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- As others have mentioned, there is a button end and the LED end, and both ends are screwed onto the middle barrel. Unscrew the button end. The button end has the battery contact spring. There is some sort of loctite, so you may need some pliers to unscrew it.
- After unscrewing it, inside the button end threading, there is a metal ring with 2 holes. That metal ring is threaded and screwed into the button end threads. I used needle nose picks like chopsticks to unscrew the metal ring. May take some force to get it started, but once you do, you just need 1 pick to twist it all the way out.
- Once the metal retaining ring is gone, you can push the button hard to push out the control circuit board with the battery contact spring. I suspect an issue is that the button or the on-board soldered battery is dead. I ripped out the tiny soldered on battery with my needle nose pick.
- From there, get rid of the black rubber ring glued around the battery contact spring. Be sure to clean up as much of the glued rubber residue as possible.
- Next, I took a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil twisted it into the battery contact spring, getting it as close to the control board as possible. Make sure the foil connects the battery spring metal to the outer ring metal of the control board, and get the foil twisted as flat towards the board as possible.
- Trim off the excess foil so that the control board slides back in easily.
- Finally, put the control circuit board back into the button end cap like how you took it out, and tightly screw back in the metal retaining ring. Make sure the retaining ring starts screwing back in easily until it starts tightening to avoid destroying the threading. The ring is used to complete the circuit with the foil. Re-assemble the rest of the flash light.
The goal is for the foil to be squeezed between the metal retaining ring and the control board outer metal ring. When the battery contact spring is squeezed by the battery being fully inserted, electrical current will flow through the flashlight casing metal to the retaining ring to the foil to the spring and into the battery. This bypasses the button switch control board. How the circuit works is basically: electricity flows from the battery to the LED to the flashlight metal case to the button switch circuit and back into the battery. If you did it right, you basically got a twist switched flash light! I tighten the battery end and just twist the LED end to turn on/off the flashlight. It seems the LED end has whatever does the 3 light modes, so you still keep the dimming feature! Note, it may no longer be water proof anymore after all this disassembly and the need to keep the LED end sightly untightened. Also, depending on how much you untighten the LED end, you can push the button kind of hard to complete the circuit too, but it will turn off right when you depress the button.