Talk about future projects and donation topic

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.

WOW!
Looks like I’m looking in the mirror.
But I didn’t try the 7, I left before it arrived.

I have wanted to move to linux full time for years but sadly I need adobe, DXO, Sony vegas, Solidworks and a few other windows only programs and have not been able to figure out a way to use them on linux so far.

Although with the new system I am putting together now I am thinking about running linux and using a virtual machine for these programs since I should have the horsepower for it. Anyone tried this?

Here comes A3.
This light is based on A7. Very similar, yet quite different.

  • hot rod, but not as hot as A7 or D4
  • 3x dedomed LH351D
    • optionally: 3x Osram Q8WP for higher throw and higher output, but much lower efficiency
  • 21700
    • 4000+ lm OTF, (uncertain) 60+ kcd with fresh Samsung 30T
    • 3300+ lm OTF, (uncertain) 50+ kcd with fresh Samsung 48G
  • fully regulated to whatever max we choose?
    • driver would possibly overheat…if not for the LEDs overheating before that
  • Khatod PL60006 lens
    • Though Chun Kuang M312 lenses might be even better
    • So could be Ilenstech ILENS61-S34
  • hopefully, very EDCy beam profile
    • very roughly 15 cd/lm
    • bright, but not overpowering hotspot gradually weakening to flood
    • no tint shift
  • powerbank with magnetic connector
  • good cooling
    • very wide thermal paths (as wide as that of Q8)
    • unibody
    • many fins, as deep as possible without interfering with thermal path width
  • my dream EDC

Here it is (top) pictured next to A7 (middle) and a rough outline of D4 (bottom)

My work PC is Linux + VM. I need the VM to run MS Office. On a few occasions I needed some other software. This model works for me.