I made mechanical reverse polarity protection ring. I cut a piece of plastic and thinned to fit. The height of the brass ring is 1.5mm and thickness of plastic is 1.8mm. I did not use any glue, just used a little more pressure to get plastic into the position.
For those who have access to the 3D printer I have made a 3d model.
Well I this afternoon cleaned up properly & modded both my Q8”s.
First I sanded the top of the battery tube where it makes contact with the ground ring.
Then I cleaned & very lightly sanded both the positive & negative contact rings, after ensuring the board was sat flat, & where the screw holes in the tail board contact the battery tube.
I then tinned the screw holes in the tail board where they contact the battery tube.
Lastly I swapped the tail board screws for brass ones.
All this gave me an increase of about 400 lumens from my previous stock reading taking it up to 5860 on start up on freshly charged 30Q BT”s at 4.20v.
I then removed the tail board again, ripped out the small thin inner springs (just pulled them out quite easily) & bypassed the springs with 20awg silicon wire soldered to the board by scraping some of the red coating off halfway between the spring & screw hole.
This resulted in a start up reading of 7650 lumens in my light tube & 6950 at 30 seconds again on 30Q BT”s at 4.20v after 30 seconds.
I am extremely happy with the gains for what are simple, cheap & straightforward mods/cleaning up :+1:
Yes it is
I had previously only seen a big jump like this when I “solder blobbed” the S70 (not that I have done much “modding” previously).
Does this show that the ground path on the Q8 is not very good as stock & in particular the springs are giving a lot of resistance ?
Or does it show that the Q8 is easily modd”able as was one of the design parameters ?
Either way for the extremely low cost of a few cms of silicon wire & 4 brass screws & maybe half an hours cleaning/sanding & soldering the results in terms of lumens gains is fantastic :+1:
Sort of a combination of those things Ian, the springs are typically gold plated steel for mechanical function, so the bypass is always a gain and in the case of 4 cells and 4 emitters it turns into a large gain. Not that factory lights are bad for having springs made of steel but in this case the ease of modification makes it a big plus. Welcome to the world of improved EDC!
Hi Dale, the Q8 is a bit big for me to personally class it as an EDC light
Then again as I am on the list for a GT, then in comparison to that monster, I suppose that you could call the Q8 an EDC light
In the fall and winter with a jacket or coat, the Q8 is handy enough. When it’s hot out and we’re wearing T-shirt and shorts, well, the Q8 is a bit more difficult to have tagging along. We had a brief taste of cooler fall weather but are back up in the mid 80’s as usual. So it’s T-Shirt and shorts with sandals weather in November. Nothing new there. Need to figure out a good lanyard mount for the tail cap……