I wonder what the costs are for a lonoceans driver if produced in moderate quantities in China. I’m afraid it will still be more than we are prepared to pay for in the D80.
The H2-C from Kaidomain is very similar. The buck controller is a generation older and the inductor is not as good. The way the reverse polarity protection is done leads to overheating the board when driven hard.
If Ban could get those things fixed up we’d have a very good boost driver. Of course it would be nice to have a couple different models. 6v, 12v plus a 20mm option.
Don’t these manufacturers do any experimenting with the heat dissipation of their designs? Is a $500 thermal camera that hard to buy?
BTW, I don’t think the “deeper” and “more” is straight forward as cut this or that. Cutting fins too close together or too deep may not have the effect some think because it restricts air movement. Only way to know is by doing it AND then testing it.
In the design project “BLF Sabre”, in theory, the detached head had a lot more surface area but I also saw problems with heat being trapped between the body and head. Only testing would prove theory.
Trust but verify…lol
I read the request for more testing in many threads but you have to understand that they do business a bit different than we are used to.
If you develop to long in China someone else will beat you to market. It does not matter if the idea is stollen or it is a similar one. If you evolve your products not fast enough someone else will come up with your desing and a few simple usefull changes and your are done. . . Without the copyright we used to have the only way to stay in business is to develop faster than the competitors. So often they know it is not perfect. But its better than the other version on the market so they launch the product and work on the next better version. It does not have to be perfect, only better than the others / old version. To change their sight of doing things more our way is a huge undertaking.
Companies like Sofirn (that work with us on more than one project) have understand that we have other priorities. But that only works because we bring them money. Other companies have to learn this (some faster some slower).
Another point that is very different is everything that has to do with advertising. They do not spend money on that. If you want your product to be recognized you do not have to build up a brand . . . name your product similar to a exsisting well known product (similar to yours) and you get enough attention.
It is the wild west of marketing. Sometimes it is hard to understand why they do what they do. But it helps a lot if you understand their way of doing things.
I uploaded the hand drawing without the red spaces. I hope someone else can implement the changes. I am having a hard time doing it on the tablet (maybe i have not found the right app).
Personally I’d prefer them not to spend much time testing fin configurations for cooling. It’s just an added cost, I want a cheap well built host.
Just look at a heat sink that is designed to be used without a fan, they’ve been engineered to death . Kiriba-ru is a smart guy, have a look at what he made for Convoy C8’s.
Deep thin slots make it hard for air to move, once the air gets hot it needs to move out of the slot and be replaced by cool air. Wider slots are also faster to manufacture, there are less of them to make and a wider tool is stronger. Less chattering and more coolant flushing chips out leads to much faster feed rates. More parts per hour, less broken tools and less scrapped parts. It should be easy to talk the manufacturer into it as long as the end result looks nice enough to sell. Kiriba’s design will look good to knowledgeable people, probably needs to be tempered some to make it look good to the masses.
Their existing design isn’t bad compared to most lights and could be kept if need be. Just keep in mind deepening the existing slots won’t help much in cooling but will increase manufacturing time, break more tools and scrap more parts when the tool breaks. Adding your tapered section will help spread heat across the head of the light, might be almost as effective as the best finning. I’d prefer a stepped design. Its probably faster to machine and could be used to install a shelf for multi emitter optics. Either way its less material for the manufacturer to remove, less time equals cheaper to manufacture. They just need to spend a little more time making sure the reflector fits, shouldn’t be a hard sell.
don’t do any changes to the fins that will take years to perfect. lets just do changes that can be done fast
Testing time is measured in matter of hours or a few days. Changing depth on a CNC is minutes work in programming. Same with spacing.
Assemble. Run. Use infrared camera to show heat builds up. Repeat to confirm results.
We’re talking flashlights, not space shuttles.
Still faster than testing, the heat path
can be predicted from the pictures, as said: no rocket science. Only the last few percent improvement needs testing, but just skip that, it is not important.
@Spartan
You forgetting that most of the smaller Flashlight companies do not have their own CNCs…. they go with a design to a company that makes metall parts and order the parts. Same with drivers, reflectors. . . . So making a prototype, test it make changes, new prototype . . . . is not a fast thing. And not cheap because you are asking a company usually making 500-1000pcs min at a time to make you 1 or 2 prototypes than you make changes and ask again for 1 or 2 prototypes . . . Even if you go with 3 different versions and asked them to make them at once. You pay a lot of extra money.
Even Thorfire did not make the Host themself. If i remember right (Sofirn made the lights back then).
If they see a huge GB interest lists (like Q8, BLF-GT, FW3A. . . ) they spend the money. But i can understand if they do not want to spend the funds. I sure would like to see such tests!
If someone can implement a stepped design instead of the tapered section (my cousin did) i could send it to LS. I tryed to do it on my tablet but it looks crappy. And i do not have a laptop with me in hospital. I would also prefer a stepped design because it makes it easyer to mod the head with spacers (for tripple or quad optics).
But i need help to change the drawing. Or can someone name a good app for android so i can give it another try myself.
Found a app for the tablet. But i need some measurements from you guys. Please check the picture.
That looks good to me, much better than having to fill the whole cavity with a heavy spacer.
If someone wants to mod it with multi emitters they can work out the details themselves. I was thinking of using the old Ultrafire 21mm optics or trying out some of the Yajiamei, they range from 11 to 13 mm tall.
Led4power sells an spacer for an X6 that is designed to work with a triple and quad Ledil Cute optic. The Cute optic has a diameter of 35mm and is 15mm tall. The spacer is 31.4 x 9.25mm. Probably too big to fit in there but it would be nice if it could.
A Ledil Suri optic (single emitter) is 38mm wide and 24mm tall. It seems to do a decent job smoothing out an XHP70.2, any chance it will fit in there? Powering it with a good boost driver on a 21700 cell might be fun. Product card - LEDiL
Can you modify the cooling fins on the left side of your drawing to show any changes you might have in mind?
In contact with them for driver design, so far they want to go with 19.5mm diameter
Exactly, even 70% effectiveness will be a big improvement over what’s there. In the end we’re going to overheat it on turbo anyway.
The manufacturer is more concerned about selling performance than product performance. It needs to be cheap to manufacture and look good in a picture and on a shelf.
We’re just hoping to make some simple changes that they will go along with.
thermal regulated driver is planned with Bistro HD OTSM
Is it going to be using a linear FET driver?
Use the SST-20
Agree and disagree.
It is a one time cost that has to be made. The entire product line could benefit from getting another, let’s say, 10% efficiency in handling heat.
Sofirn is one company that can easily do it. But do they?
So yes, they SHOULD be testing and improving, but then, short sighted companies see no profit in that. And in some companies, that carries into their quality control.
Sounds like they are sticking with an 18650 cell and keeping the shallow driver pocket.
I don’t know why they are bothering to update this light, they’re not really improving anything. Its just the old light with a driver change, and an odd size so no one will use it for a host.
I’m sure Convoy will like this news, the C8 and M1 are proven products that have this part of the market mostly covered. The new version of the S2+ with the 21700 body is almost ready and Sofirn can’t be too far behind. Its going to be tough for Lucky Sun to sell the same old same old with all the shiny new stuff around.
@Lexel
I thought they wanted to go with a standart size 17mm driver. They said they have max 19,5mm but why would they use it (or do you need the extra space on the driver board)? Makes later modding more difficult.
Here the last drawings. Added less material on the inside and removed a little bit on on the lower finns.
The grove above the 3rd fin from the bottom should not be deepened, it blocks the heat path to the top fins.