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.
I feel it would be hard to sufficiently supersede the Q8 at a reasonable price point when looking at the current competition. The HaikeLite MT09R with XHP70.2’s is a good step up at $120 with coupon code and then there’s the AceBeam X45 for$135 with coupon code (and excluding the value of batteries included). The X45 is great value considering it has a boost driver that maintains constant output and it can sustain 5,000 lumens without overheating and it even happily sustains it’s 9,000lm turbo mode in winter. A successor to the Q8 would really need to be something special for me to justify buying. Even if it was $80-100, I would still rather pay the extra for something like the X45 to have a well regulated boost driver for more constant output.
While 4x21700 parallel is tempting (40% more power) I think the light shouldn’t get any thicker. Not even the 7mm required to fit bigger cells. I happen to think people with smaller hands already find the light to bulky.
Just wondering, can the Q8 driver handle 6.5 volts?
If so a new longer tube would allow for doubling capacity, without any redesign.
I don’t know the drawbacks of such a driver but I can see it as selling point if all BLF designs allow (at least) 2 cells in series.