Talk about future projects and donation topic

I have a MK35 that I might upgrade with a GT/Narsil driver and a 4000K or 4500K led swap. Wish me luck, I’m goin in! The 4000K in the GT has gotten me hooked. I just bought a MX30L4Cvn with XPL Hi 4000K which is now my favorite balanced light.

:smiley: . GOOD LUCK!!! . :+1: . :wink:

Extremely compact 21700 flashlight powerbank.

  • USB type C
  • Astrolux 22 mm quad lens
  • Samsung LH351D, XP-L HI variants
  • Texas Commander / LD4 style driver with FET on MCPCB, regulating the light all the way to peak output. Might place other components on MCPCB too it that’s needed to save space.
  • Ramping UI

Initial, somewhat incorrect sketch:

I drew it without glass protecting the lens. I’m not sure it that’s a great choice especially that bezel blocks some light, just like it is with S2+ triples.

And there is no place to put threads between head and body tube, so this is a unibody light with press-fit driver. Not sure if that’s feasible with USB and maybe a button on the other side. You can remove the driver by poking it from the optic side.

Why did I say “maybe a button on the other side”? Because I’m wondering if a button assembly plugged into USB slot wouldn’t be a good idea.

It seems that “extremely compact for its battery type” is a very common desire. In general, I’d like to see more lights which are barely bigger than the fuel tank.

Unusually, I’d like to suggest not a from-scratch project but a special edition of existing light.

DQG Spy Ti which has low-bin XP-G2 replaced with Samsung LH351D. Warm CRI90. That’s it.
Well, extra points for shortening it to 10150 or 10160.

ADDED:
Or AR coated lens.
Or glow o-ring.
OK. There are a few things that could be done better.
But nevertheless this is a good light that’s extremely close to being a great light.

I’ve had the concept in my head for a long time…I made some drawings before…but just couldn’t make it right.
Now I managed to put all the pieces together.
Welcome A7, a pocket hotrod.
Features:

  • 7 LEDs, XP sized. Dedomed Samsung LH351D would be my pick.
    • Though XP-L2 would turn it to a 5-second light
  • 21700
  • Texas-Commander / LD4 style driver integrated with the LED MCPCB regulating the light to 10+ amps. With Turbo above that.
  • Unibody
  • E-switch
  • DQG style tail cap

Here’s the drawing, next to a rough outline of Emisar D4.

Inspirations (alphabetically):
DB Custom’s Titanium X6, DQG Tiny 18650, DQG Tiny 26650, Emisar D4, Led4Power’s works, Zebralights

Do you have a bigger picture to share? (pm?)

No, I don’t.
I draw stuff pixel by pixel in gimp. This technique limits me heavily, but that’s what I’m capable of.
If you need larger, simply zoom it.

Why not use something like sketchup or solidworks…

Sketchup doesn’t work on FreeBSD. I contemplated learning CAD before but never reached that point…

If anyone needs me, I’ll be over here crying.




You could use Blender. Or FreeCAD. Or LibreCAD. Or OnShape. Or several others. If you don’t want to do a full 3D model, I find Inkscape is good for quick 2D stuff. Its grid options make it easy to build accurate scale models.

Yes…I know that drawing lights with 1 mm resolution is barbaric.
I just never got the motivation to learn something different.
After all, what I draw is good enough to show the idea.
It is good enough to make me encounter most problems.
Regardless what tool I use, if anyone was to actually manufacture one of those lights, they would CAD it anyway.

This is not good enough to draw an angle light though.
I need 3D to figure out internal layout. I’d like to draw one one day. Maybe then I’ll get motivated to learn some better tools.

When I see the word ‘Donation’ in the thread title, I remember the only flashlight I have seen in the Third World village near me.

It was a broken, stubby version of the now famous light we see everybody trying to sell,…this one with bulb battery, plastic zoom lens, gritty switch and corrosion from the penlight cells, (not even alkyleaks).
A foil covered piece of cardboard with a rusty spring on one side, an LED of sorts seemingly glued (?) to the other….it was the the owner’s pride and joy while it lasted.

Well, if you’re using GIMP, then you probably have a harder time penciling pixel-by-pixel than you would have just drawing a nice shape with smooth lines and curves.

Why are you not using windows…

Them’s fightin’ words ’round these parts.






:smiley:

The answer is simple:
Vista.

But the long story is that I was a huge Windows fan. I invested a lot of time into learning its internals.
Then Vista came.
I didn’t have the same complaints the most had.
I complained about not being able to load unsigned drivers of my own.
I complained about the existence of privileged processes. They are ones that can do anything with the machine, but even admin can’t touch them (unless they hack system protections, which isn’t hard really). The mechanism was created to facilitate Digital Restrictions Management. Who is the boss of my PC, me or media companies? For MS it was the latter.
I complained about changes to the UI that I liked.
I complained about dropped backwards-compatibility.

Then Windows 7 came. Technically, it was Vista SP1. It only fixed the most glaring problems people had. But after Vista, they loved it.
I didn’t. It didn’t fix any of the most important problems that I had. And I knew that no future version would.
Took me a year to decide that I couldn’t use XP forever.
I left the Windows world and I’m glad that I did.

I tried scaling my technique to use 0.1 mm / pixel. When drawing something simpler than lights, furniture. I couldn’t make it work efficiently.

Anyway, I use what I use. I’m not changing it immediately. I may learn CAD one day, but that’s not on the horizon yet.