I was thinking of a carrier when I said to solder blob the pads, sorry.
TK showed how to pop the ring off the battery contact side of the driver to gain access to the screws, if this ring is removed and sanded down some the cells should work fine (you’ll have to monitor the height as you sand) the ring is made from the same fiberglass style material as the pcb of the driver. It can be left off, disabling reverse cell protection. You would then have to make absolutely certain you never drop a cell in the tube backwards.
Only nichia stands out from the rest, so if there is a problem with her, I will put something else. I have all the LEDs, so I do not risk anything. It is worth a try.
As for protection, I abolished it long ago. In M43, I got rid of the ring and cartridge in the central part. I do not have protection (as in all my other flashlights) but I can use any batteries.
That’s probably three different Vf curves for the three different emitter types… and half of the emitters aren’t evenly spaced. You might get a better result by just mixing 12 x 3A and 6 x 5D.
As far as removing the ring goes, why not? The Q8 doesn’t have any reverse polarity protection, does it? Same thing, no? If my copper tabbed cells don’t fit, I may be removing that ring.
With the individual TIR’s virtually covering the entire MCPCB, where would the auxillary LED’s go?
Looking at these images from TK, there is a cover plate that holds the TIR’s in the correct position and eliminates all gaps (as seen previously in the M43), literally covering the MCPCB in it’s entirety. So where would an aux LED be seen? Nowhere up top for sure. Not without a lot of alteration…
Lexal has been able to squeeze aux LEDs into every other Emisar light. I’m sure it could be done on the biggest one, especially if it was designed into the board from the beginning. They would still glow up through the lenses, or use an unpainted clear or opaque material for the cover plate.
The Optic is housed in a black plastic holder, an auxillary LED on the board would not bleed up into the TIR for this reason.
Hank uses a black anodized aluminum cover plate, again no light would escape through this. Machining a polycarbonate cover piece would be much trickier and prone to scratches that most people would surely complain about.
I would have thought everyone would at the very least look at the photo’s TK took…
In the pics it looked like G10 composite to me, not aluminum. G10 would allow aux LEDs to glow through nicely, and I don’t see how scratching would be an issue with it being under the lens. If aluminum has to be used for some reason, additional holes could be drilled for the AUX LEDs to shine through.
I’ve seen the pics. It’s hard to tell without a light in my hands, but it looks like some light would still get up between the lenses and the lens holder plate. Light could maybe get up into the lens reflectors too (like Lexel has done with the D1 and D1s). Can’t tell from pics how tight the tolerances are.
I get it if you don’t want/like aux LEDs, but these issues aren’t that difficult to overcome.
(Edit: taking an even closer look, the lens holder plate still looks like g10 to me. Review also states that it is “thin pcb”.)
I haven’t seen one yet and TK’s pics do look like it’s a pcb material but Hank used aluminum in the M43, which I am quite familiar with. At any rate, bright light might glow a raw or bare pcb material (which is usually a dull green in color) to a low degree but dim aux lighting isn’t going to come through the fiberglass material. Even IF there were space on the MCPCB for such an LED to be placed… perhaps around the outer periphery? Don’t know, it’d be tight. Maybe small outlet holes could be put in the cover plate to allow something to show? Again, complex but doable and at a price I’m sure. (I don’t really care either way, not something I’d add and I may be prone to turn it off it were in the factory light)
As far as a clear one would go, assembly would be apt to scratch it up.
Some of my lights would strip themselves if I gave em a shiny brass pole, they’ve been bared so many times already.
FWIW, a buddy of mine has a D18 en-route and I will be putting Samsung emitters in it for him. The W6 5000K emitters are here already…. We’ll see how/where that goes. …