Springs!!

Thanks for the great testing. :beer:

Did you see Simon / Shenzhen Convoy Electronics carries Phosphor Bronze springs? $2.75 for 10. High 10mm, bottom diameter 7mm, diameter 0.8mm.
Orange coppery color from the picture, for whatever that is worth.

They sure seem identical (size and color) to the FT ones: fasttech.com - springs djozz listed in the OP and tested, just over twice the price.

Thanks djozz for your effort writing, thinking, testing, photographing, editing, uploading, copy, paste :stuck_out_tongue: Thank you any way

So what’s currently the best recommendation for springs, and for bypass wire — for ordinary lights, and for hotrods?

And does anyone make springs with bypass wire already connected (say with a spot-welder)? Because I find it hard to get bypass wire soldered to each end of a spring without overheating the whole spring.

Try to put a little dab of flux on the surfaces (the wire end & spring) you want to mate with solder, and you will find that you don’t have to heat them so much to get them nicely joined :wink:

For all lights that have to perform a little bit I would do a spring bypass, except if the light has to be particularly good-looking, i.e. if they are meant as a present, then I'd go for a copper-alloy spring without bypass, looks way better! (I have a djozz-spring without bypass in the tail of my BLF-X6, with a LD1 driver and a 80CRI 3500K XM-L2, now that is a chique light! ) But a serious single-li-ion hotrod needs a complete spring bypass, a copper spring is not good enough.

BTW, I could ask the manufacturer of the 'djozz-spring' to make another batch if there's interest enough, I still have some and really like them for the bigger lights. In case of another batch of 200 pieces they would be a dollar/spring again (plus some shipping, see my old spring-sales-thread). what I would do different is that I would have them made with 9mm base instead of 10. Probably the height would then be a mm less too.

Thanks for the great testing.

It looks indeed to be the best of both worlds. (almost) the strenght of steel, combined with (almost) the conductivity of copper.
Having said this, I’ll hop over to your spring sales thread to order some.

If you had another run done, I’d definitely be in for some. Maybe 25-50? Timing dependent, 100?

(it was a real bummer when I used the last of my djozz springs)

Edit: And for what it’s worth, I like to clamp my curved jaw hemostats on the coil of the spring just below the end I’m soldering the wire to, then do the soldering with the solder wire directly applied to the spring/22Ga wire to get the most of the resin core inside. The stats absorb heat to keep the entire spring from overheating.

Flip it and do the other end, then you already have solder on the spring when you solder it to the switch/driver pad, which makes that go much easier as well. :wink:

The exception is when bypassing the pcb the switch is on, in which case I like to remove the switch, mount the spring, solder the wire to the top of the spring once passed through the board, then replace the switch and make the wire to switch connection simultaneously while attaching that side of the switch to the board. Again, clamping the stats to the part of the switch lead that comes out of the plastic housing keeps that connection from melting the plastic. This process keeps the switch pristine, so it’s not overheated internally and works smoothly.

Gosh, takes much more to say it than it does to simply do it.

good thread.. came accross this post from below thread

in a similar power bank the voltage drop at .5A was 110mV from one end of the sprint to the other end on the pcb.

Sorry for bringing a shovel to a flashlight forum, but I had to dig this thread up.

Never seen this test before so it’s really interesting to read all this information.

So in short. If you can, bypass the spring. It can only do good.
Really have to try that to some of my lights. luckily the (only real) hotrod with the fet driver I have has already both springs pypassed.

Yes, an interesting test indeed!

I did my first bypass a couple of day’s ago, the smallest one shown in this test - 5mm tall spring from a Qlite/ Nanjg driver. So frustrating trying to keep it in place whilst soldering.

The spring is so small it needs to be stiff to avoid being compressed too much, if you drop the torch vertically on it’s head it does very little to absorb the energy of the heavy cell’s, I dropped mine the other day and the button on top of the Panasonic cell just collapsed, the driver was fortunately still intact.

I’m going to see if I can find a taller softer spring which I can then braid.

I know #8 wasnt the top performer, but ive been looking for a source for that spring. i had two of them. I believe they were added to a driver order from mtn. The reason im looking is that they fit perfectly over the top of the nanjg spring to give a little compression before the battery presses on the stiffer nanjg spring. anyway, if anyone knows where to get them, please let me know.

Thanks your details :+1:

Do you have any springs big enough so i can make a pogo stick lol? Imagine bypassing the spring on a pogo stick and then trying to jump!

Ordered these, cheap and I though they can be usefull to add to biger on tail or over smaller at driver side
https://www.fasttech.com/p/1347100

I have some lights,small and medium,ie BLF A6,Astrolux S41,
Olight M1X Striker,Nitecore P12GT,plus a MH27,EagletacS200C2, Olight SR52-UT,and Acebeam K70.
Which of them would benefit more from a spring bypass?I mean I can see the difference with my own eyes,not my luxmeter only. :slight_smile:

The BLF A6, and the Astrolux S41 (depending on which version you have) since they’re direct-drive. Maybe don’t expect a drastic change. I honestly couldn’t tell a difference. Maybe a slight one, but a bright light is bright. If you don’t have a stock version to compare it to directly, you might not notice a change.

I’m nearly out of the heavy ones you had built and sold. Nudge nudge wink wink. :slight_smile:

I was going to have a new batch built (only difference: 9mm diameter base size instead of 10, to make it fit a standard switch board), but the contact I had at the spring factory is not working there anymore, and they lost the details of my previous order, so I had to figure it all out again, and then I ran out of hobby time temporalily, and then forgot about it.
I will have another go at it in September (out camping with the family at the moment :slight_smile: )

God on ya. For the camping with the family that is. :stuck_out_tongue: