I recently bought a pre-installed Proffie v2.2 core from NE0Saber (it came in a full hilt, advertised as ready-to-use out of the box). Unfortunately, it’s not working properly and I’m hoping for some guidance.
Symptoms:
When I insert the battery, it plays the boot sound and a voice line from one of the fonts (Kylo Ren quote in my case) → so it clearly powers up and reads the SD card at least partially.
After that, nothing happens. Pressing the activation button (or aux button) does nothing – no ignition sound, no blade light, no hum, no response at all.
The board gets very hot (too hot to touch comfortably) when charging via USB. This happens even with a low-current charger and proper data cable. It warms up quickly near the charge controller area.
What I’ve checked/tried so far:
Battery is a 18650, fully charged, correct polarity.
No visible damage, loose wires, or solder bridges that I can see.
Haven’t modified anything – it’s exactly as received from NESaber.
I haven’t connected it to a computer yet (no serial monitor output or config changes), but I’m happy to do that if needed.
Any ideas what could be causing this? Common with NESaber pre-installs? Could it be a bad config, short on the board, or faulty charge controller?
Happy to provide photos of the board/wiring, serial monitor output, or anything else that would help diagnose.
it’s not supposed to get hot, so something is definitely wrong.
Genrally, when you get an pre-installed saber, it’s up to the installer to make sure that it works. Different people/companies offer different warranties.
We can help you debug and test stuff, but there is always a chance of messing up things more when you do that, so I wouldn’t actually recommend doing that if you can send it back and have the installer fix it.
Thank you both for the reply. I am currently in talks with the retail supplier, so hopefully I will have an answer very soon. If it’s okay with you guys, I would like to expand my understanding here. I have attached some photos of the build, so any insight on how or what could be identified, I’m all ears.
Could you try and take the first picture again, but setting the focus on the board rather than your fingers. I would adjust the focus on “Made by Frederik …” text to get the board as sharp as possible.
The second picture looks good, and I can’t see anything wrong on it.
A sharper first picture might reveal something but don’t do anything to your board until you have explored & exhausted all your warranty options with the manufacturer/installer.
That fet is oriented in the other direction. It doesn’t look like there’s any potential for bridging.
This just looks like nasty flux to me, although it’s not a serious issue even if it is bridged, it would just mean LED6 is always powered. (which isn’t used here anyways)
At the very least the shielding, yeah. (It’s not good, but it’s probably not actually causing an issue here)
This thing’s a mess in general. Looks like something that would come out of a garage, not a factory… all the extra flux(?) and such. All these chinese boards seem to be of increasingly awful quality.
