@ funkychateau…. You do realize the FW3A is selling now don’t you? It is to late for should-a, wood-a, could-a…. it is done & “it is fit”.
There are plenty of batteries that will fit this light & it is in no way, as you mentioned; “crippled” if some batteries don’t fit.
There are many lights that not all cells will fit. The Fireflies E07 is but one example. Just because every cell will not fit every light does not necessarily make a light ‘bad’.
Zebralight doesn’t really support button top cells. Even if you can cram it in there, the current pogo pin configuration often won’t make contact with the terminal.
Funkychateau, the triple FW3A was designed to be a poor mans custom hot rod, it was known from the get-go that a protected cell would not power it to design specs so it was not taken into consideration to make it accept these lesser performing cells.
The Dodge Demon Hellcat doesn’t come with back seats. By design. for those that want it for it’s maximum power delivery this is perfect, for those that want back seats there are other models.
My ZL SC-600 II works equally well with flat and button tops. It even works with several varieties of protected button-tops. Perhaps there are other models that don’t.
My point was that’s it’s simple to accommodate both flat and button-top (unprotected) batteries in a single design. I don’t think anyone would dispute that the D4/D1 series does this nicely.
Those are the old style. Newer ones such as the SC64c (even with its tailcap spring) can’t fit a button top battery. Just tested with a 66.3mm long 30Q.
Dale, I don’t follow this “protected” line of reasoning. Most protected cells would be electrically inadequate, so why would anyone bother trying to accommodate them? I know I’ve never argued for such, and I doubt anyone else has either.
I hope it hasn’t come across as being too argumentative. All I’ve really been doing is asking why the tube and springs shouldn’t have been made a small increment longer to guarantee that both common styles of unprotected high-drain cells would work. Like the Emisar flashlights, for example.
I know the design is finalized. I have my order code. At this point, I’m just bantering with folks who keep explaining to me why they considered accommodating both battery styles to be such a bad idea two years ago, LOL!
Supporting button tops is a poor choice because they shouldn’t exist in the first place IMHO. Only AA/14500 and AAA/10440 lights should support both due to the disposable and NiMH cells being exclusively button top.
All e-cigs I know of really only support flat tops and any commonality between that HUGE market and flashlights is a win for li-ion flashlights.
They did think of it. They incorporated it into the design, and it works. The FW3A can use flat-top or button-top cells, as long as they don’t have a protection circuit added.
Button-top cells work in:
Proto1
Proto2
Production lights (proto5)
Button-top cells don’t work in:
Proto4
… and the status of proto3 is unknown, because everyone who received one disappeared before reporting results.
The proto4 lights didn’t work with button-top cells because of a manufacturing error which put the driver in the wrong place. It was the reason why proto4 wasn’t approved for production… but it has been fixed.
Hopefully there won’t be any more uncertainty about it.