# Magicshine HA-III Cree SSC P7-C (SXO) 3-Mode 900-Lumen LED Headlamp Set



## G4VNJ (Jun 3, 2008)

Hi, i ordered these off dealxtreme.com as most people are doing i assume, took a while to arrive as im in the UK, turned these lights on, was amazed how bright they were, these are my first set of lights...so impressed!

Didnt really have an opportunity to go try them due to weather and just have not been out in general, but we had a powercut at home so i get my light out and ran it, see how long it will last... Noticed it was really hot, like couldnt pick it up hot, then the light goes out, i disconnect it and try it again, comes back and after a while goes off again. 
Eventually it stays on but it didnt look as bright as before..

Tonight i have been out with my mate and he got two sets of the same, it is quite clear that my led has burnt out or something, it is nowhere near as bright, crap infact...

So what has happened to my light?

I have unscrewed the top, the led seems in there, pretty solid...?!?!

Also, this may seem obvious to some, i have gone to the customer services page on dealxtreme.com and tried filling out a form to ask about this and in a section its asked for

Defective SKU*: ...................

What do i type in there because i havnt got a clue...

Thanks in advance for any advice i get...


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## pe6u (Oct 6, 2009)

sku.29489 - this is the number of the product, you can see it in the adress bar when you open the page with the item.


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## G4VNJ (Jun 3, 2008)

That's great thanks.. I will get onto them.. 

If anyone else could advise me further on what's happened tho, plz do..


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## Infinity123 (Dec 11, 2009)

G4VNJ said:


> If anyone else could advise me further on what's happened tho, plz do..


The magicshine needs to be cooled by the wind. You probably overheated it. The driver or the LED may be busted.


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## G4VNJ (Jun 3, 2008)

So what do u need to do now? How do I do it?


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## Cat-man-do (May 16, 2004)

...*Rule #1: Never run a cheap light that uses a high powered LED like the P-7 without some kind of air flow for more than a short period of time. This stuff is not designed for stationary use. *

It's quite possible the emitter got too hot. This could have damaged the emitter. On the other hand it's possible one of the connections ( either external or internal ) have loosened to the extent that it is effecting the output. This is quite common with some of the cheap D/X stuff. I suggest trying to open up the light head and taking a good look at the solder connections. Another option might be to use a spare 18650 cell and try to direct drive the LED to see if it lights ( as bright as before ). Just make sure you get the polarity right or the LED will be toast. If you're not comfortable doing any of these things you can always return the stuff to D/X. At this time of year that's not a bad option seeing it will take maybe two months to get the replacement. ( * D/X won't ship the new one until they get the old one )

In the mean time you could order a P-7 torch, batteries, charger and bar mount to hold you over till the MS arrives. With cheap stuff it ALWAYS pays to have a back-up plan.
If you want some suggestions for a good torch, batteries, charger, bar mount etc... just ask. You'll be surprised at how well they work.

Unfortunately, anything you order right now is going to be delayed some additional weeks due to the Chinese New Years festival.


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## G4VNJ (Jun 3, 2008)

That's great thanks... I'm gonna have too send it back I think

Wish dx had given a little advice on the use of this light, like don't run in a certian ambient temp or something along those lines but I suppose that would put a lot of people off...

Thanks again, looks like my night riding is off for a while then..


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## MtbMacgyver (Jan 23, 2007)

I can tell you exactly what happened, since I've repaired this exact problem on Magicshines before. One of the two current sense resistors on the driver board burnt up due to the heat.

One of the two sense resistors runs way over spec. This is one of the known design issues with the magicshine. For the most part, they get away with running that resistor over spec. The resistor runs hot, but not so hot that it burns up. But, when the light gets really hot due to the lack of airflow, that resistor does get to the point that it physically burns up. That leaves a single, higher resistance sense resistor instead of a set of parallel sense resistors that together form a much lower resistance. So the light still works, but the drive current to the LED is about 1/5th of normal.

To repair this problems, you need the equipment and know how to swap out small SMD resistors. More details can found near the bottom of this thread. Help, I fried my Magicshine


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## Jim311 (Feb 7, 2006)

G4VNJ said:


> That's great thanks... I'm gonna have too send it back I think
> 
> Wish dx had given a little advice on the use of this light, like don't run in a certian ambient temp or something along those lines but I suppose that would put a lot of people off...
> 
> Thanks again, looks like my night riding is off for a while then..


