Did you read this thread?
If you explain it using “Cars” I will understand better.
CARS DavidEF
I built a Convoy C8 with an XHP 70.2, DD driver, and running two 18350 batteries. I would say that of the 5 brightness levels, I use mostly 1 and 2. I rarely use 5 because it’s actually too bright for near-range sight, but it does illuminate a wide view like daylight, and I don’t need to lug a 4 pound light with me. Of course it will get hot fast, but not long enough before I drop the brightness down. I probably could have just dumbed down the output or used a smaller emitter and get sustained output for many hours, but I also like to have that “turbo” mode available when necessary. And this thing is so blight it likely would temporarily blind a would-be assailant during an evening walk. At least burn his face - the beam on high is incredibly hot!
Brushless motors can be waterproof; you can even fly a drone underwater if you seal off all the other non-waterproof components. I’d agree there probably is or will be better passive solutions available. It’s very easy to drive an LED to spec and have a flashlight not even get warm during operation on the highest setting, but that seems to contradict an ethos of BLF, of getting the best bang-for-the-buck lumens wise. I know the opinion of a few is that max output not sustainable for an extended period of time is useless. But running under max output for however long the batteries will go until they die, which is not long, in my view is equally useless. Not like the old days when you’d get a flashlight with incandescent bulbs and alkaline batteries, and even if the batteries are almost drained, they still put out some light - which can be pretty important depending on what you do with your light.
…okay, so imagine you own a Formula One racer, a Toyota Camry, and a Fiat 500… 
Why is it so hard for manufacturers to “fess up” to their flashlights’ real performance specs? Most of them still list specs like “Turbo: 2000 lumens / 90 minutes.” Most all people on this forum can look at that and understand that the words do not mean what they say because we have first hand experience watching our own lights step down in brightness while simultaneously getting scalding hot. We understand that these “runtime” specs might be the same as the continuous runtime for the low and medium modes, but for turbo and sometimes high mode too, they are purely a theoretical statement about battery consumption. The consumer that has not yet been jaded, perhaps like the OP a few weeks/months ago, sees those specifications as a promise of performance while continuously running, though. After all, why shouldn’t runtime be assumed to be continuous? Flashlights are typically kept on when it’s dark, rather than turned off every 90 seconds to cool down before running them for another 90 second stretch. So when the flashlight fails to live up to the promise, it’s seen as the worst kind of consumer deception, done for the purpose of selling more “super bright” flashlights to ignorant consumers rather than for the purpose of making the flashlight more useful.
koziy hit the nail on the head when said “The consumer that has not yet been jaded, perhaps like the OP a few weeks/months ago”
I have been in this hobby for about 6 months, a few thousands in lights later nothing but burns and let downs. It was like when I got started in car audio and wanted just have fun with some booming music, I quickly learned about continuous watts and max watts and how some manufacturers pull the wool over buyers eye with there BS ratings of MAX POWER XXXX WATTS!
Yeah and a few thousand $$ later I was hip to the BS. I stuck to certain brands even though some guys would say “yeah this (fill in name of cheap joke amp) 2000 watts amp is all you need, all you want is to listen to your music right, who needs …? ” Basically what he is saying who wants full boost when you can drive around at posted speed limit with your $$$ car that does 0-60 in < 4 secs. NO MOFO some of us want to feel the bass and what we just paid x paychecks for. Stop BSing customers, give the ones that want the real deal performance and what they paid for and let the mild man-nerds get the wanker lights, pardon my rage.
Here goes some explicit, Astrolux MF04S with 6k lumens, why else would I buy suck a big F light if I wasn’t going to go big with it? Some of us do not want lights as a toys. What do these lights have in common, apart from I own all of them; the BLF Q8, MF04S, MF01, Haikelite mt07S, GT mini, Lumintop odf20c …? I know, they all step down before advertised runtimes in turbo, and they all get hot as fresh shyt if you keep resetting turbo mode.
