Gear

A while back on a thread about headlamps and torches I praised these babies saying they were terrific value. Well ...

The one I gave to my lad has a problem. The batteries corroded, but I thought I had caught it early enough. As the power pack is remote from the lamp I flushed it out with boiling water to halt the corrosion, dried it thoroughly and put in more batteries - all seemed fine. I gave him the lecture about removing batteries when stored which he took like any 17 yr old would.

Last night I used his headlamp, but while refitting the batteries I fumbled it a bit so that the power was on/off/on in milliseconds. After that I couldn't turn the torch off - no response to the push button switch at all. However - and this is the funny bit - the lamp was flashing an SOS message constantly.

 Now the crafty little blighters who make these almost certainly use the same chip in their SOS beacons, and those torches which incorporate such a beacon. Somehow I have activated it - probably by a comination of interrupting the power supply while the switch was in one of its three modes (full on/ dimmed / strobe).

My plan is to pop it in the microwave for ten seconds and see what happens  - unless anyone has any suggestions?

10 mins in the microwave!

Feck me, that's a bit strong. We were all 17 once!

Microwave...noooo...you'll blow it up and may even bugger the torch too...(seriously, a second or two in a microwave and all the electronics in the torch will be crisp)

as for washing it out in boiling water....LOL...

what you my have is a teeny weeny short/break in the insulation which you have exacerbated by boiling the torch.  It may be as simple as steam getting in round the driver (this is in the back of the headlamp section itself).

This is what I would do.

Undo the screws on the back and carefully seperate  the components.  Now put the torch somewhere warm (not hot, just nice and cuddly) and dry - and airing cupboard or the like (you can also try putting it into  plastic bag with a few handfuls of uncooked rice if you dont have a cuddly warm place)

Leave it for at least 24 hours..48 hours better, 72 hours better still, then reassemble. Try it then.

Edit.  Just looked at the one you have highlighted - Oooops. If memory serves me, the drivers et al are in the battery box - not a bit of wonder its flashing SOS...its drowning in boiling water!

The SOS beacon is a standard response to attack by numpty with boiling water and a microwave according to the user manual

Dont judge others by your standards Mike (but what a good idea)

I deny all charges of numptyness - except one: the link I posted was to a slighlty different torch with one 4.5v battery instead of three 1.5v batteries. The battery pack is remote enough to allow rinsing with boiling water. Which was a good way off stopping the rot - after all the headlamp would be scrap otherwise.

Anyway - the microwave experiment went like this.  Thanks for the idea Mike - that should sort things.