I guess you really should not leave one of these in a box as the battery wont stay charged and now it's dead. I hardly ever use it unless I'm in a position that I cant flip my good helmet in. Hate to throw it away even if it is a POS so if anyone has had success,or failure, opening one up please let me know. If not I'll just wing it and let everyone know what happens.

Is the battery dead? They are solar powered, just set it outside for a few hours in the sun to charge back up.

if it is a solar powered model then you will get enough light energy from the arc for it to darken there is no battery to charge it generates the power on demand.

Mine stopped working, I gave it some Texas sun for an afternoon, it was working after that.

I gave it away when I sold my Lincoln Tombstone, I have a Miller Pro-Hobby helmet now, it works much better. No more itchy-eye syndrome, it doesn't have the same 'strobe' effect that the HF helmet had.

I'm pretty sure the 'strobe effect' is caused by a dead battery that will no longer take a charge because it's dead, not just discharged. I tried the 'leave it out in the sun' method also without any luck. Mine was in it's box for a year as I usually use my regular flip helmet. I'll tear mine apart and let everyone know what I find. If I have to leave the helmet out in the sun so it will keep working I'd rather trash it.

sprout4two here on the board took is helmet apart (don't know if it was an HF helmet or not) and replaced the "non-replacemable" battery. I believe he had to glue the two halves back together.

I could have swore I've replaced the batteries in my HF helmet..................just ran out and checked, sure enough it just has two triple A's in it stored under the lens.:confused:

I could have swore I've replaced the batteries in my HF helmet..................just ran out and checked, sure enough it just has two triple A's in it stored under the lens.:confused:

Depends on which model it is, I have two. One has replaceable batteries, and the other does not. Either way, stick it out in the sun for awhile, or in front of a halogen work light for bit, and it should charge up.

I hadn't used mine for awhile, and I left it out in the sun for ~30min and started welding.

Alrighty then. I took mine apart last night. Mine has two 3 volt lithium coin cells soldered to the board. It's not in front of me but I think they were 3022's and they were the size of a quarter. One read .83vdc and the other .42vdc. Lithium batteries are not rechargeable so I could leave it in the sun for a year and it wouldn't help it. I'm going to see if I can figure out another battery scheme and maybe take the lens and circuit and put it in a different helmet. The lens assembly is pretty nice once cleaned and removed from the HF housing and will fit just fine in a small lens helmet which I have three of I think.

I'm guessing that the solar cell is just for looks but I wont know for sure until I wire the thing up for triple A's. If the lens will work under battery power alone maybe I can make something useful out of this POS.

The solar cell provides the power while you are welding. I think* the 3v lithium batteries are only to get the shade to darken when you strike the first arc, so they typically will last a long time. I would think you could solder in new batteries, or add a battery box for a pair of AAA's pretty easily.

It is an HF helmet, so....it's probably designed to be disposable:flipoff2: