Anyone got a zanflare T1 lantern?

Was a battery inserted when running via USB?

This is what the manual says about this:
Note: when the tent light is on we suggest to avoid
charging because this could prolong the charging time
or damage the battery capacity.
If you need to charge the battery when the tent light is
in use, we suggest anyway to enable low mode.

Good idea, I'll turn the lantern on now and when it gets really hot, I'll see what my IR gun reads. Tempted to get the wally wallwarts many times but never did!

No battery was inserted.

[quote=pilotdog68] I suppose the heat could come from burning off the extra voltage from USB [/quote]

Could be too not sure. After the IR reading, I'll let it cool down and run the battery down as well then can know for sure.

After one hour on usb power the IR reading is holding steady at 143F on the tail cap. What do you guys think?

Im pretty sure it’s because of the high input voltage, the only way to find out would be testing again with a half charged battery.

Well that tempature won’t fry the electronics and won’t kill a battery. Most batteries can go up to 176degrees as their Max operation tempature. And more then twice that before danger of runaway. 140 degrees is child’s play for Led junction tempatures The real danger is burning your hand

Edit also go for the walmart 2.1 amp wallwart chargers if you need one. The 1 amp chargers that came from my daughters tablets from Amazon get much hotter then it does. Kinda makes me wonder if they do that on purpose to give it a certain life span. I’ve had other 1 amp blocks the same size only get about a third less hot.
But anyways whatever that Walmart electronics brand is, works fine. I bought a couple of them about a year or so ago and they see daily and nightly use between all the. Phones and tablets. I would think but could be wrong. Walmart probably wants to avoid as many lawsuits as possible and if there wallwart burned your house down. Well they don’t wanna go there. So I think they care a tiny bit about quality control. Compared to some random Chinese company on Alibaba, aliexpress, eBay, etc thats building them from old recycled power blocks and selling them as new. Probably doesn’t have any safety features and good luck if it fails. I believe there’s some kind of fuse in them. I might take one apart sometime and see. At least with most store bought stuff bought in the western world the retailer and or manufacturers are held accountable for bad and dangerous products. I’ve found a lot of Walmart’s brands arnt that bad but there are a handful stay away from their off brand to a real block of Velveeta cheese. It maybe 2 dollars cheaper but it’s horrible. But hjk has a ton of good wallwart reviews and tear downs if your looking for one

What high input voltage, your wallwart or powerbank is already stepping down mains or boosting batteries to 5v and the lantern on USB only is using 4.somethibg volts. And this is with no battery. With a battery charging and it being on high I think it may top 160 degrees I hadn’t got mine yet will it let you run it on high and charge at the same time? I imagine the lantern is sealed and somewhat waterproof? So my theory is between the DC to DC converter and the led heat it’s just being trapped like a greenhouse

Thanks Speed4goal, then I guess it should be ok for normal battery use then and will keep an eye on it if I use it to charge batteries and see how hot it gets. Will grab the 2.1A wallwart too as I need two more anyways. Didn't know they were that tough. I have used the 2.1a ones from the dollar store that plug into the car 12v and they still working years later but you never know with those.

After having it run on battery power for about 90 minutes, end cap temp was 117F with the IR gun, so I pulled the battery and IR gun reading for battery was 123F

I just noticed the same thing. Considering this lantern is only 350 lumens, it is a bit concerning. BTW, my tailcap spring looks perfect. No corrosion at all.

I’ve been thinking about this as well, and at this point I have no concern. It’s indeed only 350 lumens, but it’s pretty much an all plastic device. And heat transfer in plastic is pretty terrible, almost non existent. So even with just 350 lumens, heat will accumulate inside the light. There is only one way of getting rid of the heat, and that is via the metal battery tube, and the metal/magnetic tail cap.
So this could also explain why you have a metal battery tube; perhaps this is actually a well thought design? But it is wise to do as stated in the manual and don’t charge the battery while using the lantern in max output.
As stated before the max temperature is well below what becomes troublesome, nevertheless swapping the battery for a Samsung or Sanyo will provide me extra assurance. :sunglasses:

Mine won’t run on usb unless the battery is inserted

At least running via battery does not seem to produce heat issues…

I did a run time test with a battery starting at 4.03V… cool white LED… highest brightness… shut down after almost 10 hours, but no heat at all…

That’s odd. Light should shut down much sooner at around 3 hours with max output and CW. https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/51852

P.S. Since output reduces over time with depleting cell voltage, it is possible that max temperature of cell/tail cap is reached before the cell is depleted.

You’re right… my mistake… I meant: cool white… dimmed to roughly 1/2 to 2/3… not full brightness… sorry for the confusion… it was at least 1/2 … rather 2/3…

No problem. :+1: It’s good to know with reduced output heat is not an issue. All I know is that with max output with WW on my sample, my tailcap was on the warm side, but not worth worrying.
I think I will do more testing if I have time.

Maybe I should have post this at the “stupid questions” thread but here it goes.
If I understand correctly, electricity leaves the cell (discharging) from + pole and enters the cell (charging) from - pole. I would expect + pole to get warmer while using the lantern and - pole to get warmer while charging the battery. So, why and how the - pole gets hot when using the lantern?

Electricity is produced by a chemical reaction in the cell, throughout the whole cell, and flows as a current through the whole circuit. So there is some heat produced by the internal reaction which will be evenly distributed, some heat produced by the current flowing through internal cell resistance, which is again throughout the cell and evenly distributed, and some by external factors, such as the heat produced by the LED and distributed unevenly throughout the whole light, and heat produced by resistance to current at any point where there is a bad connection, thin wiring, or any other reason for bottleneck.

Thinking the current leaves the cell at one point and heat should be generated there is like thinking of the cell as a barrel of coal, burning from the top down, it just doesn’t work that way. The cell is more like a barrel full of AAA cells, each one generating current and heat evenly.

Used the T1 for 2 - 3 hours every night since I got it about 2 weeks ago.

The diffused lighting gives a really nice glow, I wonder if the multiple LEDs make a difference from a single LED.

With regards to the heat, I have a potentially stupid question- is the magnet being heated by induction? I would test it myself but I don’t have pliers to remove the magnet!

The magnet is heated by conduction. The primary heat source is the leds. Heat from the leds is transferred via the battery tube to the magnet.

Just for something to do, I ran the lantern on usb power for a few hours with the magnetic tail cap removed and then got a reading of 134F for the inside of the metal battery compartment.