BLF Kronos X6/X5 GB - Group Buy now closed.

The no 176 of 400 arrived here on Finland. Not bad delivery time for normal registered post.

I’ll have to nitpick that my X6 has a embedded fingerprint on the copper heatsink :frowning: I guess that somebody was quite impatient and touched the part while the lacquer wasn’t completely dry. I’ll have to try my luck stripping the finish and shining it up, or just strip the finish and let it get some patina. Haven’t decided yet.

Otherwise the both lights arrived in pretty good condition. The X5 had couple small nicks and dents but nothing too bad. It also had some white residue on the battery tube but I got it mostly cleaned up.

Thanks for the organisers for delivering these awesome lights. These are absolutely my prettiest and heftiest lights :slight_smile:

Hi. Not sure what you’re asking chouster. It is the short 18350 tube that was for the Eagle Eye X6 light. Not sure if it works in both directions, I only tried it one way and it worked.

Hi saypat, normally the groove in the tube would be at the tail end, for a clip or a grip-ring…

I know I talk too much, so I’ll let the pic speak for itself…

2673.75 OTF

Custom Tellurium Cu heatsink, 32mm Noctigon, 3x XP-L V6 3D, UCLp lens, 18ga Turnigy leads.

Heat sink reflowed into the head while reflowing the Noctigon to the heatsink while re-flowing the LED’s to the Noctigon. All re-flowed together simultaneously, done deal. :wink:

From experience, we’re talking about two very different lists here.
Troubleshooting threads develop naturally here — there are a surprising number already:

http://budgetlightforum.com/search?q_as=troubleshooting

Someone who has all four kinds of lights and knows more than me, I trust, will do one.
I’d try to be helpful; I don’t have CU/SS lights nor knowledge of how we got to here.

————a thought for NEXT time, this would have to be agreed in advance—————

(I’d like to see troubleshooting by group purchasers become a firewall for the retailer — require participating first. Identify problems, identify who sees the problems, work on the problems. Once there’s enough to identify unfixable problems, those get assessed as either “live with it, it’s good enough” or “retailer should really have caught that” and handled appropriately. That would cut down on the parasitism by people who just try to get more for their money.)


I was thinking of the other sort of list, nonpublic
That’s QA/QC “punch lists” during development and production — a checklist, that everyone handling samples should update

What’s deadly is people seeing flaws, thinking “that’s not my responsibility” and not mentioning them to the rest of the crew.
Stuff slips by that way. That’s a shared (non-public) place the crew can (must) note: “hey, I noticed X, is it covered?”

That’s really two lists.
Some things QA finds can be fixed; others don’t get corrected — slop in a tool, or unpredictability in a component, or someone’s dropping copper parts into a bin, etc.
Those that QA done early can minimize get fixed.

What QA finds and can’t fix — there will always be some — is the beginning of the QC list (also nonpublic, probably people at the retailer)
“Look for X — there are a few — and pull them out of the stream.”

That’s an industrial-size approach to tracking details that easily get lost. A lot of people here know more about how to do that.
I mostly have experience with checking facts and writing errors of many different kinds, text lists of DNA sequences, for example.
(Get one base pair wrong and I could have been responsible for creating a monster).
Did you know you can define DNA sequences as words to spellcheck? Very handy …

Hardware adds a lot of handling problems. We’ll get better.

What QC isn’t reliably catching should become the (first) public list — a starting point for the troubleshooting group — that’s “Charlie Test” and the place to publish the known workarounds that the private list folks already know, and add to them.

Lather, rinse, repeat …

Has anyone yet replaced the 202 (2k) resistor in the tailcap to reduce the brightness of the tailcap led?
I am planning on tackling it assuming I can harvest the right resistor from my scrap box.

I only want to do this once so looking for suggestions as to what value to use to get just the faintest luminous type glimmer almost like a GTLS vial.
Double, triple the value???

Thanks

samsat, 11k works really nicely. I stacked 2 of the 22K I use building drivers, very low .15mA draw.

Thanks DB. Always there with quick useful answers.
You must have the vision of an eagle and the hands of a surgeon!
It’s going to be a challenge to solder just one SMD resistor in place let alone stacking 2 of them!
I’ll look at some of the PCB’s I have to see what values I can harvest.

I see I have some 103 (10k) which is close enough to your 11k.
Damn I knew I shouldn’t have had that double espresso come on hands slow down!

Calico version.

My X6 had a fingerprint mark also. It rubbed right off with minimal effort and some saliva. :wink:

Tried to work on my too-narrow X5 clip to see if I could increase the depth to make it more usable, and only succeeded in breaking it right at the bend :frowning:

At least I got it off the light without leaving any marks. Probably wasn’t going to use it much if at all anyway, but you never know. So, if anyone finds a clip that fits, be sure to let all of us know.

You know, it has a thermometer built in to help with that. :slight_smile:

There wasn’t anywhere near enough room for a proper PID algorithm, but it still does okay managing the heat after the heat has had time to reach the MCU. You could also improve this by cramming in some thermal transfer foam between the MCU and the pill, to help it sense heat faster.

I tried, and failed, to open up my Al X5 clip. Not enough heat? Went too fast? I don’t know. It snapped and that’s all she wrote. :frowning:

If they can make more of the good ones I’d be willing to buy a replacement or three.

Just got mine today. This is my first real flashlight, so for those of you who’ve been jaded by your collection, you might not remember this feeling, but: OMG.

It took a couple minutes to get the hang of moving through all the modes, but it’s pretty easy now. Very nicely done, all around.

Thanks,

Dudunphy did an amazing job with the A6 thread, helping countless people with the issues they encountered. I really wasn’t expecting anyone to take on so much work for the sake of others. But this is BLF, after all, and people are pretty awesome here. :slight_smile:

There’s a small issue with requiring people to post on BLF before they can get help from the retailer. It requires people to have an account. It adds another layer of inconvenience when it’s already too difficult to get good support.

As for the QA ideas, it sounds great. But first there needs to be actual formal QA, and before that there needs to be direct communication with no translators in the middle. That would likely solve most issues. :slight_smile:

“You could also improve this by cramming in some thermal transfer foam between the MCU and the pill, to help it sense heat faster.” — TK

Have you had success with this on an MTG too? I have a light where the center is very yellow, and my two I just received also have this problem, yellow center surrounded by blue.

I think that’s pretty standard for MTG2 in a smooth reflector