Fireflies E07 preview

I don’t own one. Was this a VN light? Is it using the stock driver or modified? How many lumens does it make?

It was modded by one blf member… i believe FET driver… i will measure lumen tonight.

Not that exact tr20 thingy— that looks like a ginormous 26650 thrower. But borrow some of the millwork concept, thin fins 1/16(1.6mm) or so thick, spaced the same on a ~1.5+ inch head they couldnt be very deep maybe 3/16”, or so. Yeah, and do it in copper. There was an astrolux i remember seeing a few years back— sc ? Maybe a bit like that form factor wise but slightly deeper on the fin milling. But narrow 1/16” fins and spacing. This, as opposed to the e07 cad drawing with 3 fins at approx 3/16 - 1/4” thick.

I dont find that copper unless annealed is softer than say 6xxx alloy aluminum. But it is pretty close. I handrout alot of aluminum and even the 6xxx series alloys ‘melt’ and gum up the bits unless you use a s#!tload of wax. I cant say that brass or copper do the same, mainly because theyre harder or perhaps denser, the harder non-ferrous materials seem to cut better for some reason, i dont know exactly why—my guess is that the softer it is the more a cutter will grab and pull on clearance of chip versus, slicing or chopping a chunk of chip and eject it, call it just some kind of practical jnstinct. For instance the 3xxx series aluminum (almost pure) just cant be milled by hand because it is so soft it clogs up cutters instantly. The cncs we use have a helluva time with anything other than 6061 because the mg makes it harder. 3xxx (pure/soft) even with tons of lube just makes it look like a plasma cutter did it.

Anyway, moot point. Probably too expensive like you say.

But it would be a pretty sweet light.

No it wasn’t a VN light, it was reasonably priced and worked well, search Chunky Monkey on BLF

Did you see that research about how a Sharpie changed the surface sufficiently to significantly improve machinability?
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I think youre having a bit of fun at my expense.

I have heard that you can use a sharpie to aid in a flipper knife lockup, it acts similar to graphite powder in that case—so for very small scale application maybe. As for milling i have not heard of this, but i dont do this for a living, and i am not a machinist. I kind of do multiple trades and have access to some neat machines. I used to fabricate large architectural aluminum signs. Basically large shaped boxes. We cnc’d mainly sheet stock. Now, I have a neighbor near my current shop who has a 5 axis milling machine who cuts aluminum billets, big honking chunks to make hotrod clutch parts for racing motorbikes—he wont do anything but his parts, which sucks cause i asked. In either case, the milling machines either use a spray lubricant that constantly coats the cutter at point of cut, or in the 5 axis gadget i think it just constantly pours a shower over stock and recirculates back onto the stock. I cannot imagine how a sharpie would be practical for an industrial application of this type and scale, it cant be composed of more than alcohol, a dye and maybe a binder.

Nonetheless, when we’re routing aluminum by hand it is preferable to work in the 6061/6xxx/5xxx alloys. The magnesium/ silicon content stiffens it enough so it doesnt melt as much. When in doubt you can use cutting oil or we prefer a cutting wax. But it is a pain to use the wax or oil because its a pain to clean it up—and can fisheye paint if not prepared properly.

Thw whole point was in my opinion copper strikes me as an outstanding material to make a flashlight head out of. it is a better conductor of heat, it machines up nicely—the caveat was whether it was too soft for skinny fins. I dont know. I was adding my 2 cents because it was my opinion that it would do as well or better than aluminum. I suspect they may even cast the aluminum then machine it, which seems like a production advantage

[edit: cast and milled= production advantage but cast seems likely to be more brittle].

compared to titanium or steel it is considerably softer, but i think versus aluminum copper might be slightly harder on a rockwell hardness test. But this is an opinion and based on material i have personally handled and worked with. There are multitudes of alloys of both these base metals. So it seems slightly subjective—without actual data, and specificity.

But skv89 was right about cost. I think from a production standpoint aluminum is going to be king. Copper is for one offs and small expensive batches. Which makes me sad. Because if the e07 was done with a fat copper head i would never have to buy another flashlight.

Ha.

Not at all. It’s not practical for production, but it might give ideas on how problems with difficult materials can be fixed.

