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

Aluminum itself has a reflectivity of about 89, silver about 91, multilayer aluminum up to 97%. .This is achieved lots of layers - typically several tens to hundreds. Silver reflects “selectively”, its reflection depends on wavelength.

I do not agree. Yes we will be happy with this light and that it gets delivered at all, and it is unjust to question that! But the remark was not about that, it was about the choice we had in shipping option without knowing that one of the two options would leave China many weeks after the other. It makes sense to be very disappointed about it. Of course the team is not to blame, but it would have made sense if someone in China had done some thinking about it.

I agree it really needs a handle or at least a good strong lanyard.
It is a very heavy flashlight.

Could there have been a bigger stronger LED in the BLF Giga thrower or not ?

+1 :+1:

Just received my GT with batteries. A big thank you to the GT team and Neal!

I guess I read it wrong then, I thought we were talking about the disappointment someone was feeling because the first 555 were not treated as “first priority”.

Of course all will be happy when their light gets delivered…. that seems a nobrainer. :+1:

Yeah… it would have been nice to know in advance if one shipping option was indeed going to have preference over another. Maybe that info was not avaiable or decided on at the time orders were taken however.

Or maybe, since Registered Mail is shipping in two boxes; there has been a slight delay in sourcing those boxes.

Who knows…… all speculation on our end anyway.

Main thing is the lights are being made & shipped as fast as LT can crank them out & maintain that EXCELLENT QUALITY we are seeing in the GT.

Sooooo……. Thank You Lumentop!!! . :slight_smile:

Bigger stronger? The xhp 70.2 will give more lumens but less throw.

I don’t think there is a led that give more lumens and throw and is easy to install using the current driver and cell setup.

If there’s a 70.2 version I nominate the name “GM”. Compromised throw, not pure flood. The Giga Mixer.

Sure, you could go bigger or smaller.

Smaller gives you longer throw with a smaller hot spot.

Bigger gives you less throw with a bigger hotspot.

The team settled on the xhp35-HI as the best compromise between long distance and a decent sized hot spot.

If you are willing to sacrifice some distance, you could go with an xhp50 or even the xhp70 (in 12 volt of course).

The GT joins the little family.
From left to right: BLF A6, BLF Q8, Imalent DX80 and the GT.
And I used to think the DX80 was a monster light :smiling_imp:

The ancient Maglite 6D joins the fray:

A shot of the reflectors. The BLF A6 is hiding between the DX80 and GT
No sign of orange peel here, but I see the slight maching marks that everyone has.

Paid deposit on August 26. Full payment plus small bonus for the team on December 2.
Number 5# on the paid list…
As far as I know there is only 2 GT’s for Serbia RS, bouth with DHL shipping.
One of those two is delivered to Sirius9 some time ago and with batteries included.
Mine is without batteries and no sign of it so far.
As I used to work for DHL I have possibility to check out if anything is currently coming to my address,but nothing so far…
I am not complaining at all just would like to know if there was some confusion over shipping to me, and maybe sent with registered instead??
Can someone from the team please ask Neal, or Lumintop since I don’t want to bother them when they have too much work to do.

Thanks
NikolaS

That Xiaomi projector :+1: Also, those fog photos are great.

the GT is already heavy and with silver you can not lift the GT anymore :smiley:

Yes,Ds=10.5 gr/cm³,while Dal=2.7gr/cm³.So,it is 3.9 times heavier.

If that is indeed so, the 3.9 times heavier, then the 305 gram aluminum reflector would turn into an 1186 gram silver reflector. Unless I missed something, that would mean an Silver reflector equipped GT would weigh approximately 6.9 pounds instead of 5 pounds, if a grown person could not lift 6.9 pounds I would have to wonder who carries their newborn babies for them?

At this rate they have about 350-400 more lights to ship to catch up with the current orders.

So figure ~2 weeks for that. And if they slow production to improve reflector quality figure at least an extra week for that.

So yeah, looks like February is a good bet for the next set of PM’s at this point.

Plastic could have been done and it would have been cheaper but this was rejected during the initial specs for the light.

Mostly because plastic tends to warp and bend and this causes issues down the road and it also makes modding very difficult.

There are some other options for making reflectors like electroforming? that cost a lot to setup but then are cheap to make large quantities. They were not aware how many would sell when they started production so this was not considered, still not sure if it would be worth the start up cost even with 1500 being made.

So overall, the lathe made aluminum reflector was the best and simplest option.

I was doing some testing with the xhp70.2 a few weeks ago before I got sick. That put everything on hold.

Thanks to the donations of a few generous BLF’ers I was able to order some more parts to keep the testing going.

I just got in another xhp70.2 yesterday to continue the testing though. Hopefully I can find some time this weekend to put it on the sphere and try slicing the dome. Might even try some final focus adjustments as well.

Also got in some parts to beef up the stock driver and hopefully increase the power some more.

As well as some parts to mod the drive for 3V LED’s as well.

If only there was a good 3V LED that I could try that uses the 3535 footprint.

Not sure how much I will get to this weekend but should be able to knock out at least some of it.

Ummm, no, a silver reflector would weigh only slightly more than aluminum. Why? Because no person in their right mind would make the entire reflector out of silver (check the price of silver compared to aluminum). Instead it would be put there through vapor deposition over a reflector base and the layer would be quite thin since that’s all that’s required. Or do folks think that the silvered mirrors on the Hubble are solid silver? Or the mirrors in modern telescopes are? Again, all that’s required is a microscopically thin layer to get the benefits, and not solid silver.