thanks
here is my Fenix E01
now, what is the problem?
Good question. I’m kinda lost myself… :question:
Streamer had a legitimate question too about it being a dud from the beginning.
But, from reading it all several times… :person_facepalming: …. my take is this:
“I think” djozz was identifying/speculating what ’might’ be a weak spot in the unit and could possibly cause problems sometime in the future.
He then illustrated a ’fix’ that would correct the problem ‘should’ it occur.
The same ’fix’ would prevent it from happening in the first place.
Anyway…. that is my take on it. There is no problem at this point. … 
This issue needs a good pic I see now.
Left my Fenix E01. You can see that the copper is extending to the edge and that the contact area is ok, not great IMO but this light has proven over the years that it is adequate.
Middle is one of the C01 prototypes. I see now that the copper here also does not extend to the side, but that the contact area is only good because the circuitry is not overly well centered on the board, so that one side makes for a very good contact area, the other side much less. Btw, at the time of the prototype I did warn Barry to pay attention to good contact points.
Right is the production C01. The circuitry is even a bit further from the edge of the board compared to the prototype, not much of a contact area leftover.
But it works and maybe for a very long time, again mind that there is no hard data at all at this moment that this is a failure point at all, we are speculating based on what we see. It will not help for this production run but I will confront Barry with this picture.
(in the picture not all boards seem the same size, this is distortion of my phone camera, in reality the boards are all the same size)
Great picture djozz, that clearly illustrates the issue.
I was wondering if there is a simple, cheap alteration to the head design Sofirn could implement in production in order to make the contact areas between PCB and body tube more robust and reliable?
Would just moving the contact pads more outside or enlarging them outwards be enough, or would an alternative design be a better fix (e.g. solder on a thin brass ring on the PCB)?
I like to have one of this in my collection 
Am I correct that the red encircled areas are the contact areas?
It would be great if we could come up with a design for the contact areas that would make the C01 as reliable as an HDS, without its complexity or high price tag.
Picture shows a vintage HDS EDC Ultimate 60 (2004-2006).
Thank for explaining THIS further djozz. 
Glad you cautioned them about this in advance, a shame they apparently ignored you.
The Fenix E01 design is cheap and works, there is no need to do better than that, provided that it is copied well enough.
OK… hopefully this has been much ado about nothing then.
Thanks for sharing your illustrated ‘fix’ however…. just in case.
Thanks for clearing that up, sharing your findings on this potential issue with Sofirn, and providing us with a fix for a potential future problem of the current production C01 :+1:
I won’t add stuff on the contacts to my C01.
But would those gilded copper bits an option?
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Tangda-rectangles-Square-Electronic-test-copper-sheet-Gold-plated-Copper-contact-Contact-sheet-SMD-terminal-Connectors/32836151077.html
Any news on the Blue and Red C01? It is getting late for Christmas presents.
was actually sinnin’ the same …
last thing I heard was about “10 days”, but this was more than 10 days ago … Although today the black C01 went off from “New arrivals” …
Thanks for the pic djozz. It is very clear now. :+1:
Maybe press-fitting a thin copper washer down into the battery tube to sit on and enlarge the front-facing “shelf” against which the head has to make contact.
By far the cheapest way to improve this (this is a cheap light) is to make a different driver board with copper extending to the very edge, maybe use one grade thicker copper for infinite lasting contact points.
Let me be the first to say, if the light works, it aint broke
Thanks for the photos djozz
E01 on left, production C01 on right
I honestly do not see a problem… Contact is Contact
otoh, IF a C01 Stops working… then yes, that would be a problem
and please do NOT copy the signal wires on a U60… thats a whole nuther can of worms
I respect, appreciate and admire your attention to details and suggestions for any Necessary improvements.
Do you think they make their own driver boards in their factory?
Or are they subcontracted to whoever’s the low bidder for a “good enough” product?
In the latter case I’d worry that the red and blue lights made later come through with more corner-cutting done.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-ab&q=chinese+good+enough
Question comes down to who to try to educate.
To me, the collective knowledge, wisdom and expertise on BLF is amazing. Speaking for myself, I am learning a lot here on different levels from different flashlight ‘black belts’ such as djozz. Thanks to all of you, for sharing pictures, jokes, firmware source code, PCB designs, tinkering experiences, products reviews and everything else. Hopefully, flashlight manufacturers will pay attention as well. Most of us even want them to “steal” our ideas, so we can actually buy the types of flashlights we wish would be available to us.
jon_slider: thanks for your close up detail work of djozz’s picture, the issue could not be visually illustrated in a better way.
Hank: thanks for sharing the concept of chabuduo, which seems to be pervasive within Chinese manufacture culture.
When I thought up the idea of a high-CRI version of a Fenix E01, what I hoped for was a “Toyota-style” flashlight: reliable, affordable, and build with pride. Interestingly in Japan craftsmanship, especially within modernized manufacturing, is culturally valued as something important. What I hoped for was a flashlight built with care. The Japanese have a wonderful concept that captures this idea: monozukuri (See Wikipedia or this article). Call me naive, but I truly hope we (as flashlight collective) can instill some monozukuri in Sofirn.
Most people at BLF are critical fans of flashlight technologies, they truly care about portable light, and in this technological domain they are maximizers: they actively explore the boundaries of what is technically possible, and then true to the hacker spirit try to transgress these boundaries. Engineering literally as a form of art.
Most manufacturers, and most consumers as well, are satisfiers: if it works, it works. For most consumers what is most imporant is purchase price, and for most manufacturers what counts is maximizing profit.
To come full circle to the contact areas of the C01: the current design seems to be satisficing. To quote Wikipedia:
Back to stuff that most people here probably think matters more:
Perhaps someone can create an RSS script for watching the Sofirn AliExpress store so we can automatically get a notification when the red or blue C01 comes available? Someone should probably ask this question in the IRC channel ##flashlight on Freenode. The regulars over there seem to have some advanced flashlight news notification tools 