You’re probably thinking about the BLF X6 / Astrolux SS. The fins are very shallow though. That thing is a beauty and a true heavy weight. I actually have both the BLF X6 and Astrolux SS. Without batteries, the X6 weighs 371.4g. Just the copper pill without the top bezzel already weighs 196.6g. The massive copper pill allows it to handle turbo like a champ. I just took some measurements out of curiousity:
1s: 1,271 lm
30s: 1,254 lm
60s: 1,250 lm
90s: 1,241 lm
120s: 1,232 lm
At 2 min., the copper is warm but the stainless steel remains cool, which is unfortunate. SS has very poor heat conductivity so the heat is almost entirely absorbed by the copper pill and due to the limited surface area of the pill to radiate heat, it takes a long time for it to cool. If the SS parts were aluminum, they can be used for heat shedding and performance should be much better.

If FF decides to make a copper head version of E07 with aluminum body, I will definitely buy it. Should be a solid performer for long steady turbos or any output levels for that matter.



Yup. Thats the one. Almost pulled the trigger on that one but didnt.

Frankly, i dont care about weight unless it is on my keychain. Size matters for this—for me, weight is hardly a concern. Lets put it this way if weight is the tradeoff for extended runtimes then it seems like a nobrainer to me, all things considered highpowered led flashlights are still in their infancy if we cant run a torch on high power for more than a minute. We—flashlight consumers/addicts have grown to accept this anomolous reality, because its all we have known. I submit that runtime trumps weight for this particular unit. i dont really want to go with the zebralight 700/21700 offering so i hope this conversation gets heard by ff. They could make something truly special.

And i will still end up getting the zebralight 700 thingy if Just to keep my new 21700s warm.

Fair enough.

I suspect it is like a carpenters pencil trick to cure a squeaky hinge. Rub a pencil over a hinge and it will stop squeeking—on the fly graphite lubricant, it may not be the best thing for the job but will work in a pinch. There are alot of really smart guys who work machines and make things who when short on engineer approved process and materials can macguyver their way thru a problem. (Anderson, not the new guy). I would venture a guess this sharpie trick is just this sort of thing.

I’ll have to look it up again, but iirc, it helps the formation of a chip by holding the top of the material together enough so that it’s not permitted to gum up and much form a chip instead. Scotch tape had the same effect.

I want the 7 emitter 26650 light please with copper head option lanyard hole and magnetic tail with ramping UI. shorty tube also 26350.

That was a really nice item. It’s also the reason why Bistro’s thermal code doesn’t work on smaller lights — it was designed and calibrated for something with a big solid heat sink, so it responds too slowly on lights with a higher power-to-mass ratio. To put it another way, the massive heat sink made it so the thermal algorithm could be pretty bad and still work. But smaller lights require a smarter algorithm.

I must admit I don’t really use my X5 or X6 any more, because both were kind of obsoleted by the Emisar D1 / D1S. But they’re still very nice, and I keep mine out on display with their nice wooden case along with the other items I helped make. It’s kind of nice having a physical remnant of projects past, something to look at as a reminder.

Weight definitely matters though. Carrying the steel/copper X6 was like carrying a brick. It’s very pretty, and performs well, but if I wanted to actually carry one around I used the aluminum version instead. Even if I had it in my purse, with the steel version, it would make my shoulder sore after a while. Granted, I have all sorts of other toys in there too; there’s a reason they call me ToyKeeper. But still, the weight was a big drawback for practical purposes.

Understood. However, this seems to support what skv89 has been proposing about mass. Plus, more fins, plus copper. He suggested 40g of extra mass. There was some discussion about whether this would have any effect. Based on what you have observed it seems that it does have quantifiable effect on runtime. In addition, pairing a beefier aluminum head or as i have proposed—copper. I think the original impetus for me to engage was that the e07 fins seem a bit ill suited. Many of the original comments were “thats a lot of light in a small package”. The astrolux came up because i had a vague memory of a copper head with many thin fins. I think a stainless battery compartment isnt appropriate. Throw a weightier multi finned head on an aluminum body i think is where my vote would go. Kind of a bridge between ideas, not a full on copy of the astrolux or trj20.

