So far I have had no issues with it turning on in my pocket. I don’t clip it to my pocket but just carry it loose (no other items there). I have a nichea from when they were first released. Not sure if it’s an original or tweaked switch. Reasonable travel and pressure to activate. A little gritty at times with an edge push. I might do the tape someone mentioned to get rid of the grit but really, I don’t really notice it unless I’m trying to notice it.
Maybe that’s the reason. I carried mine clipped in my pocket last night, for the first time. (I wanted a warm white light.) Activated 3 times by accident, within 1 hour when I was outside. Luckily I had it set to a low level, and it didn’t “press and hold”. Yuck, that’s way too easy. I’ve carried a Zebralight the same way for years, and never had an accidental activation.
Carrying it loosely might help. I might try that, but I’m not sure I trust it. Muggle mode seems like it cripples the light, and lock-out is not for my usage.
20mm OD (outer diameter), but it can be 19 or 18 if that’s all you can find. It will stretch. 3/4” OD is fine.
Thickness is about 1.5mm or 1/16”. This means ID (inner diameter) is 17mm or 21/32”.
It would seem so. There’s a couple of prototype photo floating around, one solid titanium and another titanium with a copper head/heatsink area. Nothing official has been confirmed though, that I’ve seen.
The only photo of a titanium FW3A is titanium with copper head.
There aren’t any photos of an all titanium FW3A. I think you’re thinking of photos a couple people have made of modded polished aluminum FW3As with the anodizing stripped.
What is SS’s heat capacity compared to anodized aluminium? Will the Cu head in FW3T make it have better or slightly less heat tolerance than original the Al-ano? Has brass equal heat tolerance as Al?
Not a scientific response, but recollection from the top of my head:
SS is pretty bad for heat - it conducts heat worse than Titanium and much worse than copper or aluminum. It’s also extremely heavy. Expect a stainless steel FW3A to get really hot at the head really fast, without conducting much heat out of the head to the rest of the light. It would probably ramp down pretty fast. I haven’t actually seen anything from Neal about a SS version though. I don’t think one is planned.
Brass’ heat tolerance depends on the alloy. My understanding is that the typical type of brass found in flashlights conducts heat worse than aluminum and much worse than pure copper. It is also quite a bit heaiver than aluminum.
FW3T contains a copper head combined with titanium bezel, body tube and tailcap. Copper both holds more heat than aluminum and conducts it much better. However, Titanium conducts heat much worse than aluminum. If it’s anything like the difference between the D4 and D4 Ti (which used a similar setup), I expect the copper head would heat up really fast, but the body tube would remain relatively cool. The light probably wouldn’t stay at max output for long and might even ramp down earlier than the all aluminum version.
FW3C - all copper version should have the best thermal characteristics of all the FW3A variants and should be able to run turbo longest. However, if it transmits heat too well, the user might find it actually to be less practical than the aluminum version. This would be the case if the entire exterior heats up at such a uniform rate there isn’t a safe place to hold the light without getting burned.
The best heat conductor is copper, then brass (no matter which alloy), alu and SS and at the last place is titanium.
It’s a neverending subject in CPF group…