. . . That guy has some serious skills!!! :+1:
Wonder how many he crashed before he got that good??
False advertising if it only sustains turbo for 20 microseconds because that’s unusable.
Also false advertising if it is a direct drive flashlight and can only reach turbo on a freshly charged battery.
So if you have used the flashlight at any other mode from the last charge then you never can reach the rated turbo output.
Round 2 ???
A lot of crashes, many years of crashing, I know the guy. He builds and mods his own machines. He is out in CA, travels to East cost a few times a year to fly at many events.
Flying at night is why I need the bigger more powerful throwers.
This what I currently use, it runs ALL NIGHT never overheats or step down, however I am tethered to my car or generator, forget lipo packs. Want to replace this with a portable thrower that can match. Has more distance than MF04S/35, BLF GT/70, any Haikelite or whatever factory thrower Led flashlight that is out there currently.
I can only imagine the years it took to become that good! That was some very impressive flying!! :+1:
Thanks for sharing…. 
Well, look at reason why not possible to sustain ” turbo ” for long periods of time.
1. Dangerous. Extreme heat generated from so much output. All the heat sinks, fins can only diffuse heat so much. Unless a fan is added to help aid along with the other safety features of light non sustained drop down is required. Will cause FIRE or COMPLETE flashlight damage because electronic features ” DID NOT ” step down from continuous heat.
2. Safety. The light ” MUST ” step down from sustained high output to PREVENT serious burns or explosions due to generating high amounts of heat from light
3. The step down feature built in is EXCELLENT Engineering for both safety of light and person using light.
I would not call it ” BS ” but rather a safety feature in case of non sustained ” Turbo ” for long periods of time.
Personally I call a light with a sustained output of 100 lumen a 100 lumen light. Even if it has a 10k lumen turbo.
Personally I would be very satisfied with 1k sustained.
But still I see a big fat turbo as a bonus. I won’t use it often, but who cares it’s a free bonus.
What I don’t like is the deceptive advertising.
Stuff like “Max output 10k, max runtime 2 weeks”
It’s not a lie but we all know why they pick those numbers.
ANSI lumens are another example of that.
I bought a maglight with three D cells in it 7 years ago. It’s still as bright as when I bought it using the same cells!
How’s that for advertizing? I ‘forgot’ to mention I never use the light, so it’s no lie, but utterly useless information.
I’ve been wondering lately why we don’t see flashlights using heatpipes instead of blocks of copper. I suspect the biggest reason is the difficulty in fabrication and additional expense of the heat pipes themselves.
On the other hand, I’ve been planning to build a light using some old PC heatsinks that use heatpipes and widely spaced fins to hopefully have a passively cooled light that can sustain stupid amounts of output.
Did you ever try a blf gt?
That video reminds me of the videos where terrorists that blow themselves up while trying to build their bombs. :zipper_mouth_face: It’s just a matter of time before something breaks.
It wouldn’t be hard for a manufacturer to make an extrusion for a flashlight body that had provisions for heat pipes coming feom the head/pill… This however qould require a different method to attach the head or pill…
For those who have interest in DIY CNC, stepper motors are advertised at their stall torque… Which is somewhat useless you want your machine to remain stationary. Which also isn’t 100% sustainable because the stepper would overheat. The drives do have idle current reduction but that means loss of torque. The drives are also current limited and steppers rated for max current, and they can be overdriven or underdriven based on the drive and PSU uses - sound familiar?
The opposite is true with servomotors. Thet are rated at continuous rpm and power, and can peak 20-33% above rated specs for brief periods - turbo mode if you will. Of course with machinery once you get an axis moving it takes les and less power to keep it going at a desired speed, unlike a flashlight LED.
@prototype3a, it would not actually work well.
You need very large active thermal dissipation for heatpipes to be effective.
They do work with phones, since they don’t output as much power but at the levels we push our light, it is not sustainable.