But honestly we’re all just fussing on about things that are probably just dreamy kids stuff. Fireflies asked what this community thought and i want awesome to happen—it seems to me theyre on pace for awesome. It seems to me like there is some growing enthusiasm for this fledgling little outfit.

And just imagine a big heatsink with an efficient driver/firmware thingy—which is to say thermal algorithm. Wow.

FWIW, while the Trustfire TR-J20 has the LOOK, it doesn’t have the heart. Those precious fins aren’t connected to the emitter shelf in such a way that actually transfers the heat. It’s fixable, and I machined a heat sink for two of them that works quite well, but of course it adds weight, quite a lot. But then, neither of the two I machined the sinks for were concerned with a mere 10,000 lumens…

Point being, the machined fins look good but they have to be interconnected to the thermal path to actually work. This is why the Eagle Eye X6 is one of my favorite lights and I’ve built dozens of them, in a staggering array of options.

The copper head on an X6 would be ideal with Ti battery tube and bezel. Just saying… (another FWIW, my Reylight Ti X6 is making over 10,000 lumens in triple XHP-50.2 configuration) This is not just a plug for Titanium, I love the stuff for valid reasons… light weight and strength being the obvious but the Ti actually has such low thermal conductivity that it almost acts like an insulator, protecting the cell from heating up when using, oh, say 7 Nichia 219C’s. :wink:

Now, all that said, I really don’t see why this E07 is being configured with 7 emitters. Seems far too much for the size of the light and the size of the accompanying cell. I DO like the style, quite a lot actually, but 7 emitters? Looking forward to seeing some actual photo’s of proto’s and samples.

Watching…

Edit: Oh, and one more FWIW… the Stainless/Cu X6 and it’s little brother the Cu X5 had much deeper fins in the prototypes than in the production units. The proto’s were great, the production lights were disappointing.

More mass, slower temperature change. So it takes longer to overheat, but it also takes longer to cool down. It doesn’t really increase the maximum sustainable brightness.

The algorithm in Bistro is really slow and makes small adjustments, which is how things should work with a relatively large heat sink. The algorithm in RampingIOS V2 is faster and makes much larger adjustments, because it has a much smaller heat sink. And the algorithm in Anduril / RampingIOS V3 does both, adjusting the speed and magnitude of its response to match the hardware.

If I understand correctly, the E07 is designed to use Anduril. So it should work with a large or small heat sink. The sustainable level depends mostly on the light’s environment, like whether it has a hand or moving air to wick away heat.

As a side note, I’m tempted to put in a factory reset / auto-calibrate function. Like, hold the button, screw on the battery tube, continue to hold the button for 5 seconds, and then it’ll reset everything to defaults and calibrate itself based on the assumption that it is currently at room temperature. And, by “room temperature”, I mean … um, maybe 22 C? Not sure how warm everyone’s rooms are, but I think that’s generally considered average.

“Mere 10,000 lumens”??? How many lumens were you outputting?

Personally I’m not a big fan of titanium unless it’s for AA/14500 lights because as you said, it is basically a thermal insulator. But at least TI is better than SS, which has poor conductivity and heavy. Copper combined with aluminum seems to be the best in terms of price and performance.

Any idea why they couldn’t retain the deeper fins in the final X6 and X5?

Yep that’s exactly what I’ve observed from playing with all my lights. Still to me that is very desirable because we can’t expect to sustain output anywhere near turbo, we can at least extend those high output blasts to more usable durations without rapid dimming.

Good news is FF responded and said the Final E07 sample will have shelf thickened to a whopping 8mm which should help increase heat transfer rate to exterior wall surfaces, weigh about 180g instead of the measly 138g, and deepened fins for better heat management! So it will have both increased mass and surface area! :laughing:

Considering this is a bit smaller than the D4S, the E07 will be a beast of a small light. With 7 emitters and high current 21700, E07 should have more output, higher efficiency, and potentially longer, more steady brightness at high output levels. Both the D4S and E07 with batteries loaded will weigh about the same so shouldn’t be a weight concern to anyone. Good job FF! :+1:

Nicely done.

What was the shelf thickness before? Will this increase the exterior length?

Not sure what it was before but 8mm is 0.315”, which is pretty freaking thick for a light of this size. We will get more info when the final sample/prototype is done.