FW3A, a TLF/BLF EDC flashlight - SST-20 available, coupon codes public

Order placed July 14, Asked for refund about a few times, most recently a month ago from Neal, still no refund.

Really bad service probably the worst I ever had. What can I realistically do? Is there a better way to reach him? I have PMed him a few times, wrote it in email and had trusted him to do the right thing. Is my money lost?

My raw aluminum came in today.
For the first time ever I didn’t even need to remove the tail cap. Works perfectly.
Does have the one step lockout, which is strange since it is new production.

I’m sure you already have, but make sure the ramp and stepped modes aren’t set to the same floor. I think that would make it look like one step lockout.

Yup, you were right.
Thanks

Glad I could help. :smiley:

Got my raw aluminum and Ti-Cu last week. Both with 4000K SST-20.

My impressions:

Raw aluminum - Very impressed

  • Looks great
  • Everything in order and works out of the box
  • High-CRI SST-20 have excellent tint. Noticeably less green even than the 4000K SST-20 in my first-run grey FW3A.

Ti-Cu - Not impressed

  • Did not work out of the box - head retaining ring was loose, but even after tightening it and tailcap, light still did not work.
  • Finally got it to work, but only when I pressed the button really hard. Problem identified as being a defective microswitch. The switch had a noticeable click, but only made contact internally when pressed extremely hard. Fixed it by replacing the tailcap PCB and switch with one from an aluminum FW3A. Now it works.
  • Light came missing the o-ring at the tailcap that is meant to prevent the clip from rotating.
  • Tint is comparable to the first-run grey 4000K SST-20 FW3A. Still good, but noticeably worse than the tint in the raw aluminum FW3A.
  • Once I fixed all the problems (which required canabalizing an earlier model FW3A), the light now works fine and looks good.

For the newbies like me:

The FIRST click on lock is the floor setting on RAMP.
The SECOND click on lock is the floor setting on STEP.

For example, for the first click to be moonlight and the second to be Turbo:

From ON, click 4 times
When you get the pulsing light click one time
After the flash, on the pulsing light click as many times as you want to subtract from turbo for the high ceiling - I think there are 150 clicks total, so 10 clicks would be 10% less (or whatever).

After that is done, click to turn the light off, then click to turn back on.

Now Click three times, that gets you into STEP mode.
Click four times. That gets you into low ramp.
At the pulsing light, click 150 times. That sets the floor at Turbo
After the flash, click one time on the pulsing light. that sets the Ceiling at Turbo –1
After the flash, click as many times as you want to set the number of steps. For this example just click once, there will be no steps.

Now turn off and click 4 times. You are locked. First click will be moon mode.Second click will be Turbo.

This is just an illustration. Real world, when you are in the setup for STEPS, click as many times as you want for brightness, suggest maybe 20 clicks just to see what it does. On the next pulse set the ceiling. Remember, that is MINUS clicks, it starts at full or turbo and works down, try 15-20 clicks to start. The third set of pulses sets the number of steps, do as many as you want.

Hope this helps someone. Took me a while to “get” it. I never use stepped mode, so I set the floor fairly high. Now I have a usable light from lock, two clicks gets me to maybe the equivalent of med mode.

This is true IF you were in ramp mode when you locked it.

The first click is the floor of the current mode. The second click is the floor of the other mode.

Yes you are quite correct

Only because I’ve sat and played with the settings obsessively. :wink:

Your explanation is otherwise very good and much appreciated.

You got no replies from PM or email?
The package never arrived, seems lost?
I’ll try and see if he responds to me and I’ll point him to you.

Neal says he already issued you a refund. You might want to check your account to verify.

I’d probably buy some too, so I can put them on all my FW3As. :slight_smile:

I really didn’t think anyone would 3D-print a thumbs-up candle diffuser. I was just making excuses to take a bath.

I’ve been enjoying my FW3As and FW1A, but it’d be really nice if they came without AR coating on the lenses. Polishing the coating off takes a while and leaves my hands sore.

It’s worthwhile since removing the coating improves the tint… but it’d be nice if they came that way by default.

Interestingly, my FW3C with the early one-piece Lumintop optic (that fills the space taken by a glass lens) has a slightly less rosy tint than my later purple FW3A which has the Carclo clone + glass lens. The FW3C looks to be about bang on the BBL for me, and the FW3A is just a hair on the rosy side. I suppose this is largely down to variation of emitters within the same bin though.

The spare glass lens that came in my FW3C box has no sign of coloured reflections when I hold it up to a light source. Does this mean it is likely uncoated?

Hum, shall we expect the 18350 tubes after the Chinese National holidays? Yeah, I know, 30th september was only yesterday and delays are expected.
I am just asking to organize my “shop” activity :stuck_out_tongue:

I picked up a 23x1.5mm sapphire lens that Neal offers, and it’s a perfect non-coated replacement for the FW3A. I decided the time and effort to polish off the coating was worth at least the $5 it cost for the sapphire lens.

You can try swapping the optics around to see if they have any effect on the tint. If not, then it’s just the emitters.

All AR coatings I’ve seen had a colored reflection like blue, green, purple, etc… If the reflection is white, then it’s not coated.

Take the plastic off and check both sides, some are harder to spot than others though

On every production FW3A / FW1A I’ve checked, there was AR coating on both sides of the lens. That doesn’t mean every item has it, since production details typically vary at random… but it’s at least probable that the lens has AR coating unless it’s a sapphire lens.

Usually the way I check is by holding a known-bare glass lens next to the lens being tested, and holding both under my Viltrox panel so they reflect at a ~45-degree angle right next to each other. Then I flip the lens and test the other side too. If either side is a different color than the reference glass, it has some sort of coating.

Here’s an example of how that looks: