adaptor or i can remove the batteries and put them into the included charger (the ac adaptor is also included). thanks for doing this video

Informative and interesting as usual!

I found somewhere on the web a datasheet for the chip. It's purposely designed for torch applications, there are 2 spare pins that by tieing either to ground or vcc you can disable the SOS mode. Another interesting quirk with these torches is when you use a radio near them, the torch will turn on. I guess the track to the transistor is acting as an antenna and allowing the transistor to turn on a bit.

Hmm. The battery contacts (cells) are in parallel? Seems like someone put a cell in backwards.

I don't know if others have mentioned this as I have not read all of the comments yet, but it would seem to me that the fault here was in the battery itself and not the headlight. The broken wire could have easily happened after the previous owner opened the unit to investigate. I have lost count of how many times I have broken fine connections like that one. Without the actual battery that was in that compartment being available to test we cannot know for sure but I agree with Clive. It is not likely that such a thin wire could pass such a current and not be burnt at all. It would have glowed like a bulb filament. I think the battery got hot, heated the contact, (possibly) melted the solder on the thin wire and parted it, but certainly fried the coiled spring contact. The only other thing I can think of that may make that thin wire survive is if it is PTFE wire.

I have an LED flashlight (torch), supposedly 1 W, in which its metallic reflector was shorting out the LED itself (because of the bare contacts on the side of the chip assembly). It intentionally screws in and out to focus the beam at different distances, but unfortunately allows the reflector to go too close to the LED. I ended up squirting some hotmelt glue on it for impromptu insulation.

Love the videos. Resistance readings before disassembly might have been more revealing as to the problem.

I've got one of these head-torches. Nice and bright. I'll only use the chipped 18650s though, as its strapped to my head.

very interesting detective work :D

I had one of these fail on me 2 days ago. In my case it was the Elfeland version of this light. One of the 2 transistors blew up. And as you can see, there not much protection when that happens. I was using 2 fully charged 18650 with a bit higher capacity than the crap that came with the light. I'm glad the batteries I bought was with the protection circuit as there's no protection in the head light.

Cool, just found this one, had to watch as I have had one of these headsets, well perhaps as long as this video has been out there. Strange how that works; perhaps I purchased it after seeing?? Probably not, usually if you find a fault, I won't buy the product, but I do have to say, it has worked great for me now for many years. I keep her fed with old 18650 cells removed from old laptops that I replace battery's on for my friends and family. Usually, I find that only one or perhaps 2 of the cells are really bad, the rest have just been disabled by the deathwatch IC.

i have this exact same light from amazon, have had no problems with it at all.... modified it to use a s a bicycle light ( its a bit too bright for a camp light, cant look at your friends without blinding them)... also added actual lighting gel, red filters to the side lights for better night viewing ( its still pretty bright after 2 layers of the darkest i had)

My working theory is that the contact pushed back some of the cell's insulation wrapping and effectively shorted the + terminal and the - terminal (the case wrapped around the cell).

That actually looks rather well made, they didn't skimp on things like the glass lenses and machined aluminum housing.

I have several of those lights and yes if you put one in backwards you get one terminal burnt I have done several times you get the battery out as soon as you notice it rarely gets left in long enough to heat both terminal's

I have that same exact headlamp and when mine arrived the middle and left LEDs were loose. I took the whole thing apart and put some thermo compound on all the leds and have not had one issue yet.

Looks like a nice little head-torch. That's too bad it was brought down by either that loose wire or a cell inserted the wrong way round. But then, I think a lot of us who've done field work have seen simple things take down quite complex or expensive equipment. Those are the "horror stories" they like to tell in Engineering 101 classes.

I've had mine (you've shown it before the one with a single CREE LED with blue band) same box in the back. ) glow but only ones and only because the one cell wasn't making proper contact with the Positive end. The ones that are better came out of a laptop battery ( 9 cells = 9 batteries) and usually a bit of a shock at some point. :P more or less because Dell recalled my laptop and I was left with a brand new battery. Doesn't work so well with used Laptop batteries. The difference however is that the ones out of a laptop battery are much flatter on Positive than the Ultrafire etc brands that actually have a tip. All I did was pull on the negative end springs and problem solved.

that's what happens when you try to sub ohm head vape.

Judging by the quality of the housings the LEDs are in, that very well may be a genuine Cree!

I've got the same type of light but in bike form factor. They're quite good... Though mine does get pretty hot when running all 3.

The lighting seems to work quite well. I like that it is shadowless (your regular bench lighting is near to two point sources, which casts strong shadows, and can prove tricky to identify things in the video) - as you noted, it's almost like a ring flash in the effect this arrangement has. The long fluorescent tubes I have seen previously gave a diffuse light as well, but the flicker was noticeable. A suggestion for the background when doing this sort of close-up work would be a mid-to-dark grey or beige so that most of the image is mid-exposure and the highlights and shadows are evenly bracketed around that.

