[PART 1] Official BLF GT Group Buy thread. Group buy officially closed! Lights shipping.

Just received my GT with batteries. A big thank you to the GT team and Neal!

I guess I read it wrong then, I thought we were talking about the disappointment someone was feeling because the first 555 were not treated as “first priority”.

Of course all will be happy when their light gets delivered…. that seems a nobrainer. :+1:

Yeah… it would have been nice to know in advance if one shipping option was indeed going to have preference over another. Maybe that info was not avaiable or decided on at the time orders were taken however.

Or maybe, since Registered Mail is shipping in two boxes; there has been a slight delay in sourcing those boxes.

Who knows…… all speculation on our end anyway.

Main thing is the lights are being made & shipped as fast as LT can crank them out & maintain that EXCELLENT QUALITY we are seeing in the GT.

Sooooo……. Thank You Lumentop!!! . :slight_smile:

Bigger stronger? The xhp 70.2 will give more lumens but less throw.

I don’t think there is a led that give more lumens and throw and is easy to install using the current driver and cell setup.

If there’s a 70.2 version I nominate the name “GM”. Compromised throw, not pure flood. The Giga Mixer.

Sure, you could go bigger or smaller.

Smaller gives you longer throw with a smaller hot spot.

Bigger gives you less throw with a bigger hotspot.

The team settled on the xhp35-HI as the best compromise between long distance and a decent sized hot spot.

If you are willing to sacrifice some distance, you could go with an xhp50 or even the xhp70 (in 12 volt of course).

The GT joins the little family.
From left to right: BLF A6, BLF Q8, Imalent DX80 and the GT.
And I used to think the DX80 was a monster light :smiling_imp:

The ancient Maglite 6D joins the fray:

A shot of the reflectors. The BLF A6 is hiding between the DX80 and GT
No sign of orange peel here, but I see the slight maching marks that everyone has.

Paid deposit on August 26. Full payment plus small bonus for the team on December 2.
Number 5# on the paid list…
As far as I know there is only 2 GT’s for Serbia RS, bouth with DHL shipping.
One of those two is delivered to Sirius9 some time ago and with batteries included.
Mine is without batteries and no sign of it so far.
As I used to work for DHL I have possibility to check out if anything is currently coming to my address,but nothing so far…
I am not complaining at all just would like to know if there was some confusion over shipping to me, and maybe sent with registered instead??
Can someone from the team please ask Neal, or Lumintop since I don’t want to bother them when they have too much work to do.

Thanks
NikolaS

That Xiaomi projector :+1: Also, those fog photos are great.

the GT is already heavy and with silver you can not lift the GT anymore :smiley:

Yes,Ds=10.5 gr/cm³,while Dal=2.7gr/cm³.So,it is 3.9 times heavier.

If that is indeed so, the 3.9 times heavier, then the 305 gram aluminum reflector would turn into an 1186 gram silver reflector. Unless I missed something, that would mean an Silver reflector equipped GT would weigh approximately 6.9 pounds instead of 5 pounds, if a grown person could not lift 6.9 pounds I would have to wonder who carries their newborn babies for them?

At this rate they have about 350-400 more lights to ship to catch up with the current orders.

So figure ~2 weeks for that. And if they slow production to improve reflector quality figure at least an extra week for that.

So yeah, looks like February is a good bet for the next set of PM’s at this point.

Plastic could have been done and it would have been cheaper but this was rejected during the initial specs for the light.

Mostly because plastic tends to warp and bend and this causes issues down the road and it also makes modding very difficult.

There are some other options for making reflectors like electroforming? that cost a lot to setup but then are cheap to make large quantities. They were not aware how many would sell when they started production so this was not considered, still not sure if it would be worth the start up cost even with 1500 being made.

So overall, the lathe made aluminum reflector was the best and simplest option.

I was doing some testing with the xhp70.2 a few weeks ago before I got sick. That put everything on hold.

Thanks to the donations of a few generous BLF’ers I was able to order some more parts to keep the testing going.

