[Available again! - BLF special edition light] new Sofirn AAA twisty high CRI 5mm LED

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. :+1:

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. :+1:

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 :wink:

Got mine shipped. Can’t wait to see them coming.

Start with quality components, not the cheap stuff.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-ab&q=electronic+semiconductor+quality+MTBF

Oh, wait ….

… checking the AliExpress site often, daily in fact, waiting for the other colored body variants.

And indeed the parcel was available for pickup today.

Unfortunately I only received 1x 5600K when I ordered 1x both. Only one inside and even the CN22 form said “quantity 1”.
Oh well, shit happens. Not a big deal! Sent a message to them. They’ll probably get back to me later “today”, it’s 2AM in Shenzhen right now.

Like I said before, at this moment I could order more C01’s but since I did not get both CCT I don’t know which one I like more. Argh…

Note to Sofirn: the 11-11 sale is clearly the wrong moment to launch a new product :person_facepalming: