Wow, the FW3A heats up really fast on turbo...
I won't be using that anymore!
I'll test out the flashlight more when it gets dark.
Overall, I'm really impressed.
Nice color!! :+1:
Wait, that doesn’t look like machined copper.
That looks like electroplated copper. 
It’s easy to see since the knurling has some black imperfections, meaning copper didn’t deposit well on the light.
… or it’s just dirty.
It happens sometimes.
Can copper get that dirty?
I though it only gets oxidized/patinad.
I obviously got too excited for my own hype.
I assume if you take your copper light and roll it around in some mud you can get it quite dirty. :smiling_imp:
I’m facing the same issue; very little use for the light for the next 3 or so months. Apart from that and the fact the light seems too nice to carry and get scratched up, everything’s looking good.
Thank you team, mfg, everyone. The FW3A is even cooler than expected - in warm white of course.
Oh, the threads on mine were apparently dirty and loose on arrival causing the symptoms described by many others. Cleaning and reassembly fixed that.
As CRX and Teacher said, it’s probably been taken apart and baked. This changes the gray to orange.
It does not look like a different metal construction .
/\ …. 
… 
Let me correct you here. The inner tube does not carry any led power. It only carries the very tiny switch signal.
The emitter gets current through the outer tube when the head and tail are somewhat threaded together. This is why you see the leds blink as you are threading them together.
It takes the precise tightening of the tail first, then the head, for the inner tube to make good contact and allow the switch to work.
The only in between state I can think of is the inner tube not making good contact which means the switch won’t work.
Ok, I just thought that once these levels were set up that people wouldn’t be changing them very frequently.
Is it possible to know when to order to get the updated firmware? Like a specific date where all FW3A’s shipped have this firmware? Thanks for all of your hard work updating it TK!
It's now mostly dark here.
I was afraid that 7A would be too warm, but it's fine.
I like warm tints.
Superb flashlight!
need this light with a 18350 pipe option too O_O
The light is so short with an 18650, that my hand barely covers it!
It wouldn't fit in my hand if it were any smaller.
[quote=raccoon city]
meh at least with the 18350 will be a lot easier to have it as a keychain light 
and when someone needs light boom blind the whole area for a few seconds lol
Thanks for the correction. I understand what you’re saying, but light behavior puzzles me. So I make about a 1~2mm turn of the head while LEDs are powered, which cuts power. I then press the switch and I get a moonlight strobe. Easy to reproduce. So does this mean outer tube contact is still good but switch senses insufficient power because head isn’t fully tightened?
Nope, that’s above my pay grade. I don’t get information like that.
I sent a new build though, and I think the drivers are getting made in a few days, and I think I heard the 219C model might ship in a week or so… maybe it could end up with new firmware?
Anyway, the build I sent includes the following updates:
- Rewrote the thermal regulation. Should be much more stable now.
- Added momentary strobes. Pick a mode in the strobe group, turn the light off, then go to momentary mode. It should do the last-used strobe. Or, to do a normal (steady) momentary level, turn the light off from a normal ramp mode first instead. Only normal ramp modes and strobes are supported though … there’s no momentary battcheck, no momentary sunset, and no momentary lockout. What would that even mean? It does do momentary candle though, since it’s easier to allow that than not.
- Made “hold” auto-reverse in strobe modes.
- Made lockout mode’s momentary moon use 2 levels instead of 1. The second click goes to the other ramp’s floor.
- Added ten-clicks-from-off as a shortcut to thermal config mode.
- Fixed the bug maukka found — hold-from-off then release-and-hold in stepped ramp wouldn’t work until it had been on for a full second.
- Made candle mode slightly more calm but also able to burn a bit brighter sometimes.
- Beacon mode duty cycle is 100ms now instead of 500ms.
- Made muggle mode do smaller thermal adjustments.
- Fixed a minor bug in lightning mode. The brightest flashes should be full power now.
With the new thermal regulation code, here’s what I measured with a fresh 30Q cell:
For comparison, here’s an earlier version measured by Bob_McBob:
It worked, but it had a lot of jitter. So I fixed the jitter (among other things).
These updates apply to all build targets, not just FW3A. I spent the entire day running thermal tests, and every tested light worked pretty well. The only exception so far was a D4S, which was unexpected. It bounced a little before stabilizing. I haven’t been able to test an original D4 yet though.
I like your updates! Wish there was some way to update existing lights. Will definitely pick up an SST-20 when they come out. Thanks again, TK.