What's going on with my Arctic?

[Raiden Gekkou]

I've noticed that my Arctic will shut off with the 3 indicator lights blinking a lot earlier than I would expect it too. If I only run it on low power then this won't happen, but it'll cut off on high power after a while. My two 600mW greens last much longer, and I would expect a 600mW DPSS green to run down a lot faster than a 1W diode blue. I've switched around the batteries a couple of times to find that it's not the batteries at all, but something that the Arctic is doing. It's always done this and i've ignored it, but it's kind of annoying, and if there's no way to stop it from doing this then i'm getting rid of it. So, does anyone know what's causing this?

 

[SRESAL]

Your batteries are junk... or possibly your charger. Once they get to a certain (low) level, the s3 devices won't operate in high mode.

 

[NKO29]

YEPPPPPPPP I hadnt used my arctic for a month or two and it did the same thing. I then tried a good quality battery and it worked just fine. It used to like my laptop pulls, but i guess theyve gone bad.

 

[Raiden Gekkou]

Odd, I use Panasonic 3400mah 18650 cells that always seem to work great for my other lasers. Do I need to fully drain the batteries every now and then?

 

[djQUAN]

IIRC, Li ions last much longer if it isn't fully cycled or run to empty before charging.

 

[Raiden Gekkou]

I've never ran them empty, and was wondering if cycling them at least once would help. Any batteries to suggest?

 

[NKO29]

Actually you mentioning using good batteries and it still doing it got me thinking. If I freshly charge the batteries it will last for a while, but If I leave them for a day then it will do exactly what you describe yours does. I think te voltage monitor has been either set too high or the setting has changed while I wasn't using it (it hada battery in it for the time it was unused)

 

[Raiden Gekkou]

If that's how it is, I guess i'm done with my Arctic then.

 

[SRESAL]

It is frustrating... the krypton I had did it even worse than the arctic.

 

[NKO29]

FIXED it! VERY easy in my case. After some testing with my DMM, my tailcap had a resistance... I unscrewed those 2 screws and pulled out the pin... Screwed the screws on as tight as possible, reinserted the pin and BAM it works normally!