[PART 1] Official BLF GT Group Buy thread. Group buy officially closed! Lights shipping.

Look at this.

NCRB’s would be best value for money surely

Ah I have had a talk over the phone with the owner of NKON and his buttons are hand welded on there to ensure minimum resistance added.

I’ve had top notch service from Nkon and their price are great for a European shop.

About the choice of batteries, i’v come to the conclusion that the only battery i need for all my 18650 usage are the superbly versatile 30Q, they are only 15% less capacity than the highest capacity 18650, they have a very low internal resistance that make them capable to deliver very high currents when needed, they are very resiliant to repeated high current usage ( more so than the VTC6 or HG2 according to Mooch tests) and they are cheap and very available.

It greatly simplifies my battery upkeep/rotation.

Does anyone know the beam angle of the GT?

Just did a highly inaccurate measurement of my C8 and the hotspot seems to be roughly 38cm across at 5 meters or +–2 degrees or a 4 degree cone. I wonder how collimated the GT’s beam is?

PSA - Cells pulled from recent (less than 2 years old) Teslas appear to be derived from the NCR18650GA, but have additional Tesla “special sauce” added that appears to improve cycle life considerably, as well as survive abuse considerably better than most other cells. I’ve got a couple test cells I’ve cycled from 4.25 to 0.0v and back (clamped in dead short for 24 hours after 5A discharge to 0.5v) and after 10 cycles like that, they’re still within 50mAh of the non-abused cells. Also notable is internal resistance drops considerably with heat - unlike most cells that only seem to noticeably show this below 0C, the cells I’ve tested have a pretty significant lessening of voltage sag above 40C.

Like the normal NCR18650GA, not optimal for high current applications, but if you don’t need a 30Q, it’s really hard to beat these. I’ve bought mine from the guy below, but they’re pretty common on ebay now as well. Previous wrapped cells I’ve gotten from him did need a solder blob to work with lights like the Q8. I’ll report when I get my latest order if the current ones are the same.

http://edisonmotors.net/shop/product/tesla-model-s-18650-battery-cells-3-4ah-3-6v-from-p90d-p100d-vehicle-211

What?!
Please make a topic about this
I am sure lots of people don’t read the GT thread and what you write is very interesting (and a bit weird)
This deserves a deeper talk :wink:
(Me thinking about dangers of under voltage dendrites is something id like to read smarter people react to)

No time right now for a solid write up, but once I get the new cells in (my previous cells were from a P85, no silicon in the anode that I’m aware of) I’ll be doing a bunch of tests and can do a better write up then. I’ll also dig up the old 0.0v test cells and see how much they’ve degraded over the past year.

I might attempt more destructive tests on the new batch too. (I say attempt because past attempts with a jumper cable were just that, no fire, just a really hot cell, and one that made a “click” noise and went open circuit)

I ordered three of the the 4 packs of 30Q from banggood. I’m going to use 4 in my Q8 and 8 in the GT.

After the coupon it was $55CAD for 12cells, $4.5CAD each. It’s hard for me to get anything else in that price range.

Seems like a real good price yeah.

Thanks darkpenguin, very interesting!

What do I do to get The coupon code ?

I bought 8 30q cells but accidentally ordered flat top. Hoping I can make them work. Figure a little magnet or something should do the trick but I’m hoping the carriers wind up working with flat tops. Oh well, live and learn I guess, got a great price so worst case I’ll get 8 more and repurpose these.

The way a carrier is loaded pretty much excludes a magnet top, it’s been said that the isolation disk can be removed to make flat tops work but you’ll have to be sure you observe proper polarity when inserting cells, it’ll be on you if you invert one accidentally.

35E are higher according to reviews.

It was a M4DM4X deal, I think I found it posted on BLF but a quick google turned up this page: https://m4dm4x.com/4pcs-samsung-inr18650-30q-button-top-new-deal/

Hopefully it is still active. They’re button tops too!

I bought this shoulder strap for the GT: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100-Genuine-CANPIS-Leather-Camera-Shoulder-Neck-Carrying-Strap-Black-for-Leica-Fujifilm-SLR-Mirrorless-Camera/32469338138.html

It showed up yesterday and it is very nice. I think it will work very well. I am very excited for this light.

Managed to get out for some GT Proto beam shots last night
First the map for distance

Then for the control shot

Now the beam shot, using the same settings as the control shot

Just to show that it really was getting there, a crop at 100% of both images

Sorry no comparison shots as it started to rain and I got out of there while I was still dry :smiley:

Cheers David

Edit:- There was a half moon out, ‘sky glow’ from the city only 7~8km away plus the lights on the pier so a real life situation

Those are awesome shots Pommie. You can see the pylons beside the road or pier which ever it is all the way down. This thing really is a monster thrower. Thanks for sharing them!
Rick

Yeah Pommie, thanks for keeping sharing these beamshots!

Very nice David… very nice indeed. Thank you for sharing those…… :slight_smile: