Fenix and Nitecore have more costs involved and have to charge a higher price to make profit. You can ignore their batteries.
Pretty much everyone on this form that is actually enjoying flashlight has a battery charger or several battery chargers and just regular OEM type batteries.
I’m going to ask around see if I can find a good place for you to buy a couple basic batteries and basic charger.
Lithium ion batteries can be ruined if their voltage should ever drop below 2.5 volts. The chemical structure breaks down. So any type of small drain on the battery can be a concern. A 3mA drain on a fully charged 3,000mah battery would take over a month to drain down. So it’s not too big a concern as you might think. Just don’t leave it stuck to a bare metal object for several days.
When people test flashlights they always test them for parasitic drain. Most people also will give the battery caps a twist in order to break the connection and eliminate parasitic drain when they’re storing their flashlights. If you’re really concerned about it you can get a protected battery.
There’s a lot of trade-offs with protected cells, so if a protected cell will fit in your light and it’s reduced amperage is not an issue, you might consider getting a protected cell. It’s a battery with a little added on circuit that shuts off power if the battery voltage gets too high, too low or draws too much power/short circuits. Some might even shut off if the battery gets too hot.
Protected cells tend to cost a lot more, are longer than normal and have a maximum amperage output typically around 5A to 7A, but some are higher.
Since you need at least a 10A cell it means you need a protection circuit of at least 10A. There are very few choices. One a company in the US. They offer a 20A circuit on a good OEM high capacity cell. LG MJ1 Protected
Its fairly cheap, but you need to make sure your light can fit a 70mm long battery.
Another is this Imalent 3000mah cell with a 15A protection circuit for $20. It is also 70mm long.
I see Manker makes a 18650 cell with built in charging. You should ask them if it will fit the MC13 and if you can buy it separately.
Nitecore and Fenix do make some protected 18650 with built in charging and they are really expensive. Maybe these are what you were referring to earlier. The problem I see with these 2 brands is they don’t say how much current will trip the protection circuit. Is it 5A, 10A, 15A? I don’t know. If you can find out, they might be worth buying.
Thanks for taking the time to type that all up to explain to me.
Its occurring to me that this might just be a little too advanced for me. I dont think i’m going to be able to understand a lot of what might need to be understood to own and operate these flashlights.
I just had my second OlightS2RBatonII crap out on me today…
Olight has good warrantees. Contact them to get it fixed or replaced.
For people who are not into lights, like my family members, I usually get them a light like the Eagle Eye X2R and put a protected battery in it. It has a mechanical switch so when it’s off there is no drain on the battery. You plug a usb cable into the light to recharge. It’s pretty simple.
Sorry about the bad luck, having two S2R going out seems really unlucky.
What’s the maximum amount of current I could run through the FET in a BLF A6 driver? I’m building an S21A with triple LH351D LEDs powered by a high drain 21700 cell. If I’ve understood the relevant graphs, its likely to be drawing around 15A on full blast. Is this going to melt the driver?
I use short piece of 8 ga as that’s what I had handy. You don’t want it to be too long or too skinny because it’ll just add resistance. Being that thick though, does make it a little hard to bend and work with. So if I’m doing an amp draw on a smaller light where the amperage is fairly weak, I have a second wire that’s like 14 ga and a little longer that’s a lot easier to bend around and hold into place. When it comes to lower amperages a little extra resistance is no big deal.
What would the application be for this good alternative? Are you talkin about from the driver to the LED or do you mean for taking amp draws?
Thanks for your reply Jason! :+1:
I was also thinking that 8AWG would be a good “thickness”, despite the thoughness when bending it!
My use will be to check the draw in my lights, I don’t have many “hot rods” so maybe I can use a thinner (12AWG) wire? Or that would be too less?
The alternative I was referring to was using a different kind of wire, like “single core electric wire”, in copper of course. The purpose would be the same, measuring battery drain.
Wait, are you going to be measuring high amp draws or super low parasitic drain?
All of the stuff I talked about above concerns the higher amp draws. If you’re going to be measuring very low currents such as parasitic drain I would not recommend the clamp style ammeter. For that I use test leads on my DMM. The clamp style meters are great four typical amp draws but when it comes to super low amperage it just doesn’t have enough accuracy.
I don’t think single-core or any type of solid copper wire is a good choice for amp draws because you really need to get a good connection on both the battery and on the edge of the battery tube. Having the soft copper strands spread out helps to make a better electrical connection.
With the clampmeter I would be measuring higher amps, putting the wire through the “clamps”. Like my triples or quads on Turbo, not the low amps or parasitic drain I wanna see how much my Convoy S6 triple with Luxeon V and a driver w/ Bistro HD OTSM is pulling from the Sony VTC6, as example.
I have a UT201E clampmeter on the way to me so I will be able to use it for that purpose.
Then I will try to order a (better) DMM to read low amps and parasitic drain.
Thanks for the complementary reply! I understand what you say, so I’ll stick to the other type of wire with soft copper strands
How can I calculate the approximate output of a light from the Amps it is pulling?
Saying: I have light with 3xLuxeon V 4000K that is pulling ~21.1A from a 18650 cell.
How can I calculate without a luxmeters/integrated spheres?
Excellent guess. Exactly what I used to do. Figure about 70% efficiency between led tests and an actual flashlight.
Try to find a test from a known person here on the forum and the same emitter and color temp. Its not gonna be real accurate, but it gets you in the ball park.
Always use clamp meter for these amp draw tests.
If a FET driver, keep in mind the battery model plays a role in the amperage.
Thanks Robin Dobbie and JasonWW for your replies.
That seems a good way to calculate that!
These are all estimations of course, but I was wondering how much lumens it would produce.
That is a Convoy S6 I did with a FET driver from Lexel w/ Bistro HD OTSM, 3 Luxeon V installed in an led4power alluramic MCPCB, spring bypassed, copper spacer from kiriba-ru, forward clicky switch and Carclo 10511.
That thing gets HOT real quick anf puts out a small wall of light, so I was wondering how much it would be putting with that Amp draw (which will be different when using the switch and not the thick copper cable I used).
Thanks again for the replies!
At thefreeman, I went to a local store and got a relatively thick cable (4mm outter diameter), made of copper inner strands thicker than AWG inner strands.
It will work
I wanna see how much my Convoy S6 triple with Luxeon V and a driver w/ Bistro HD OTSM is pulling from the Sony VTC6, as example.
, a good bronze spring is arround 3~4 mΩ for reference.