Q8, PMS SEND TO THOSE WITH ISSUES BLF soda can light

I wonder how long it takes to see cheap low quality clones of our Q8 as it happened with former SRK …

l can bet not that long….somewhere in China l am 101% sure someone’s lathe is already churning out tubes.

It ‘appears’ it was just a faulty solder joint Jason… Nothing more as far as I know now.
No more questions about this please. I will report final results about this tonight or in the morning.
I think I have deleted ever reference I have made to this except the original report. I can’t delete quotes though.
I am pretty tired of getting RUDE marks for trying to do the right thing in reporting this & then being accused of being vague & elusive about it after PM’s with The Miller & TomE about what was going on.
So be it… no more answers from me till it is fixed or goes to TomE.
That is all.

All the while l really thought BLF’ers got the first crack of all the production capacity considering the number of interested people in the list, and now the backlog….l wonder how many percent of the production were appropriated initially or diverted to this dealer.

l feel sorry for the Q8 team who worked so hard to make this project a reality and also of equal importance are the thousands of people who expressed interest and eventually ordered and paid, only to be torpedoed by Elfeland.

Btw, who owns Elfeland?

This is my question also. I wonder if they have stock right now, it’s really un telling how long it will take through banggood especially when other organizations seemingly are getting access to the “faulty” ones already produced. Does this mean those 2000 lights are not going to be disassembled and then reassembled with corrected indicator lights, or is thorfire making new ones and allowing the others to be sold to other vendors. Perhaps the Miller could try to find out for us because if so this is rediculous. I ordered on September the 7th at 7:00 pm central us time. I have yet to receive any shipping notice whatsoever and it still shows backorder on banggood website. If the above is correct, thorfire is going to have a lot of unhappy customers.

I have a question for Thorfire: Which type of anodisation has the Q8?

I ordered one Q8 on 9/7 and just checked my Banggood account and it is still backordered.
The four Samsong 30Qs I also ordered will be delivered tomorrow. Four extra batteries and no light. Other vendors have the light available for sale. I thought BLF had the first 2000, and then Thorfire might produce others for the public.

Do you think we can find out more details on the switch problem? What is the likelihood that this will develop later for people with the first batch of lights? Since I’m a flashlight enthusiast without a purpose :slight_smile: I don’t really use it much. I just don’t want to have this fail on me 2 years down the road when support and interest has long dropped off. If Thorfire is changing their board layout to make a better, more stable switch is it possible to get a replacement? I don’t mind shelling out a few bucks to buy it as I’m still interested in changing out the LEDs (and having a spare board would give me peace of mind if I really can’t solder such small components properly). I just ordered 2 sets of LEDs - 100x 0603 pink ones and another 20x each of red, white, blue, yellow and green for a grand total of $1.27.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-100pcs-SMD-SMT-Super-Bright-Surface-Mount-0603-1608-Light-Emitting-Diode-LED-Diode/32368361712.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/5-colors-x20pcs-100pcs-SMD-0603-led-Super-Bright-Red-Green-Blue-Yellow-White-Water-Clear/32383494488.html

Did the same thing, just ordered some leds and resistors, if that’s the only fault with the light it’s not exactly hard to fix.

Use the YT... number, labeled as "Reference" on FedEx tracking in 17track.net, but probably won't get anything more than what's on FedEx. FedEx goes thru stages, so maybe your's got stuck in customs?

My recent bunch took 4 1/2 days to cross the country (left LA, arrived in NJ), 6 days delivered from first FedEx event in LA.

Not exactly easy either, those tiny SMD LED’s are so easily damaged by the soldering iron. Blow hot air on em while holding em down and you may melt the plastic switch housing, of course that can be removed first but every time it’s soldered you stand a greater chance of melting it. (I know, it looks like metal, it’s a plastic housing underneath that face plate)

The Miller states here that Elfeland is a BangGood account. I really don’t think any appreciable number of lights have been diverted in this manner.

Lot of questions, let me give a go at it but first Teacher.

Teacher, I don’t know who is ruding you. I do know it can’t be the fact that you report an issue.
A big issue too.
It is important people know it is safe and appreciated if issues are posted.
I think you are being relaxed about this huge problem too, thank you for that, people can get worked up over small things so a DOA at the wrong person could have flared a lot of stress.
Maybe it is the vagueness despite we all wanting to know what is up and posting elaborate about not being able to post about the issue that ticked people off? Who knows.
Just ignore that rude bar and focus on good pics of the place the wire should be, the wire and ideally seen from different angles.
Thanks.
.
.
Elfeland is Banggood, that is 99% sure. It probably is another branch of BG we are dealing with and I would not take shipping notices very serious. AliExpress let’s sellers extend purchase protection, during which time opening a dispute is pointless. So they can’t ship but know they will and if needed extend protection a few times.

Anodization, that is a tough one
We asked type2 for easy color changing. We asked to check it when improving the Banggood listing, and HA3 stayed.
My proto color change was extremely hard, type2 is a breeze.
Yet HA3 should go to olive drab and my proto did show nice colors.
So let’s go with HA2,51 :smiley:

It seems the switch assembly issue is due to mismatched SMD LEDs and maybe some solder issues on the resistor (most likely worst case scenario, two very mismatched LEDs and not 100% good soldering of the resistor.)
From what we now know, the problem shows itself pretty fast after starting to use the Q8.
It looks like a non issue if your Q8 keeps it on the first day.
The play time one has with a new light seems enough to bring it to the surface.
Not all have mismatched LEDs so the chance of having both that and a solder problem are small.

Thanks for the updates, The Miller.

FTFY, Astrolux is Banggood and Elfeland is the only aliexpress shop selling Astrolux flashlights.

Well, I don’t want to be part of any arguments about it, but I’m in agreement that the Q8 lights shouldn’t have sold in any way, shape, or form, on any website, under any conditions, until the GB list was satisfied. And by “satisfied” I mean all shipped. I’m sure Banggood had “good reasons” for it, but I don’t personally like it. And furthermore, it makes running down and fixing issues a bigger problem for the Q8 team, unless they just disavow all the non-GB sold lights, which would be fine by me.

Plyoman wrote:

Me too, but anything further on this should “belong in the ”Modding” thread”:Q8 modding
(I’ll copy this over there)

That’s: Q8 modding

There….you….go.

Well I kind of think Elfeland being BG is the same.
People with issues have a choice,
EITHER
try customer support or AE messaging that is aimed at stalling by people not knowing about flashlights or the Q8
OR
post here

I know what I prefer :wink:

The Miller wrote:

Amen, amen. Pointing out where to look for potential failures is the kind of help we all appreciate.
A cold solder joint can crack and eventually separate and that’s easy to fix, if you know where to put the soldering iron briefly.

Seems like they’re doing a production line where each worker does a single operation (e.g. one guy was putting on the left switch LED from one reel, then passing the board on to the other guy who was putting the right LED on from a different reel, then passing it on to the guy putting the resistor on ……)

So if there’s a problem with one particular solder join being poorly done (too fast so it’s a cold solder spot that will crack later, for example) — that’s a QA type situation where identifying the possible problem can help everyone look for it.

Hm. Why didn’t they have those guys place all the components, then another guy solder them with a heat gun? Oh, well …