I started to make a “charging cap” for my Q8. PVC end cap to screw onto the battery tube and charge all 4 cells at once, but don’t quite know how to cut threads on the inside for it to stick. No lathe or anything fancy. Was thinking press-fit, weighted, etc., but nothing jumped out at me.
The DC7 keeps getting mentioned…It a decent light? Wanting to get my first soda can and not sure where to start. Q8, D18, Meteor, DC7? Is there another thread that could help me out?
Dialectric oil is used to isolate different parts and also to transfer heat from parts that can’t touch metal or touch each-others (short). In a flashlight, it’s the metal that is used to transfer heat, oil won’t help.
Yeah, more and more light is boring for me, too. Larger and larger lights to do anything more than scorch your fingers and eyes for a handful of seconds. The "more light" category needs some major innovation in lumens/Watt before I'll get super excited there, or at least some cooling innovations.
Throw is also relatively stagnant these days, with people still putting XP-G2s in some throwers. Larger optics was the game, and then the GT and MF04 did their thing.
USB-C charging is beginning to see adoption in the flashlight industry. 21700 size, too.
Interfaces are getting pretty advanced, especially for single-button. I think the FW3A will nearly "solve" the single-button tail-switch UI. There's a few nice dual-button configurations out there, but not many, so I guess there's room for innovation there, or for further adoption of selection rings like the RRT-01.
What else is there? Small OLED displays like the vapes have? I still need to be able to fumble in the dark for it, and turn it on without blinding anyone. I could go for every driver ever from now on having a battery check mode of some sort.
I'm also not sure how much I like TIRs these days. Are there any good options for throw? I've lately been feeling like my TIR lights need 1000+ lumens to be useful outdoors at night, for example to see across a parking lot, but admittedly that is the tiny TIRs of triple/quad. Maybe I need to find a big TIR for an S2+ and try it for a bit. They would probably be nice to mod with, too, so I could stop worrying about shorting onto reflectors...
Actually with some CSP LEDs it is not easy to cool the phosphor. Clemence has shown that submersing the LED in liquid allowed driving it much harder.
As to active cooling: lots of complexity, big cost, noise, problematic waterproofing….not my style.
However a big passive radiator shell like Olight X6 Marouder with liquid metal and magnetic pumps would be:
also very complex and expensive
silent
waterproof
And unless it springs a leak it should be very reliable.
Though heat pipes would be even more reliable, much cheaper and should work well enough.