BLF Interest List: EX3 High Current Beryllium Copper Silver Plated springs - Still selling my springs :)

welp missed out on 219Bs (impossible to find now imo) so I’m hoping these sst20s bring me at least within spitting distance :slight_smile:

@Barkuti, will send you the payments once I receive the LEDs.

@Sam, I took the picture like you wanted. And they fit fine.

Is there a chance that we will get springs and LEDs by the end of July?

Yes.

Will order the springs next week.

I personally can’t wait to get them, especially since the improvement is 20-25% over the 2nd gen while having the same good mechanical properties are the 1st gen springs.

In which way 2nd gen springs have worse mechanical properties versus 1st gen ones? Just the big spring due to some deformation?

Yeah, just the big spring.

See, from the feedback of some members, I decided to remove a coil from the large springs, along with making the top diameter smaller.

While making the top diameter smaller was a good idea for broader compatibility, what I forgot to think about during my calculations was that removing one coil while having a smaller top meant that more force had to be applied for compression, and since removing a coil meant more force per coil was being applied, well…

The spring deformation went from 0,9mm right down to 2,8mm, which was not very good.

The 25% improvement in conductivity was nice, but not worth that large deformation.

So, I took a lot more time on my hands to find a new way to improve the spring, which was hard and time consuming, but lead to these developments:

1. Could change the material to BeCu C17500 45% IACS. Was not going to happen for obvious reasons, being that mechanical properties are quite important.
2. Could change the material to BeCu C17550 60% IACS. However, cost would explode to stratosphere levels.
3. Finally, after a lot of research, and myself getting a new job, I found that electroplating a thick copper layer(20-25um) would result in the same performance boost of 20-25% of the large spring, but while preserving the goal of having good mechanical properties.

And that goal was met, and the improvement is actually even better than I intially predicted, since the conductivity boost of the 3rd Gen springs are applied to both sizes of springs.

TLDR: The 3rd Gen springs are a large overall improvement over all previous generations of springs.

That’s a lot of LEDs.

Yes of course.
Wait until you see how many springs I usually order. :slight_smile:

I should start shipping LEDs only orders next week.
I’ll try to do it as quickly as possible, and as well as possible of course.

I have received the SST-20 FD2 LEDs.
Will start shipping them Monday for the LED only orders.

I have also ordered the 3rd Generation BeCu springs.
Anyone interested in getting the 3rd Gen BeCu springs now, post your interest below.

Hey, BlueSwordM, would you consider making some shorter springs sometime? I was working on a light today, and was thinking of changing the springs to Blue™ springs, but the “small” spring from you was still a good bit taller than the Qlite driver’s stock spring. I was looking at my Astrolux S42 a few days ago, and the tail spring is particularly pitiful looking. But I can’t change it either, because it is very low profile, and I don’t have any springs that will fit in its place. Even a Qlite driver spring is taller.

That is some good advice. Would have to make some smaller springs one day.

However, you may be out of luck with the S42 spring.

Your only option is a bypass, since it’s a press-fit spring, and soldering to aluminium is well, you already know.

I’m not worried about the press fit of the S42 spring. I would just make a copper round piece and solder a short spring to it - if I had a short spring available.

Huh, do you have a special kind of flux for this?

Because soldering copper to aluminium is still very hard.

Hope you can do this though.

No, I will make a copper round that I can press fit in place of the spring. The new spring will be soldered to the copper round.

Recently I took a peek at available solder fluxes for steel, as I often solder to batteries. Found this strange and not expensive FNA (ФНА) dubbed flux flasks for sale:

  1. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Flux-FNA-NVR-used-for-soldering-of-aluminum-stainless-steel-nickel-copper/143061322482 from India.
  2. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Solder-Flux-FNA-for-hard-soldering-aluminum-steel-and-nickel-parts-25ml/232663002505 from Romania.
  3. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Solder-Flux-FNA-for-hard-soldering-aluminum-steel-and-nickel-parts-25ml/232663002505 from Latvia.

The compound is claimed to be effective on aluminium.

:-)

Edit.-

That flux called FNA (ФНА) is the same flux I use in batteries (Goot Super soldering flux, HWY-800, etc.) and works well on steel, nickel, and of course copper but I definitively won't say it is good for aluminum.

Thu, 06/20/2019 - 01:06

Barkuti, didn’t you already have some experimentation going on with trying to solder to Aluminum a while back? How did that turn out? I can’t remember.

I got FTKA/ФTKА and F61A/Ф61A fluxes back then, and experimented just a bit. Soldering over aluminum foil could be attained relatively easy. But what I originally had in mind was soldering to a chunk of heatsink and some hollow pill, and that was :facepalm: a whole different story. My attempts were mostly unsuccesful. I got some success on the heatsink by pre-heating it in an oil bath inside a frying pan, then soldering over some de-anodized and fluxed part of it. But overall never got really strong joints on the heatsink, I think that had to do with the heatsink alloy. The fluxes emit nasty fumes, and they may be hard on the iron's tip. Due to the overall difficulties I gave up on the matter at that point.

Maybe my bar was very high to start with. O:)

:-D

Thu, 06/20/2019 - 02:29

I’m in for:
10 SST FD2s

No more sorry, as I said in Post 147.

Only springs are currently available.

After the springs come in I might be in for a portion of whatever leftover you have, going to wait to order though