You can do it, but they are a safety feature so you don’t put the batteries in correctly. As long as you are careful, it should be fine.
Another solution would be to add a little solder blob to your batteries positive end.
I don’t need to removed white plastic cover on my mf01 to use with unprotected flat top… I do have to remove cover on my mf02.
Astrolux have low voltage indicator. So yea…
Just insert the battery carefully…
Well, that’s strange. You removed the covers only on one light, but battery holders should be the same on both MF01 and MF02.
BTW I can read the following in MF02 specs: “Please use unprotected button top or flat top 18650 battery,with button top will have better performance.” So are you sure the plastic covers are about safety only and not about performance?
Thanks for clarification. 
The point of the plastic discs are to prevent a wrongly inserted battery from touching the contact point. Meaning the flat, negative end of the battery should not touch the contact.
Some flat top batteries are actually slightly raised on the positive side. Maybe that is why Newlumens are working?
This is polarity protection so you don’t fry the driver or short a battery and melt a spring, etc…
Yea… I just tried Sony vtc6 flat top on my astrolux mf04 without removing the white plastic cover and it works…
Can you see why it works?
Is the Astrolux protection just not effective?
Curious as well. Do all 18650x4 Astrolux’s share the same battery carrier? Asking because I just purchased a MF01 that’s making a pit stop with Lexel before making its way to me and I’m currently trying to figure out what batteries to go with.
Since you live in US, you can easily buy an authentic 18650 from illumn, liionwholesale, etc…
I will go with Sony VTC5A, or vtc6 for the astrolux mf01… if you can’t find Sony, Samsung 30q would be my second choice…
Yep, was planning to purchase from Illumn. Mainly trying to figure out if it’s better to go button top or flat top since it seems people have gotten away with both. Is spring sag more susceptible in one over the other? Will be running buck driver with spring bypass if that matters at all.
Was thinking VTC6 or 30Q’s so sounds like I was headed in the right direction. What advantages are there in going the VTC5A route?
Get button tops if you can or else just solder blob some flat tops.
There’s no real good reason to try and bypass a safety feature.
There’s no reason your springs should get saggy. Even with long protected cells that compress the springs fully, they should not sag.
With a buck driver you want to keep voltage as high as possible. So look for a cell that does not have much voltage sag. All of the high drain cells that have been mentioned before should work fine. The vtc6 and 30Q do seem to hold higher voltage for longer than the vtc5a. You can compare them on HKJ’s battery comparator using a 3A load.
Oh yeah, some astrolux battery carriers have ends made of brass and some are made of aluminum. That’s about the only difference I know of for sure.
Battery carrier will work with both button and flat top 18650 in stock form. The reason why some people prefer to remove the white plastic cover is because they were pretty loose in earlier batch of MF01.
I also first removed the plastic ring, then realized that I did not need to do this, and then sketched it with black lacquer ... I got out of the situation this way: I soldered a drop of solder to the positive contact, and then removed the excess.
Surely Astrolux had some reason for adding them in the first place. I was pretty sure it was for polarity protection.
This is the best picture I can find.
You can see the outer edge is raised which should prevent the flat, negative end of the battery from touching.
So the white discs are useless?
Unprotected flat top works perfectly on all the astrolux lights… fit nicely and no rattle… illumn have Sony VTC5A and vtc6 flat top for $5.99 each. 30q button top are $5.50 each.
Vtc5a give a little more output than vtc6 or 30q… you will not able to tell with your eyes. I personally will choose vtc6 or 30q for the mf01… mf01 is making over 10000 lumen and you want to look for the higher mah for the extra runtime.
Coupon code if still available to purchase? Thanks.
Interested in the group buy of Astrolux MF-02S.
NW version.
Thanks
Interested in the group buy of Astrolux MF-02S.
Interested in the group buy of Astrolux MF-02S NW
Hi
Interested in the code for Astrolux MF-02S NW
Interested with Astrolux MF02S.