Thank you

High dynamic range on your camera passively increases the contrast >> better picture in most cases

I have one of these lights and i have put the battery in backwards twice and it gets real hot,but it still works , so when they are put on backwards it is a dead short, so i would assume it has no backwards protection!

Were you able to get it back together and working again? It looked like a really cool head torch! edit.......the focus was a bit rough when you were looking at the main board - got a bit blurred at stages.

ive got one of these i use when exploring abandoned mines....its covered in mud but so far, no issues, i did waterproof it though :)

I have had 2 of these. Sent the first one back as I assume the lead from the battery fell off. My current one i had to re solder the lead to the negative plate to make it work.

I have one of these head torchs and the wiring failed at the end where the cable goes into the main headlamp,just from fatigue of moving. I repaired it once and next time it failed I just stripped it down and now use it as a bench lamp and works very well off a 4V power supply.

I brought a couple thru wish about a year ago, gave one to my friend and both of us have had good use from them. The 18650's mine came with are actually not too bad for a no name chinese cell. If the beam was adjustable it'd be a very good even if the 2 outer lights had a wider beam or weren't focused on exactly the same point as the central light. For the coin they're pretty good I think. I've seen headlamps going for 3 times the money that don't perform as well.

Ahh...to hear those lovely words: Let's take it to bits!

Hey Clive -- the camera was pretty distracting in this video. Wasn't "as easy" to watch as your other videos. Also, the audio sounded pretty muffled. Is it possible to not let the camera do the auto focus/exposure thing in the next vid? I'm guessing you can't do anything about the audio since you're kind of "on the move" at the moment for work, but I figured I'd at least ask re: the camera.

i was hoping for you to touch the loose wire again, to make it glow, and prove what happened

Hey, I had one of those! I abused it for over a year in my garage before it finally crapped out!

Aaawwww and I was waiting to see if you soldered that wire back on and see if it got hot again after putting it on that lil what ever thing. xD

Clive, the light reflecting off your hands is tricking the camera into underexposure and making it hard to see the headlamp: the proof is the final frame, where ond hand is in shot and the headlamp is much easier to view (two hands create more trickery than one). The solution is a camera setting called Exposure Compensation: you probably need to set it to +1.0, maybe +1.5. This isn't criticism, I'm just trying to help, since you mentioned the settings. I have a background in photography and I like your dry humour.

I have to say i love the accent.

Not convinced by the video quality on this. Any way to lock the exposure? Or it could be the HDR feature you mentioned. Or both even. An on the road setup but not as easy to watch and focus on the details for me

I've had a bikelight where the batterypack wire shorting out the battery. I replaced the cable, and after a ride it shorted again. It happens that the plastic wire insulator didn't like -5C (or lower I can't remember.. 6 years ago). No spectacular fire because of AA batteries not lithium. A silicone wire insulation would have been better.

Could u do a review of the Anker power banks? It could be cool to see if the well builded :) -Thanks

I bought one of these, and when I received one of the wires in the side lamps was disconnected, and I had to re-solder it. Seems that this particular one also had some bad or missing soldering, so perhaps that is a thing with these.

When I bought a genuine Apple iPhone charger cord, and reached to unplug it, I was rewarded with a burned finger and melted plastic. My previous Apple cord had worn out and failed prematurely. I have been using cheap gas-station cords for Apple products, and they never seem to give me any trouble at all, for about 1/10 of the price. Some say that the stories circulating in the media about fires caused by "counterfeit" charger cords were started by Apple themselves. Who's zoomin' who?

oh god the auto settings are not great, it is kinda up and down and all over the gaf.

A few years ago i had a 14500 cree flashlight and suddenly for no reason it gave me a sudden what felt like burning, and still don't know what happened because after quickly removing the battery the flashlight was fine and the battery still worked.

An especially interesting video Clive. I like your lighting set up - but auto exposure and focus look pretty horrible to me.

The auto exposure is rather distracting with the background changing brightness, but I didn't notice any problems as a result of auto focus.

+bigclivedotcom can you do a video on current transformers. I'm curious why you have to short them out when not in use and what happens if you don't. Thanks

I own this very device, it does heat up a tad from the rear...

it was designed to take the two cells in parralell. My guess is he put the batteries in series. May explain the burnout

I miss the old brown workbench, it was more pleasing to look at. Because it can contrast most colors, while this black background is hard to see some blacks on gadgets/electronics/etc.

i'd hazard a guess that the batteries protection board went short circuit funny thing is i've always wanted to get my hands on one of these lights just out of curiosity what way around are the batteries? is it a 8.4 volt series or 4.2v parallel system?

This channel is probably the best place to ask; My Kodak powerbank (model: KBP-S/5200mAh), that I use to top off my tablet while using it, has stopped recharging said tablet. In stead, it just maintains the current charge level. The powerbank also used to emit a high pitched constant tone when it started running out of charge. It doesn't do that anymore. Anyone know whats wrong with it?

