If you ever need new main cap for the 310 I have a few.
___________________________________
John Hermanson
Camtech Photo Services, Inc.
21 South Lane, Huntington NY 11743
631-424-2121 | Olympus OM Service since 1977
http://www.zuiko.com | omtech1 AT verizon.net
Tim Hughes wrote:
> I had two very old QA310's I bought "as is" a long time back with various
> maladies.
> I wanted some flashes to modify for a project, so stripped one down and
> changed it, so it could
> use NiMh cells. I am going to remount the flashtube later to turn it into a
> bare bulb unit.
>
> The original inverter transistors are small germanium ones and are limited to
> about 1Apk so using
> NiCd's or NimH cells kills them. I replaced them with very beefy PNP power
> transistors: NTE154
> (equiv Tip32) transistors and these seem to work really well with NiMh cells,
> as well as improving
> cycle time. I cut of the transistor tabs so they fitted better and insulated
> the metal face with
> some mylar tape. The leads needed to be dressed differently, to drop into
> original transistor
> holes. Peak currents now go to over 3A. The two inverter transistors are easy
> to identify, as they
> have little heatclips on them. I must have set off a few hundred full dump
> flashes while testing
> and although the plastic reflector got pretty hot, the transistors hardly
> seemed warm. Using new
> Alkalines still gives a little higher flash output, provided you wait long
> enough, but the NiMh
> are more consistent and faster. A T32 with NiMh, still cycles a little
> faster, even with this mod
> to the QA310.
>
> Taking the QA310's apart is a real pain as there is a small spring etc to
> lose. There is an
> obvious screw in the battery compartment and less obvious screws under the
> metal trim on back
> panel, after removing the central srew on the dial assembly using friction.
> The case has some
> plastic clips at front sides and back, this requires careful prising to open.
>
> The normal trigger voltage is fairly high : 220V measured/loaded by a 10MOhm
> DVM. I am going to
> add a low voltage trigger cct.
>
> Take care to avoid the lethal high voltage energy stored in the flash cap, if
> you open your flash
> to do this mod! Charge is stored for a long time after switch off on a couple
> of large caps.
>
> Tim Hughes
>
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