I just got in another xhp70.2 yesterday to continue the testing though. Hopefully I can find some time this weekend to put it on the sphere and try slicing the dome. Might even try some final focus adjustments as well.

Also got in some parts to beef up the stock driver and hopefully increase the power some more.

As well as some parts to mod the drive for 3V LED’s as well.

If only there was a good 3V LED that I could try that uses the 3535 footprint.

Not sure how much I will get to this weekend but should be able to knock out at least some of it.

Ummm, no, a silver reflector would weigh only slightly more than aluminum. Why? Because no person in their right mind would make the entire reflector out of silver (check the price of silver compared to aluminum). Instead it would be put there through vapor deposition over a reflector base and the layer would be quite thin since that’s all that’s required. Or do folks think that the silvered mirrors on the Hubble are solid silver? Or the mirrors in modern telescopes are? Again, all that’s required is a microscopically thin layer to get the benefits, and not solid silver.

For the questions about the registered mail shipping after DHL.

NO ONE knew this was going to happen nor wanted, desired or even approved of it happening.

Far as the team knew the orders would be shipping in the order they were paid and that was that.

Everything after that was sprung on us just like everyone else.

Now there is some logic to why they did what they did, so I can’t blame them too much. For example DHL shipments will have relatively few if any issues, they will arrive quickly and with minimal abuse on the trip compared to registered mail.

So it makes sense to send these out first and get the lights in peoples hands.

Registered mail on the other hand will have some issues, just the nature of the beast. You will not ship hundreds of registered mail packages of this size without some percentage of them having issues, it makes sense to have these inevitable negative experiences come after a bunch of positive ones and not vice versa.

First impressions are everything in a project like this.

There are even more factors as well and all things considered, I would have had a hard time not doing the DHL shipments first if I was in their shoes.

That said, the real mistake they made was not in shipping DHL first but in not letting us know this would happen ahead of time. There I 100% agree they messed up.

The language barrier makes communicating difficult and details like this tend to get left out as it ends up taking 3 emails to understand exactly what was said.

At this point they must be out of DHL orders to ship so by process of elimination registered mail must be going out soon.

Oh, and to the user that was missed and added to the list as 1762, know that when he asked, he was not on the list for the 3rd one. I updated the list after seeing the request posts from my phone. I don’t generally post from my phone though, just not worth the hassle.

Also, as he pointed out and is now added to the OP, the Team-Giggles account has had the PM’s disabled as no one actively monitors that account. So your message could just be lost for weeks on end before someone logs into it.

If you have a question or issue please send them to Neal or myself at this point.

I think you’re right. Only the silver oxidizes very fast to it would have to be coated with clearcoat where we are again with orange skin

Absolutely. That wouldn’t be hard to do Alux. Even if it’s a coating of aluminum it’ll oxidize so that should be coated also. Clear coat might be more of a problem with a telescope due to the absolute requirement for accuracy. But I’m out of my knowledge base when discussing clear coat. It would be far easier to clearcoat a flashlight reflector though since we aren’t discussing fractions of a wavelength of light. Maybe the same AR coating that is put on a lense would do it? I’ll leave it to the manufacturers to handle. :slight_smile:

Would it be worth doing for the slight gain in output? There might be less expensive ways to get that gain then by silver and clear coat.

Just brain storming now… I was thinking platinum also, but I didn’t look up it’s reflectivity. That metal doesn’t oxidize. Of course we’re back to cost and I have no idea if it can be vapor deposited. Gold would also work. I know gold can be vapor deposited. Just look at a NASA astronauts face shield. Again, cost.

I would like to extend a special thanks to Lumintop for the great work they have done from the day we first contacted them right through today. The amount of work they are doing is unbelievable. Their expertise is immense. It is obvious Lumentop is an excellent manufacturer. We are very fortunate they are making these lights for us. They make it very clear they are willing and able to do the most possible.

I don’t know how everyone else feels, but if it took a year before my light came, because that was the time needed to make it as perfect as possible, I would be delighted they took all the time needed to do it they way know is best. It takes as long as it takes.