I seem to have leveled out at the I can eat a raw habanero in 10 minutes and not die level. A guy I work with conditions himself by eating a whole raw scorpion or reaper a day, sliver by sliver. I just dont get it. I tried a sliver of reaper the size of my pinky nail and was hurting for a good 7-10 minutes.
On another note, glad to see the FW3A project gaining traction again. Just curious though, whats the risk of an electrical short with this battery tube/eswitch design? Might not be any, but im having a hard time visualizing it from the drawings.
Those links are for specific quantities of cut tape. If Neal is asking about sourcing for the full project, Digikey offers better pricing for reels in increments of 800 emitters, for at least $0.41 USD cheaper per emitter than that link. That adds up quickly for a project I’m sure will be using several thousand emitters.
The inner tube is only there there to pass the tail switch signal (normally open, signal is connect to ground) from the tail to the driver.
If it gets displaced, say at the driver end, it gets grounded. No hazard, (unless locked onto turbo) except it stops working.
Or perhaps open-circuit. Same difference.
Firmware could detect such a fault condition (grounded) and do the necessary. E.g. shut down.
Every time the cell is replaced/recharged this connection is re-made. So it has to be ultimately reliable. And the arrangement sturdy (not thin-walled pieces relying on delicate tolerances, particularly pressing against a few microns of plating on a driver PCB).
That’s as I understand it. I could be completely wrong, and look forward to seeing how it turns out. This is certainly not an obvious way to make such a thing. My interest is just to see how far this goes, and how well it eventually works.
If delivered successfully it will definitely be unique, and well worth the “investment”.
Received a New PM message in my email just now, Got so excited, thought it was for this. But was for another light I forgot about. Just read a couple pages back and looks like early next year maybe?
Piston Drive, which I think was actually invented by McGizmo, is a different design. PD flashlights don’t have a switch in the tail at all, just the end of a piston that transmits mechanical force to a switch in the head.
The FW3A isn’t the first to use nested tubes to transmit an e-switch signal from the tail to the driver though. Several dual-tailswitch designs from Nitecore, Fenix, and Klarus do this. The Folomov 18650S also uses a tail e-switch, but I’m not sure if it has nested tubes or uses a different technique.
I find the FW3A compelling because it puts together a combination of features in a way that I expect to work really well for how I use an everyday carry flashlight, and does so at a very low price. It doesn’t need to be the first light with some feature in order to do that.
Exactly. That’s the point of the FW3A. It may not do anything particularly new, but it puts together a lot of good older ideas into one nice package. It’s a well-rounded sort of design for practical use. That’s why I carry it around on a daily basis even though I have a hundred other lights to choose from.
Hello, decided to finally make an account, I’ve been watching this project for some time now, and I wouldn’t want to be too late to the interest list. So, put me down for one, and big thanks to everyone involved!
I definitely want one when available and I am patient, not really but the wait will be worth it. The light looks like a work of art with those clean lines.