HaikeLite XHP70 Thrower Prototype Sneak Preview

Oh, yeahhhh. the BOSS man. You know, sometimes you can find stuff in a picture you couldn't find when searching...

I had it out to take a throw #. Still up there, 649 kcd at 5m, but I've gotten well over 700 at 10+ meters with tuning.

Edit: Added wall beamshots to the OP of my review: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/42543.

Wow Tom. That all looks orsm. I even love the fact that you have a book on XML’s on your shelf. That is hardcore. :slight_smile:

Thus used to be my home office - I used to work in there 7 days a week, 10-12 hrs/day. The books are all pretty much out dated, many I threw away to make room. Still working with XML today though, but C#/.NET wrap the details pretty well now. Used to be you had to know that stuff cold. I've had lots of contract gigs over the years, lots of different markets and technologies - wasn't easy to keep up.

So, what do you use the candle warmer for?

It’s funny, my office looks nothing like that. Even if I count all the Alkaline cheapies in my cars I’m probably under 25 lights total, and I only have about 4-6 batteries (toolpack pulls) that aren’t in a light.

The clear L6 really stands out in your pics.

Sorry to Haikelite for getting off topic

Candle warmer? You mean mug warmer? The mug warmer is my official PCB reflow surface - nice 80-100C or so temp to bring the PCB up to temp before reflowing. An EE friend gave it to me because he no longer uses it - he got a temp settable skillet that can do bigger boards and has better control of heat. He's been doing this stuff a lot longer than me, knows a lot more than me for sure - he's in to ham radio, rocketry (the big ones), doing side work like designing answering machines, etc., so does a lot of proto and small run work.

I'm to blame for the side track'n . Think we had a thread or two a ways back on home bench setups, but when the subject of sanity came up, had to post the insane pics I just took .

I think I’ve seen them used as both candle warmers and mug warmers, but I guess that’s semantics lol.
I’ve seen those at thrift stores and wondered about them. Does pre-heating help in some way? If so, is it still beneficial on double-sided boards with components on the bottom?

Yes, but I typically reflow directly on the mug warmer, but usually give it a minute or so of pre-heat. It definitely effects the quality of the solder joint you will get. I'm no expert but look a little down on this page for "Insufficient Wetting" here: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-guide-excellent-soldering/common-problems.

Some great basic info there. I used to buy my solder paste from a ham radio hobbyist who prepared needles with the good solder paste, and sell them to other hobbyists for a reasonable price. I explained to him basically what I/we do with flashlights and he was interested. I sent pics of the boards reflowed, and he picked it up right away, based on how the solder joints looked - he pointed out I was not providing heat to the boards. Since then, I asked around with the tech and EE's I work with and they all use some sort of means to heat the PCB prior to reflow, and of course all commercial shops do.

So will it work without heat? Most of the time, sure. Are you getting a proper solder joint? Probably not, and the trained eye can spot it easy.

I think I was getting away with it because I was using an embossing gun (which pushes a wide stream and heats up a little slowly) and usually I heat from the bottom of the board if I can. I should have a proper reflow gun coming this Christmas though, so I’ll probably grab one of those warmers too.

Hey Tom, what is that green box where all those colorful 18650 batteries are stored?

Shotgun shell case - ways back someone, maybe Dale, pointed it out - little pricey.Holds mostly pack pull cells. The other smaller one behind the iPad is also for shotgun shells. Bought them from an online retailer - maybe search here on BLF - can't recall where...

I don’t believe this for a minute. No remotely responsible manufacturer charges Li-Ion cells in series without charge balancing. You’re to need to be much more specific about these packs. Laptops most certainly use charge balancing and cell monitoring. Electric and hybrid cars use charge balancing and cell monitoring. The RC folks use charge balancing. Please cite specific examples of all these packs without charge balancing.

Drill battery packs didn’t use balance charging for the many years. This is why the drill battery packs were so unreliable for so many years.

Although I did overestimate the number that didn’t have balance charging. After awhile you stop taking notice of things like that and just get into a routine, grab the pack, twist it till it breaks, pull out the cells, take voltage readings, dispose or clean up and keep the cells. Repeat for the next 6 hours.

After awhile you tend to not notice anything except that your fingers hurt real bad and you should really address those cuts. lol

I have pulled apart quite a few packs that only had electrical connections at the end of the series of cells and nothing in the middle.

Well, cordless tools have generally used NiCD or some cases NiMH packs. Li-Ion packs weren’t on tools 20 years ago. Further, many tools that do have Li-Ion packs more recently have used high current safe chemistry sells like the A123 variety which may not need charge balancing.

I have never seen a drill with A123 cells, heard about them but never seen them. The drill manufactures swapped to Lithium but used the same battery setup as nicd for a long time (aka, no balance charging).

I never said these packs were 20 years old, I said I have opened laptop packs that are that old and didn’t have balancing. I used to care when I first started pulling them apart and noted things.

I also have home made battery packs that have a lot of use without balancing with very little divergence.

The end point is none of this matters for flashlights, they are not charged in series anyways. I was simply stating that the balance issue is not as bad as some make it out to be from my experiance.

I’m learning a lot here. Thanks TA and Stereodude. Just a detail to add here: I do believe charging in series does happen with flashlights. For example Lumintop SD75 (2S2P), and Nitecore MH41 (2S). I have been wondering for a long time whether unbalanced charging of lithium ion occurs with products such as portable vacuum cleaners etc…

Yes, in some lights they charge in series but lets just say that people that use internal charging doesn’t really care about the cells anyways. I have yet to see an internal charging system I truly trust or feel like waiting on.

I feel the same; however, this is actually the weird part. No doubt you’ve seen plenty of videos where people put different cells in their Skyray King or something; it happens all the time.
So you have unbalanced charging in certain lights, and it is exactly the not so careful people that put different cells in these lights for use and charging without ever taking the batteries out again. And apparently things don’t go sour… Certainly not recommendable, but this is perhaps your view how the dangers of lithium ion are exaggerated? Meaning if you have a set of quality cells from the same batch, it is pretty much impossible that things go wrong in 4S configuration.

Yes, that was exactly my point. Even when abused the cells themselves are actually quite safe now days.

I have even tried shorting them out on purposes (as was documented in the Q8 thread) and there was another thread where a member tried to get them to explode and it was surprisingly hard to do that.

The dangers of brand name 18650 cells is really not all that bad. Don’t short them out, keep them at reasonable temps and keep the voltage between ~2.75 and 4.2V and they will work fine.

HaikeLite, could you please explain very briefly the positives of the different battery configurations you use in this lite?
I mean 4s vs 2S2P. Probably I missed this lesson…

+1 And please at least provide realistic runtimes of the 4S version, how different is the regulation?