^ neither for me. proprietary cell design is a deal breaker for me.
This is my first time hearing about it, but I think your correct. Here’s a diagram.
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Interesting, though not novel. For example, Olight uses this setup with proprietary cells where positive and negative contacts are both on the top of the cell and a single negative contact at the tail facilitates charging as well as signaling for the tail switch.
You’ve seen olight make tail e-switch?
I’ve only seen them use the special batteries to facilitate the magnetic tail charging. It used an e-switch by the head.
Granted, I don’t know all the olight models, but I’d like to know more about any tail e-switch model lights.
Yep, the newer 21700 models use this design. Warrior X Pro has a two-stage tail e-switch and M2R Pro uses the same tail switch in addition to the e-switch on the head.
There are some older models that also use a tail e-switch but have the tube-in-body design.
I am not sure if this has been answered anywhere but my FW3A is going berserk. After lending it.
I can’t configure or reset anything. I sort of recognize that while ON and holding the e-switch it is doing step ramping but that’s about it.
I can’t find any hint how to reset the settings to default.
If it’s an older model it won’t have a reset. Just change one thing at a time. Is it in muggle mode? Get out of that. Then change to smooth ramping. After that you might need to reset your ramp levels.
If you have a newer model which does have reset, loosen head to cut power. Hold down button while tightening head and keep it pressed. I think it should blink or something to tell you it’s reset.
I can’t figure out if it’s an older model. I got it a year ago. The loosening head reset didn;t seem to work. Tom E posted recently that there is no way for you to figure out what version of Anduril you have on you flashlight. Maybe I will make a suggestion.
ZeroAir reviewed the FW3E last month - https://zeroair.org/2020/06/04/lumintop-fw3e-flashlight-review/
Interesting. Before production, we tried to get Lumintop to fix the inner sleeve issue… by improving manufacturing tolerances enough to match what Fritz made. Getting all the right parts consistently in the right place is generally sufficient to fix the issues. However, they were unable to do that, so it ended up being common to have things out of alignment or even have a driver shelf which wasn’t big enough for the driver.
So I guess this was one way to solve it. The proprietary cell is a deal-breaker though. Also, the clip wasn’t adjusted to fit the new length… and if there’s no inner tube, the entire light’s diameter could be reduced.
In any case, would be nice if they’d update the firmware. From zeroair’s review, it looks like it’s running a pretty old version. 
A year ago is probably the older version.
Follow my advice. If you dont know how to do those things, just ask.
You can also make a video showing what it’s doing.
It probably doesn’t have a factory reset function… but if it does, it would be accessed by a “13H” action. In other words, click the button 13 times, but hold the last one for a few seconds.
But it probably doesn’t have that, because the factory reset function was added a month or two after the FW3A was launched, and Lumintop rejected the firmware updates I sent.
The 13 clicks thing is unique for the FW lights, right? The “hold the button while connecting power” is for more conventional e-switch lights, right? I’m always getting these mixed up. Lol
The 13H thing is currently only used on lights with tail e-switches… because on those, it’s usually impossible to hold the button while connecting power. For the FW3A in particular, power is connected long before the button.
I’ve been thinking of adding 13H as a standard thing on all lights though, for consistency.
If they were smart IMO, they’d make a proprietary 21700 standard, and then an adapter sleeve to make an flat top 18650 work
There is no way to physically make an adapter sleeve work with the FW3E. It is a very unique driver layout.
I have read thru the majority of this thread I have three FW3a’s I have taken them all apart and put them together again and they all work. Today I received a 18350 copper tube and inner tube the from Neal and I cannot get it to work. With any of the switches. The o ring is in place I put on the tail cap first tight and then screw on the head sometimes I get the connection flash others not. The switches all work on each other but not with the short copper tube. I dont know what to try next any ideas ?
Chris
I don’t know much about the short copper tubes but you might want to verify they are designed to work with your particular tail switches. There was a design change when they added a retaining ring to hold the switch assembly in place. They had to alter the battery tube threads in order to get them to work.
You can test if your tail switches are making contact. Check this vid at the 2 min mark.
Still no luck both short tubes I have,al and cu look identical. The al one works the cu not. Dimensions are within .001 of each other in length and all.
Chris
I have two short copper tubes - one works fine the other does not work.
EDIT - The one tube works one any FW3 the other does not work on any light.