DBSAR Lantern Mini-Review: -Zanflare T1 (UPDATE: Second T1 failed!

That’s lower than even I thought it would be(51°C after an hour)………. and definitely acceptable

Hi, as the administrator of this forum I can assure you that there are indeed both manufacturers and affiliates here in this forum. We make no attempts to hide that fact. Whether that affects any particular user’s judgment and/or opinions is up to each individual:

So please drop the “deep forum” conspiracy theories. And please stop arguing:

Thanks.

Boy……. sure got quiet all of a sudden :sushi: ……… Anyone else have temps?

Guess we’re all now homeless from our burned-down houses after the testing. :smiling_imp:

If anyone wants to modify theirs without destroying it I’ve managed to get the diffusor top off and retain 3 of the 4 locking tabs.
Wrap your thumb and index finger around the white section right above the black base.
With your other hand, crush your index finger into the diffusor while lifting up slightly.
Work your way around the light a couple times and it will eventually pop free.
The adhesive is very weak and you will hear it separating. Be careful when it does pop free because that’s when one of the tabs may break.
Sorry if this has already been addressed.
I was thinking of putting an insulating layer and a heatsink between the emitter strips and the battery tube. Or gutting it and doing something else with it.
With some of the issues I’ve seen it’s not good for gifting but could be a nice host.

edit: this thing looks like a sci-fi prop from a few years ago with the cover off! Kinda harsh on the eyes but may leave it like this for a while.

Keep in mind the heat has to get out some how. The battery tube and tail cap is about the only way it can do that.

I’m off work and can do some tests on my two lights. I only have a temp probe from my DMM, though. I guess I can insulate my finger and hold it up against what I’m measuring. Will that work?

I need a good IR thermal reader that’s not too pricey.

Okay, here is how I tested my two lights. One used the stock battery and the other an Evva brand protected Panny B 3400mah (69mm). Both fully charged.

Ambient was 25°C. Lamps where laid in their side.

I let them run about 10 to 12 minutes at a time, then checked the tail cap temp, the inner battery tube temp and the battery temp (the negative electrode was the hottest part). I probably lost a good bit of heat just from checking every 10 minutes so at the 40 minute mark I decided to let it run 20 minutes continous to try and max out the temps.

I took amp draws before the test with each cell and ran all tests on the CW setting as that seems to pull the highest amps.

Here’s how and where I measured. The bare aluminum on the tail cap seemed to be the hottest part.

The two batteries.

All the temps seemed to be pretty accurate. They steadily climbed and then stated to level off. There are a couple measurements at 30 minutes that are a couple degrees cooler than before. Those might be anomalies. It’s tricky getting the probe to press against things hard enough so they might be about 2° too low.

Anyway, here are the results:

I hope you guys can understand them.
Max tail cap temp was 54°C.
Max battery tube inner wall was 55°C.
Max battery temps were 52°C. It was hard to hold them. This might be a safe battery temp, but I still don’t like it. I’m certainly not used to it.

I stopped testing after 60 minutes since the temps were leveling off. If they had run for 60 minutes continous (no interrupting to check temps) I think all temps might have gone one or maybe 2 degrees higher. I’m not sure. Both batteries were in the 3.6v range after the tests so their output might have have been going down. Total runtime was probably closer to 75 minutes. After recharging both batteries, the capacity added to each was right at 1480mah.

About the battery temps, it seems like the heat shrink acts as an insulator not only electrically, but also thermally. I suspect most of the heat is going through the tail cap, up the spring and into the bottom of the battery. It’s an all metal heat path so conduction is good.

Some of the heat probably comes through the plastic heat shrink, but not most of it. It’s just not a good conductor. This is my theory, at least.

The positive electrode was the coolest. It only makes contact with the upper circuit board, not the battery tube.

52°C is not a problem. It actually improves performance, especially in the cold.

Not good test conditions, the problem is obviously going to be more evident when the light is standing on a non thermally conductive surface, not lying on its side generating a convection current past the hot spot with cool air.

Below are my temperature measurements, using a fully charged Samsung 30Q cell. I ran the test for 60 minutes, measuring every 10 minutes with an IR thermometer. The measurement is the highest temperature observed on the base of the lantern, which was not actually the tail cap but a spot on the base just to the side of the tail cap, for some reason. Temperatures leveled off and started dropping from about 60 mins onward.

I ran the test twice:
(1) Base Temp 1 lantern position:

(2) Base Temp 2 lantern position:

The lantern was sitting on top of a speaker cabinet. Starting/ambient temp was 25 deg. C.

Thanks Pete, that looks like another well done & documented test… with decent results as far as the lantern goes.

Same goes for you JasonWW… well done with excellent documentation. :+1:

Sorry. Maybe I’ll do that the time time I’ve got a chance to measure again.

Maybe I’ll just let it run 40-50 minutes straight on a hard wood surface then measure the battery temp.

The most important thing is the battery temp, right?

Is it safe to assume the battery temp is always going to be a few degrees cooler than the tail cap temp? That’s what it seemed like on my tests.

So I’m guessing Petes batteries got up to 53°C or 54°C?

My battery temp did not exceed 50 deg C.

So your batteries ran at least five to six degrees cooler than your tail cap temperatures? Interesting.

Was the hottest part of the battery the negative base plate?

My T1 arrived today. Now fully-charged in the office, I will simulate the above 60-min test with my ir meter later tonight when I’m home.

Would you believe that the ‘Weather Station’ clock/thermometer/humidity/barometer is a product of Henry Xu of Opus?

Photo below shows the closeness of the ir’s reading to the Inside Temp of the Weather Station.

Later tonight I will start the 60min temp reading test…

Started the discharge test at 8:17 @ room temp of 26.8cel : (lantern standing on wood table during the duration of the test, except when taking temps)

After 17min., IR temp reading at 43.7c:

After 36min. : 52.3c

After 48min: 55.9c

After 1hr, 1min.: Temp started to decrease by 1.2degrees to 54.7c

After 1hr, 2min: Temp steadily decreasing to 53.1c

Removed cell while light is still on, cell temp 51.4c, Cell voltage: 3.66v

Definitely just fairly warm for electrical components standards, so it’s safe to use using even with the unknown OEM cell that came with it.

Well it appears, from Pete’s results, that the battery tube gets hotter when the light is upside down, which seems odd. This would seem to indicate that the heat concentrating at the tail cap is not due to that being the bottleneck of heat dissipation. If that were the case the light would cool more effectively upside down.

This makes me think that the outside diffuser is dissipating much more heat than it is given credit for, obviously it won’t appear as hot, as it has a much larger surface area. Maybe not such a bad design then, just slightly overpowered for its overall heat dissipation capability?

Just concluded a discharge temperature test on post 114. :beer:

My bad. I must have measured cell temp incorrectly before. I re-ran the test (lantern in position 1), and after 60 minutes, lantern base was at 56 deg C, and cell temp was 56 deg C as well. This was the temp on lower half of the cell. The upper half was cooler.

Cell was at 3.83V at the time of measurement.