The Wuben TO50R HC is a 21700 quad with USB charging, a boost driver, and 90 CRI LH351Ds. Zebralight also uses them and has their lights made in China.
But Zebralight has its official headquarters in the US, and Wuben lights usually arenāt cheap unless you get them from BLF group buys. Neal and Lumintop may not have access to the same kind of supply chains they do. Sofirn, on the other hand seems to me to have much more in common with Lumintop as a company. It would surprise me if there are things Sofirn can get with relative ease that Lumintop cannot.
Itās definitely nice that companies like Lumintop pay more attention to enthusiast groups like BLF. What we get may not be perfect, but itās a whole lot better than whatās available elsewhere.
I got a surprise visit from DHL with a FW3A sample. Iām still testing it, but here are some initial notesā¦
The good:
Everything seems to work fine so far.
The optic is the correct type.
The spring hasnāt had anything flake off like in the previous sample.
The driver spring is slightly shorter to accommodate slightly longer cells.
The driver appears to be at the correct depth this time.
Button-top unprotected cells fit. I tried one 66.8 mm long and it was fine.
The driver and tail PCBs appear to have been upgraded from a green board with silver-colored traces to a purple board with copper traces. Itās also really clean and has extra labels on it, while the previous board was fairly dirty and somewhat damaged.
The dark-colored clip doesnāt use black paint like on a SK-68 or a SWM V11R. It seems to be a different type of finish, like it was oiled and heat-treated or something like that. It looks like polished hematite, or perhaps smoked chrome or gunmetal chrome. I donāt know how durable it is, but it looks nice.
The bad:
The clip ring has expanded from 25.5 mm to 26.1 mm in diameter, so it sticks out a little. I already asked about changing this, but it sounds like the clips have already been produced so itās too late to change.
Other:
The tail is not glued.
The clip is a bit more stiff than the earlier versions.
The driver is still very slightly off center, but apparently not enough to effect anything.
The driver retaining ring on mine seems pretty stuck so I havenāt been able to get it out to look at the top side of the driver. I probably just need a better tool though.
The button is somehow even clickier now than in the previous sample. The feeling has really improved a lot since early prototypes.
Itās not perfect, but itās pretty good. Unless something goes wrong in testing (like if other sample units donāt work), it seems like itās probably ready to ship.
Lumintop seems to get it pretty right when theyāre collaborating with hobbyists. When they do stuff on their own, it doesnāt always make sense. The new EDC05C, for example (measurements by zeroair):
I cannot imagine any reason for this to be a 12 volt light. 500 lumens from a 14500 is doable using most 3V emitters - a single E21A would have worked for that. It doesnāt even maintain full, or near-full output when the battery is low. Points for using E17As though, at least assuming theyāre high-CRI E17As.
But it seems like the design of that light was essentially random. Perhaps the company is run by a genetic algorithm?
Anyone want to speculate why they made the clip ring wider? I canāt imagine itās literally just a random decisionā¦ maybe they were afraid itās too thin and might break in some units when the clip is put under a lot of stress, especially when they canāt guarantee the quality of the steel is top-notch for every clip
Thatās great news TK, thanks for the update.
Is the hole in the end of the clip on your sample? Iām not a fan but itās not a deal breaker at all, there are more important checkboxes that this light comfortably ticks for me so send out the order PMās
The only thing I can think of that would expand the clip ring is to increase the strength of the clip arm. Maybe they realized that if you put some good leverage on the clip arm as if you were fighting the light off your pocket it had a chance of bending both the arm and the actual clip ring.
I agree itās not very visually appealing compared to a flush ring but in my experience a mfg who increases the size of a metal component is doing so at their cost rather than to save cost. TK noted the additional strength of the new clip and Iām thinking thatās got to be due to the additional ring size?
It very well could have not involved any overt decision. Keep in mind that although it is easily noticeable in the picture, and Iām sure will be easy to feel, the growth Toykeeper measured is only 0.3mm (0.012ā) per side - equivalent to the thickness of 6 sheets of paper.
If theyāre sending out a CAD pattern to a vendor without tightly controlling the tolerance, the vendor may err on the side of providing too much material, especially with as thin as I expect the ring is. Or the supplier may have just ignored a specified tolerance.
Even in the US Iāve had suppliers miss or ignore tolerances they didnāt think were important.
Sofirn had trouble with the clip supplier for the C01, by the way.