It probably says in the manual somewhere not to run it without some airflow. You toasted it, if you're going to test run time do so with a fan on it.


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## G4VNJ (Jun 3, 2008)

Funny thing is, I'm training to be an elelctrician but have not a clue of electronics, not in this size anyway lol! 

It's way over my head, I have got in touch with dealxtreme.com awaiting a reply...

Thanks for your replies


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## Cat-man-do (May 16, 2004)

MtbMacgyver said:


> I can tell you exactly what happened, since I've repaired this exact problem on Magicshines before. One of the two current sense resistors on the driver board burnt up due to the heat.
> 
> One of the two sense resistors runs way over spec. This is one of the known design issues with the magicshine. For the most part, they get away with running that resistor over spec. The resistor runs hot, but not so hot that it burns up. But, when the light gets really hot due to the lack of airflow, that resistor does get to the point that it physically burns up. That leaves a single, higher resistance sense resistor instead of a set of parallel sense resistors that together form a much lower resistance. So the light still works, but the drive current to the LED is about 1/5th of normal.
> 
> To repair this problems, you need the equipment and know how to swap out small SMD resistors. More details can found near the bottom of this thread. Help, I fried my Magicshine


Oh yes! I remember someone saying something about that some time ago but I didn't know it was related to overheating but Yes...it makes perfect sense. Unfortunately for the novice that is not an easy fix. I was hoping that MS had fixed that problem by now but apparently they haven't. MTBMacG...can you suggest a resistor setup to replace the orignial? ( ** never mind, I didn't see the link. )


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## G4VNJ (Jun 3, 2008)

To be fair, I ordered mine a while back, before the new year, they weren't called magic shine then, so they have solved the problem...


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## MtbMacgyver (Jan 23, 2007)

I can't say if the lights being shipped right this moment have changed anything about the under spec'ed current sense resistors, but the last one I took apart was ordered a few weeks before xmas from Geoman, it was called a magicshine, and it still had the under spec'ed current sense resistors.

If you're curious enough about this to take the light apart and look, here's a picture that shows the resistors in question.










The resistors in question are R03 and R04 just to the right of the large wire wound inductor. In this pictures, R03 is a 0.5 ohm and R04 is a 0.1 ohm 805 SMD resistor. These two resistors are in parallel to create a combined resistance of 0.0833 ohms. Since they are in parallel it doesn't mater if the 0.1 and 0.5 resistors are swapped. When the light is on high, the 0.1 ohm resistor will dissipate 400mw and the .5 ohm resistor will dissipate 80mw. A 805 smd resistor is rated for 125mw. If the 0.1 ohm resistor that's running way over spec burns out, the .5 ohm resistor remaining will cause the LED current on high to be 0.4A instead of the normal 2.4A.

I replaced the two resistors with a pair of larger 1206 0.165 ohm 250mw resistors. Digikey part number 311-0.165ANCT-ND. Combined they from a resistance of 0.0825, which yields a LED drive current of 2.42A. Virtually the same as stock. By using two equal value resistors, the current and power splits evenly between them. That mean on high, each resistor is disipating 242mw.

To be clear, the lights with the under spec'ed resistors aren't necessarily all going to fail. Resistors stand up well to a fair amount of abuse. Without doing or finding some pretty extensive testing data, I really couldn't tell you the increase in failure rate for that 0.1 ohm resistor running way over spec. It'll be running much hotter than normal, and it'll certainly go if the light gets really hot, but under more typical temps for this light it's certainly possible it could run a long time. It's not all that different than running a halogen bulb over spec. So I don't really have the data to predict if the life of that resistor has gone from 100,000 to a 1,000 hours or if it's gone from 100,000 to 100 hours.

For those that like to mod stuff, you can certainly change these resistors to increase the drive current to 2.8A. A 0.13 (RL16R.13FCT-ND) and 0.16 (RL16R.16FCT-ND) combine to give 0.0717 and an LED drive current of 2.79A. I haven't tried this. I would tend to assume they didn't set the drive current to 2.8A because of the heat that'll be generated. But, if you're careful about not running the light on high without reasonable airflow, I bet it'll work ok. I doubt the mod is really worth it since a 15% increase in light output would hardly be noticeable even in a side by side comparison.