Hi Clive. I've enjoyed your videos since the first one I saw, but I'm not that familiar with all the electric terms, so I was thinking if you could maybe sort of like "sum up" about the product, when reviewing/tearing a power supply or whatever? For example, I've watched the Ikea usb power supply vid, and it was a little unclear to me if you liked it or not? Same with led bulbs from ebay/amazon etc. Of course I can figure out what your opinion is when the title of the vid is "Led bulb equals death trap" or something like that, but could you explain it for us, not-so-technical? I'd be appreciated :)

I got this one too! I was got loose wire from center led and soldered two times back on heatsink. Shit aluminium and solder are not good.

The battery terminal spring in the device could of simply shorted out the + and - of the lithium cell if inserted backwards and if the battery plastic coating had been damaged or not sufficient to insulate the casing from the positive.

good

i have a couple of the zoomable single lamp ones of these Boruits. i love them, but i have had to upgrade the elasic as it stretches in no time. I use high quality expensive brand cells and they do run for ages. i would like to do some mods to the circuitry such as : fit a smoothing capacitor so that the low power mode doesn't strobe.. and also fit a variable resistor to control the brightness, how hard would that be? what's the best way of doing that? design a totally new driver board? What annoys me about these cheap Chinese things is they are nearly good. i mean i'dbe happy to pay for a higher quality version but they just produce them as cheap as poss. FOr only slightly more outlay they could make them much better.

Please set the exposure to manual. With a black background, and your hands moving around, the exposure is changing all the time. :)

Bigclive you nearly got a thumbs down. The Auto Focus was annoying. I could put up with the white balance changes but the hunting in focus was painful.

The overall quality of the lamp doesn't look bad at all (although the pinched wire shows that quality control is crap). Do you know where he got the torch and how much it cost? Btw. I'm with the others that thing the spring contact shorted one end of a cell (center nub to outer battery case).

666 likes and 6 dislikes probably never going to see that again.

Oooh, I have one of those, different branding though. Same graphics.

Mine's having sort of the same problem it won't turn on it won't charge or anything but when I put the charger in it I can turn the light on but it won't turn off

Run some current tests and see how much it takes to unsolder a joint.

I have the exact same one

I need to replace the central LED. Can you help me? thanks

I suggest please not using HDR. You may try to use HDR either when you have such a strong point light source that either highlights are blown out, or shadows come out completely black, or midrange detail is lost; or when photographing subjects against the light. What HDR will do, it will try to retain local detail while narrowing dynamic range by high-pass-filtering the image, so there will be a wandering shadow/halo on the video around light/dark objects. It may also try to photograph with more dynamic range, but i imagine, sensor limitations kick in rather swiftly. I suggest trying auto exposure once again with HDR off, it might prove more workable. I think HDR amplifies the annoyance. But i'm not sure.

did you repair then test again ??

That happened to me before. I shorted wires by accident and the middle spring burnt and smoke came out too.

Does anyone know the sizes of the LED bulbs? Cree XML or Cree XML 2 The center large one is? The 2 sides smaller ones are?

i own that head light the e-bay listing sayes it 10.000 lum it bright and get warm after a while

i fixed one of those at work, the wires from the battery pack and lamp had burned off the board i had to rewire it

Is that DC jack a dead short?

Can you tear down something that's dead? It's more of an autopsy, right?

I had to start commenting before the video ends or reading other comments because of that auto exposure. Leave it not turned on or use some matteing powder for handmodels

is there a way to buy the first xml t6nitself?

I had one too and after some time of working one of the transistors burned out. It still works but main LED can't be turned off.

I bought one of those for my wife. 5 minutes after opening the package I modified the lights before letting here use it. There is NO protection or charge-controller in this lamp. Unmodified it's an accident waiting to happen.

Experimental head warming feature for cold weather?

Im certain the original owner put the batteries in series ;)

A question for Clive or anyone else who knows. What colour LED is best for attracting flies to their doom and how many kV do you need? There's a lot of them pesky varmints about this year.

Wouldnt the snipped wire, cause more current to flow through the remaining battery? causing the contact heat up? plus bad design?

I got mine for under $6 n I LOVE IT. it's friggin bright as shit and the battery last forever...it's like having daylight on your head. mine works perfectly n it's been tossed around just a we bit to say the least ... mostly cuz it was cheap but now it's my go to when I want to light up a quarter mile or blind the piss outta someone hahaha

maybe you should turn off auto exposure next time it's really weird. Or if the app has got an option to delay the adjustment a bit you could use that.

Not every lamp will be bad. Looks like a one off. If they started getting lots of returns,yeah,no good there. Just another day on Ebay.

Clive. I want to make a LED work bench light.. I bought some Strip LEDS that are waterproof (white) And I also bought some cheap IR controllers for them the controller Says on the sticker 5-24v peak 12a I'm sure that it will come no where close to the 12a (China) haha.. But anyway.. its not going to be anything special but I cant come up with anything that will house the LEDS.. I just have no idea where to begin. on what to build to house them... Do you have any ideas on what I could house these in.. any input would be great thanks.