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

TheMiller posted somewhere in here, or the Q8 mod thread (moving so fast it’s hard to find), that Thorfire is redesigning the switch board. I would imagine, they would offer you one when it’s complete.

I would take you up on that bet The Miller, sadly my flashlight spending money is tied up at the moment. Have a good weekend, I am sure this whole situation has a lot for you to deal with. I’ll do my best not bother you with further apparently unanswerable questions . It is what it is and you deserve a break

traces cant be the issue, just 1 resistor for both means even the slightest difference in Vf makes on dimmer
Cree LEDs of the same reel usually have quite the same Vf,
but for those tiny SMD LEDs the emitting area is a lot smaller, so they may vary a lot more

Unsoldered LEDs and switch just holding my temp stabilized iron at 300°C at the other side
also skillet might work well

then cut the trace to one LED and add a resistor

add solder paste

add resistor and wire

2 white LEDs with 19.1kOhms each

With solder blobed 30Qs you should definitely get 6k+ out of the box.
Either your reading is off or your batteries are not fully charged or both your lights are under performing - but that seems a lot.

Try tightening both ends of the flashlights and see if it gets better. Some clean up could help too, according to reports. Seems odd that the two lights are both so low…

Whilst not as cheap, these are Aussie options, with fast delivery and good customer service too.

4,000 at 30 secs sounds pretty low if using 4 30Q ST's. Here's # taken at 30 secs on fully charged 30Q BT's from Banggood (large top):

5,440 4,930 5,290 5,035 4,780 4,770

Maybe my PVC light box is a little high - think djozz sees about 200 lumens lower from past comparisons at these levels. I was expecting in the range of 5,500 lumens, as I saw with the prototypes. But the good news is with tweaking, the 4,780 light did 5,170 with cleanups and screws replaced, and did 6,150 with the fully modded tail PCB from the prototype.

More to come...

StephenK

Wow, thats double the price at least, ill keep them in mind but ill keep looking for now.

i ordered these on the 20th.

ssschen, can you link the ones you ordered and let me know what shipping option you took please.

Of topic @ Tom. You mentioned somewhere you had a soft spot for a triple with no pill you modified. Was it the HD2010 triple?

My second Q8 arrived today.
It does have the mismatched SW LED’s when sitting in standby state, unlike the first one.
It has an intermittent problem.

It will sometimes not shut off.

The first time I turned it on, I ran it up the ramping about half ways. Released the SW and immediately ramped it down to ML. Ran it back up and down a couple or so times. Then hit the SW to turn it off. It stayed on. I hot the SW again. Nothing. I untwisted the body from the head a quarter turn and it went off. Of Course it would.

Turned on. Turned off. that time all was okay. Since then I have done many of the tricks it is capable of; battery level check, OK. Four click lock out and back in, OK. Double click to jump to turbo, OK. I let it run on turbo to check the timeout; 3 minutes, so OK.

A couple of times during these trials it would not turn off. Clicking the SW caused the SW LED to flash, but the light remained on. Sometimes after several clicks it would go off. Sometimes I would give up after a half dozen clicks and turn it off by loosening the body to head.

Sometimes, when it will not turn off the LED’s will flash and be very slightly brighter, then with the next click go back down. This is with the light on ML.

I attempted to make a video. Naturally the light worked fine during that time. I’ll try again later. I have both lights with 30Q’s, one in left hand, one in the right hand, clicking in unison. The good light, #1, works flawlessly but #2 hiccups every so often.

Sure would like #2 to work reliably.

Hmm MtnDon that is a new thing.
Yet is seems tied to the switch assembly again.
Will update OP tomorrow.

Yep - dunno why, still like the rough, not so pretty, but great performance of a HD2010. So found some great deal on a triple version, so couldn't turn it down.

Found it: Beamtech BT-4000 form TMART for $22 - back in April 2015.

Hhmm, MtnDon's issue sure sounds like a mechanical switch problem. The description sounds like one click acts as 2 clicks, but hard to say.

To save me reading through hundreds of posts has anyone got a link to a pouch/holster for the Q8 that is either available in the UK or will ship to the UK without incurring high shipping charges please :wink:
I think there was a smoke grenade pouch available for people in the US only ?

One of mine has just now done that too. I'd double-clicked to turbo to see what the noise was in the back garden & then grabbed the 2nd one & did the same, after a few seconds of having fun beam waving I shut them both off, only the 1st one wouldn't turn off.

I could ramp up & down no problem just couldn't switch off, I unscrewed the head then re-tightened and it has been fine since, I can't repeat the issue. :shrug:

One more possible issue: earlier today after maybe 11 hours without use I noticed both switches were no longer illuminated while in standby, turning on then off brought them both back to life and again, it hasn't happened since.

I bought this one

I heard that THIS POUCH works with the Q8 from a poster in the Astrolux MF-01 thread.

Ha! Beat me to it MtnDon!

Don’t agree. I got two Q8 and measured 5250 and 4820 lumens which is close to other measurements. After tail PCB mod 1000 lumens more though.

Thanks just ordered :+1:

A real teardown will have to wait (I want to know if the ledboard looks any different from proto3, did they have a new type made after the delamination issue was found?), but here's my initial findings.

Out of the box output in djozz-lumen, I did wipe the contact area's of battery tube and driver cleam with a tissue:

with charged 30Q's:

3 seconds: 5400 lm

30 seconds: 5220 lm

with Panny BD (lower drain but still powerful):

30 seconds: 4780 lm

After cleaning up some stuff under the switch-board and swapping driver screws (I killed a driver screw while screwing it out):

with charged 30Q's:

3 seconds: 5560 lm

30 seconds: 5280 lm

(after some recent checks with reliable sources I believe that my djozz-lumen is about 9% high. But it still seems lower than most calibrations found on BLF and CPF, and what flashlight manufacturers list as ANSI -measured output of their flashlights)

Here's some pictures:

The tailboard screws look ok:

The earlier reported stuff in the screw-threads:

Some of that stuff is in between tailboard and body. I removed it and screwed down the tailboard really tight.

The driver screws look fine but are soft as butter, one was demolished while screwing it out with a well-fitting screwdriver.

I changed out the screws with a couple that I found in my box of screwy thingies:

The driver looks good, notice the 7135 with 'claw' mark.

The leds are more off-center than needed, you can see that the centering suffered from twisting the reflector. The beam is good though. But I will center the leds better when opening up the light in the near future.

Preliminary conclusion:

The production light is very close to the proto3, which is good. Wished that Thorfire was less sloppy with screws and screwdrivers, I don't really get that when they make a nice product like the Q8. But the performance of my copy is fine, also out of the box, nothing to complain about that, a 3.5% output drop in 30 seconds in a 5000 lumen soda-can-size light is a sign of a very very good heat path. And if I would not have opened up everything, the screws would not be an issue.

Now on to a busy weekend....

Nice djozz! I'm finding lots of variations, but if I swap battery tubes with heads, the performance seems to track with the battery tube, not the head. Might be the first one I tested was the best. The material around the upper left screw hole in your pic appears to be the glue I've seen on several - just one out of 4 has it, mostly there is a blob stuck against the black outer tube, like it was squeezed out, then set hard.