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## GEOMAN (May 30, 2006)

G4VNJ said:


> To be fair, I ordered mine a while back, before the new year, they weren't called magic shine then, so they have solved the problem...


The 3 mode variety is mid-2009 at best... There have been several design changes since then. The resistor change you mention, above, was submitted to the Magicshine engineers for implementation.

Great work Macguyver. You're a smart guy.

Geo


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## mattmor (Feb 15, 2004)

GEOMAN said:


> The 3 mode variety is mid-2009 at best... There have been several design changes since then. The resistor change you mention, above, was submitted to the Magicshine engineers for implementation.
> 
> Great work Macguyver. You're a smart guy.
> 
> Geo


So the 5 mode one has different resistors in them?

Thanks.

-matt


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## GEOMAN (May 30, 2006)

mattmor said:


> So the 5 mode one has different resistors in them?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -matt


Frankly, I am checking with MS on this. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, the Chinese new year continues to the end of the month - everybody's on holiday... An answer may be a bit.

Geo


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## G4VNJ (Jun 3, 2008)

Jim311 said:


> It probably says in the manual somewhere not to run it without some airflow. You toasted it, if you're going to test run time do so with a fan on it.


It didn't come with a manual... If I did I would have read it.. Obviously..


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## Cat-man-do (May 16, 2004)

MtbMacgyver said:


> *For those that like to mod stuff, you can certainly change these resistors to increase the drive current to 2.8A. A 0.13 (RL16R.13FCT-ND) and 0.16 (RL16R.16FCT-ND) combine to give 0.0717 and an LED drive current of 2.79A. *I haven't tried this. I would tend to assume they didn't set the drive current to 2.8A because of the heat that'll be generated. But, if you're careful about not running the light on high without reasonable airflow, I bet it'll work ok. I doubt the mod is really worth it since a 15% increase in light output would hardly be noticeable even in a side by side comparison.


For the novice, trying to replace the resistors could be a problem. I'm going to assume the new resistors are also very sensitive to heat. This would probably require special equipment and technique to install. Using a normal soldering iron might cause a problem in a case like this if I'm not mistaking.  Any suggestions?


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## MtbMacgyver (Jan 23, 2007)

Cat-man-do said:


> For the novice, trying to replace the resistors could be a problem. I'm going to assume the new resistors are also very sensitive to heat. This would probably require special equipment and technique to install. Using a normal soldering iron might cause a problem in a case like this if I'm not mistaking.  Any suggestions?


Resistors are actually very tolerant of heat. You're not likely to hurt them during soldering unless you really kill them with a high wattage iron.

What makes this difficult is the size. They are tiny. At a minimum you need a soldering iron with a very small tip. 1/32 works quite well. A low wattage (15W) inexpensive iron will work but it's pretty hard to find an inexpensive iron with a small enough tip. You don't tend to have the tip selection available for higher end soldering stations.

Removing the existing resistors is actually harder than soldering on the new ones. That's because you have to heat both end of the resistors at the same time to get them off. Heated SMD rework tweezers make that easy, but you can also use two soldering irons at the same time kinda like they're tweezers. Then use desolder wick to remove the excess solder from the pcb pads. The hardest part of soldering the resistor back on is getting the tiny resistor lined up and holding it in place while you solder the first side. You can use the fine tip of an X-Acto knife to hold the resistor down while you solder. Once the first side is soldered down, the second side is much easier.

It takes even more specialized equipments, but solder paste and a hot air rework iron makes the process even easier. The solder paste is intentionally thick and sticky. Once the board is cleaned off, you put a small dab of solder paste on each pcb pad. Then you can place the resistor easily with a set of small tweezers or smd vacuum tweezers. The paste will hold it in place. Then you use the hot air rework iron to melt the paste into solid solder. I haven't tried this, but I don't see why you couldn't use solder paste with a regular iron, and that would certainly make placement a lot easier.

