September 21, 2024

Modifying the BLF-A6

This is one flashlight that I feel no urge to modify. But there are a gang of people that want to modify each and every flashlight on planet earth, and so it goes.

Taking the light apart

I found a spanner wrench and a vise with nylon jaws (that included angled spots for gripping round objects) made taking it apart more or less civilized.

Unlike other flashlights, the PCB and LED do not both come out from the rear. On the BLF, the LED is on a PCB in front of a short aluminum tube, and the control board (aka "driver") is in the back of said tube. They are connected by two short wires. The wires are so short that there is no way to get at the component side of the driver PCB. So if your goal is to flash new firmware, you are going to have to unsolder (and resolder) one or both of those wires going from the driver to the LED.

My interests were just in looking at the board to see what components were present, but I decided to satisfy myself with photos taken by others and posted online. I reassembled my light, tested it, and called it a day.

Online resources

The BLF mod thread above began in 2015 and has grown to 45 pages. Sadly, many photos are now missing as they were posted on various shabby and evil photo hosting sites that have now deleted them -- a fairly common scenario.
Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Light Info / [email protected]