FW3A, a TLF/BLF EDC flashlight - SST-20 available, coupon codes public

@ ActiveAl…… He opens it up a bit to fit over XP-L emitters. This DOES NOT gave to be done for the XP-L HI.

Maybe sth from this thread HowTo: Modify Carclo Optics for XP-L Use--For $0.25
HD has a dome
HI is flat

Edit:
Massive advantage for drilling the optic. Cereal_killer explains it perfectly here: triple XP-L project, need your input. Problem solved?

That is neat!! Thanks for showing that TK…… :slight_smile:

The original XP-L doesn’t quite fit into Carclo triple optics, because the dome is slightly too big. It’s a really close fit though, so the optic can be expanded a little to fit.

This is completely irrelevant for XP-L HI and LH351D though.

… and a few more pictures to show the size, color, and box:



Sizes and colors… The lights shown are, from left to right:

  • Okluma DC2
  • Reylight Pineapple (1xAA)
  • SK-68 clone (1xAA)
  • FW3A proto4
  • FW3A proto2
  • CNQG Brass Beauty (original), my smallest 1x18650 light by volume
  • Reylight Dawn
  • XinTD C8 V4 (bottom)


I’m also hoping there will be a diffuser cone made for it, because I like those and they work well with candle mode. I’m using a Fenix AOD-S now, but it’s not ideal. Here are a few of my lights with their party hats on:


Ideally, I’d like the FW3A diffuser to be nearly identical to the Olight S-Mini diffuser, except scaled up to fit.

One other nice thing about the FW3A is that it doesn’t cover any of the optic. Most Carclo triples obscure the outer edge of the optic, but the FW3A lets all the light through un-hindered:

… and just to keep all the pics in the same post, here’s that shiny button animation again:

Thanks for the pics & info TK. It looks as though most things are coming together fairly well…. hopefully that will continue. :+1:

Do I really need to insert the Futurama meme of Fry screaming “TAKE MY MONEY” ???

I think I just drooled on myself a little. It looks so nice! :smiley: Thanks for keeping us updated. I really appreciate it.

In the OP it says “current status: anodization is dark gray”… now, I can’t speak for others of course, but to me dark gray would be something like graphite (or maybe a bit lighter than that) - in the pics it looks like it’s closer to silver, kinda like a middle gray actually lol.

Did you swap in clear optics btw? Or did yours not come with a frosted medium spot?

Have to admit, I actually prefer the dark grey.

Whatever color gray Proto 4 is, in TK’s picture above; looks just fine to me. :+1:

Both colors look good to me. What really has me excited is seeing it next to the SK-68, and realizing it uses an 18650. It almost seems like magic.

but which color will we get, the darker or the lighter one ?

Only time will tell for sure I suppose…… :wink: … When we open our boxes we will know with 100% accuracy. :smiley:

We are getting the darker color. The lighter color (prototype 2) had issues with faint stripes being visable.

They changed to the darker color (prototype 4) and the stripes are gone. The new color is very consistent.

okay i see, i actually prefer the darker eventho it wouldnt matter which hey used . its crazy how small this light is, compared to that sk68 light more or less the same size i would never guessed this light uses 18650 if i didnt know about it before.

Darker, like Proto4; good!! :+1:

You are the luckiest receiver of all FW3A receivers! I wish that was the X-L HI version available on the production run.

4000K is my preference, and the 219B is still one of the top two nicest tints in that temp. The 219B is extremely consistent in my experience, and all the XPL-HI 4000K I’ve used have been slightly better or just slightly worse. The HI’s are really consistent for Cree’s.

We asked for dark grey, though what I received is more of what I’d call a medium grey. I think it still looks good though, even though it’s a bit lighter than expected.

I don’t have any 10511 optics right now, but I ordered some. So I’ve been using the two closest until then — 10508 and 10507. Those are what I have in the pictures.

I know, right? I’m not sure if the SK-68 is as widely-known these days as it used to be, but it was a lot of people’s first modern LED light… and the FW3A is almost exactly the same size. But the FW3A puts out about 50 times as much light, has 5X as much battery capacity, has a much nicer general-purpose beam, and has feature-rich firmware instead of just 1-mode or high-low-strobe.

Darker.

In this case, it actually makes my 219B-4000K light look slightly green. It’s quite rosy. That’s just about right for me though.

Maybe after the initial batches are done, they could make a 5A-tint XP-L HI model. Or SST-20. Or whatever else people want. For now though, I just want to get the original project done.

There was a poll about this a while back, basically yes/no for each optional “blip” in the ramp, and I went with whichever ones had more yays than nays. IIRC, that worked out to 1x7135, 8x7135, and ramp ceiling. But in the default config, those last two are the same.

I’ve been tempted to turn off the blips entirely, and have turned them off in the builds for some other lights, but the FW3A is still configured according to the poll results.

I’m just curious about the “blips”…

For now, which flashlights with Anduril have that blip? and which don’t?

I think the BLF Q8 and Sofirn Q8, Emisar D4S has that blip to signify crossing-over from the fully-regulated to partly-FET-driven mode.
But I don’t think I noticed a ‘blip’ on the Fireflies PL47 or E07.
Is that right?

Yes, I think so.

The “blip” simply turns off the emitters for 8ms when it passes a specific level.