So for someone with 3 or 4 hands, some patience, good vision, and fine motor skills, this is quite do-able with a couple of inexpensive irons. If you don't have good close up vision naturally, then some type of magnification helps a lot. For those of us with only 2 hands, it's still doable but the patience of a saint helps a lot.

A cheap, easy and very convenient way improve your close up vision is to pick up some 2-3x reading glasses at a drug store. Even if you don't need them for reading or any other tasks, it's amazing how much they can help for tiny SMD work. And it much more convenient that some type of magnification you have to hold or position independently.

One tip specifically about changing these resistors. It's crucial that you don't end up with a shorted resistor due to some type of solder bridge or misaligned resistor. It's best to check your work with a meter before you apply power to the driver. Since these resistors form the feedback circuit for the current regulation, if they are shorted, the driver will instantly try to drive the current to infinity when you apply power. The driver circuit will last a matter of milliseconds before the magic smoke escapes. What makes checking this with a meter hard, is the resistance is so tiny it's hard to distinguish from a short and it may be below the resolution of a lot of low cost meters. See what resistance your meter reads for the probes touched together and across resistors soldered to the board. If you get a pair or readings like 0.1 and 0.2 respectively you're good. The problem is with a lot of meters you may get something like 1.2 and 1.2 respectively. The resistors may be fine and just less than the resolution of the meter or they may be shorted. If you get a reading of 0.1 and 0.1, I'd check your work very carefully before applying power.


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## MtbMacgyver (Jan 23, 2007)

I didn't know Radio Shack still sold these because I got one in the store about 10 years ago and hadn't seen them lately. But this is a descent iron for small work. The tip isn't quite as small as you'd like ideally, but it's as good as you'll find in a low cost iron. You can also get replacement tips from radioshack for $2.19.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062728#

Tips
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062729#


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## MtbMacgyver (Jan 23, 2007)

Oh and because I was curious from the previous post, I went down to the workshop and tried using solder paste with a regular iron instead of a hot air rework iron. It worked very well.


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## lidarman (Jan 12, 2004)

MtbMacgyver, 

Have you by chance jotted down the schematic for the MS board?


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## oldassracer (Mar 26, 2009)

*resistor change*

in for the answer to the MagicShine engineers reply to the resistor changes...


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## neex (Mar 30, 2005)

Jim311 said:


> It probably says in the manual somewhere not to run it without some airflow. You toasted it, if you're going to test run time do so with a fan on it.


I agree and if you look at the literature supplied with almost all higher end lights also, they all suggest that stationary use should be limited if at all due to overheating. Niterider and Lupine mention this in their docs. I can't answer for others not Magicshine but if you want DE to warranty your light you may need to leave the part out about running it while stationary as it might not help your cause much. Good luck.

A.


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## batvette (Dec 10, 2006)

MtbMacgyver said:


> Resistors are actually very tolerant of heat. You're not likely to hurt them during soldering unless you really kill them with a high wattage iron.
> 
> What makes this difficult is the size. They are tiny. At a minimum you need a soldering iron with a very small tip. 1/32 works quite well. A low wattage (15W) inexpensive iron will work but it's pretty hard to find an inexpensive iron with a small enough tip. You don't tend to have the tip selection available for higher end soldering stations.
> 
> ...


Couldn't you just use a desoldering iron/tool and remove the solder from each side at a time? 
(I have in front of me "ECG soldering iron", their part number E69348. It's a 45 watt iron with a hollow tip attached to a rubber bulb, I use it often. It gets ALL the solder off every time)

BTW excellent tip about checking your work with a meter.


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## MtbMacgyver (Jan 23, 2007)

batvette said:


> Couldn't you just use a desoldering iron/tool and remove the solder from each side at a time?
> (I have in front of me "ECG soldering iron", their part number E69348. It's a 45 watt iron with a hollow tip attached to a rubber bulb, I use it often. It gets ALL the solder off every time)
> 
> BTW excellent tip about checking your work with a meter.


In my experience, those work very well for thru-hole components, but not as well for surface mount. It'll get a lot of the solder off the joint, but since the SMT part actually touches the board it takes very little remaining solder in that joint to keep the part attached.

But, I don't have that exact iron so I don't know how well that one works. Have you tried it with SMT components? How well does it work specifically with SMT parts?


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