Q8, PMS SEND TO THOSE WITH ISSUES BLF soda can light

Some first impressions, then photos!

The good:

  • Perfect fit and exterior finish. Clean and battery tube threads well lubricated.
  • Pretty good interior finish for the most part
  • Nice heft, weighs in at 404 g (no cells). The latest SRKs are around 300 g.
  • Clean reflector, lens, LEDs, MCPCB, interior
  • Looks like a good quality PCB for the driver
  • Good button with crisp action
  • Good thermal performance. Can sense some heat on the exterior very rapidly.
  • 3D tint, or extremely close to it, as per specification
  • 2 mohm FET on the driver, as per specification
  • The ā€˜goodā€™ type 7135 regulator on the driver
  • LED wires are AWG 18 or larger

The neutral:

  • More aggressive knurling than usual, but well done
  • The SS bezel on mine came dirty. Some glue or similar that comes off easily though.
  • The glue used for the plastic finishing rings around the brass +contact ring is a little fragile. Very easy to remove these rings.
  • LED centering is OK, but not great.

The not so good:

  • De-laminating MCPCB. Apart from the mask lifting at one edge, there is also an air-bubble around the -wire pad.
  • Two inclusions in one of the four reflectors
  • The now known issue with the tail springs. A 2 ft drop onto its tail on a soft surface interrupts the cells.
  • Driver is obviously hand-soldered. Hopefully this is just a prototyping issue. It is mostly a case of too much solder and there are no signs of dry joints or bad connections.

OK, photos. These are as the light came out of the box, no clean-up, no rework of any kind.

Banggood style bag, but I am not expecting anything from BG?

Apparently we have an SKU already:

Simple but functional packaging, of course the retail version may end up improved:

Oh nice!:

Not something you will see on any other SRK light:

Less nice inside, but still pretty good:

Tail board:

Tail cap:

Tripod threads:

Some boobed flat-tops:

We would need 2-3 mm extra on those springs for a secure fit with short cells:

Plastic rings. The brass ring stands ~0.5 mm proud of both:

Cool side light:

Great tint. XPL-HI 3D on the right:

Business end:

Against two current-generation SRKs:

The good FET:

The not good reflector:

Underneath the tail board:

Back of reflector:

MCPCB:

Small screws are all the same size:

Thermal paste:

Back of MCPCB:

Shelf cleaned up, very nice finish on that one:

Its flat:

My only real complaint:

Same defect:

Now to put it back together and use it!:

WOW, now thatā€™s a great rundown of the light :+1: Thanks a lot
Have the other proto3 lights the same issues as the one DEL received? Except for the LEDs being off-center and the spring issue I donā€™t remember any mention of the other issues.

Quick, The Miller, update the post title, link this review, and letā€™s get going on whatever else we need! Weā€™re getting close to the end, now!

Thanks DEL! :beer:

I haven't even removed the MCPCB on the round 3 light, but I've even reflowed LED's on the round 1 and round 2 lights. Not the same exact MCPCB, but looks the same (round 3 made it wider and thicker). Haven't seen this problem or anything close of the peeling layer.

Haven't seen reflector issues in the 4 prototypes I've gotten.

I didn't notice the plastic rings could be removed easily. I had to pry off the ones on the round 2 lights and thought they were glued pretty good, but the plastics were very different in round 2.

I agree with the hand soldering, but truthfully it's hard for me to tell, so I couldn't say for sure. DEL has way more experience and expertise in that area.

#7 is back together. Tricky not to touch the reflector.

Those crappy solder-blobbed laptop pulls are giving 5600 lumens on start, 5300 after 30 s. I can accept that :smiley: .

The inclusions in the reflector surface is an irritation, but it is cosmetic only. Springs should already be fixed. Plastic rings are not an issue, they stay in place even without glue. Solder is ugly, but functional. Had to clean up the pads to re-attach the LED wires, looks like mediocre lead-free. My only real concern is the durability of the MCPCB.

Edit: Parasitic drain is only 0.14 mA, even with the fairly bright side indicator on.

Nice review and pictures DEL. Thanks. :+1:

Thank you DEL! :+1:

Yes very nice DEL!
And I am happy we went for so many samples before giving the GO for now we know the lamination is a concern.

Welcome to BLF!
Will do!

Yeah!
title, links to impressions/reviews and list updated

I love how weā€™ve now adopted the solder boob name. No more blobs.

+1ā€¦ I like it too. :wink:

wooo just got done doing some plastic surgery on my VTC6ā€™s as well , now they all have some nice size solder boobs. :partying_face:

Implants, if you preferā€¦

To be clear
That lamination, what is that?
The top cover with insulation properties or are the copper traces part of it?

Interested

Well , i thought something similar , but iā€™ll have to get max 2 or 3 for start :stuck_out_tongue:

In my case the copper traces are part of the delamination, which implies that the traces are less well cooled, which really could be an issue at 20A.

Hi, Iā€™m interested in 1 BLF Q8, is it still possible to be added to the list?
Thanks in advance.

Yes welcome to BLF!

It must be onplants, as the addition go on the top of things and not inside.