I understand why people appreciate magnets in lights but would also rather have a choice.
I do not carry magnets on my person or in any bag that my wallet may end up being in after one erased some of the magnetic strips on my credit cards (it took a second occurrence before I figured out what was causing the issue) and they also alter the reading and accuracy of your compass even from quite a distance away (but this is only a problem for people who use maps and compasses).
Yeah, I certainly wouldn’t demand a magnet be the default, I am 100% fine with that being a separate extra cost when ordering. I just want the option to be there, basically. The deep carry clip I would really just like a choice when ordering since they have them available, instead of having to pay extra for that separately.
Yeh, most magnets are a simple Nd-magnet disc that sprays magnetism all over the place.
What you need is a shield or guide, like stick-on grounding magnets for welding. Got one face of the magnet that sticks to the piece directly, and a cup that goes around it stuck to the other face, so the field only “jumps the gap”.
The magnet in the Lumintop "Tool AA 2.0" optional twist tail cap is mounted under a removable tail cap battery spring and replacing the magnet with a spacer is easy (I used a button from an old shirt for the spacer).
The "removable spring design" while not ideal for high current lights would most likely function adequately in the proposed AA/14500 compatible "Sofirn SP10S BLF edition with Andúril". I do not have access to a Sofirn SP10S and do not know how the tail cap is currently constructed.
The current tail cap is very thin, probably not enough room to add a decent magnet. For the SC31b, the optional magnetic tail cap is thicker to provide room for the magnet.
If SP10S Anduril version is allowed to only work with 14500 battery, it is easy to fulfill. But it has to work with both AA and 14500 battery, it takes time.
I personally am fine with 14500 only. There isn’t really anything out there like this even with 14500 only. I’d hate to see this project fizzle out because the AA requirement is too hard to get working.
Adding AA support would still be a good update down the road if you could keep working on it while producing a 14500 only version in the meantime.
A BLF-approved user interface for a AA compatible driver is one of the grails of BLF for many years, I would not easily like to trade that for another li-ion only driver, even when that saves months. I would be happy to still wait a bit if I know that Anduril+AAcompatibility will eventually happen.