I will say this Eva Z. From customer service has always been helpful and have sent me FREE parts…holsters and a battery tube(threads stripped) for my TN42.
They have been more than fair and Very responsive and expedient at that.
I am interested to see how she responds to my email regarding TN42 V2 and its ill advised proprietary battery.
I’m still a little unsure that a special battery is needed. The way it sounds to me is the TN batteries have a bit of specialized construction with having pos/neg terminals on the button top end. Maybe that construction is for magnetic charging from one end one a special charger outside of this light. But the user said his Orbtronic protected cells did not work and unprotected Samsungs worked when magnet was put on top. Basically, what I’m hearing is that button top with tall enough button is all that is needed. Is this not the case, or does this light actually require a specialized cell beyond a sufficient button top on the positive terminal?
It is the case that all that is needed is another button top protected battery with a tall enough button. The issue is that I have yet to find one. I think the removal of the plastic insulator which is held in the head with three screws might in fact allow the use of orbtronic protected button top batteries, but since that will kill my warranty I am reluctant to try. My question is, why should the purchaser have to modify a light to use readily available batteries? Why was the existence of this issue not made public in the advertising. I do not like the propritary nature of the olight batteries either, but at least there was a purpose for having the negative contact on the positive side for their magnetic charging and remote triggering. On this light, the negative area on the positive side only contacts a plastic insulator. It appears this was done solely to make the battery proprietary. Thank God I did not pay full price for this light, but I still feel the failure to point out other button top batteries like orbtronic will not work was disengenuous on Thrunite’s part. Had I been aware of the proprietary nature of the batteries, I would have passed on this light.
No it is not that rare, but none of the three similar proprietary batteries in these 3 pictures would work due to shorter center button. I think if I remove the pastic insulator held by 3 phillips screws and add insulators to the button side of these idiotic thrunite batteries both the thrunite and orbtronic protected cell might work. The plastic insulator ring is maybe a mm taller than the brass ring conductor. Therefore the button needs to be about a mm taller than the rest of the battery on that side. Otherwise the plastic insulator ring prevents the button from touching the brass conductor.
Update…removed the three screws that hold the insulator in the head and removed the insulator. Screws must be re-inserted because they also hold the PCB. Next I used plastic sticker insulators like those used for 18650 button top batteries when re-wrapping them, to totally cover the problematic negative washer on the positive side of the Thrunite batteries. With that simple mod of both the light and the battery, I can now use the thrunite batteries I further modified, or the orbtronic protected button top 21700 batteries. It is quite a simple mod if you have the right size battery end insulators. Both the Thrunite and Orbtronic batteries can also be charged in the light, or in a charger that charges 21700 protected batteries. Easy fix, but for a problem that should never have existed.
I wasn’t talking about these being replacements for the stock batteries, I was explaining how the negative terminal on the positive side can be obviously seen from the product picture.
I can 100% verify that at least orbtronic batteries now work. The white plastic 18650 end insulators are super cheap and sticker on 1 side…bought from imrbatteries.com for 99 cents for a 20 insulator sheet. I have a bunch because I re-wrap batteries if damaged. Re-wraps are also available there. Having vaped for years, I have become super educated on all forms of batteries. The orbtronic batteries are likely samsung 50E re-wraps with orbtronics adding the protection circuits. Take my word for it, never ever use unprotected batteries in this or any light that has common positive and negative termination points. Doing so is very dangerous. If just one cell shorts internally, it can cause thermal runaway on the other 3 cells even while the light is off. A short becomes a 0 ohm resistance load and will draw dangerously high amps from all remaining batteries once that short completes the circuit. Watch a video to see what these batteries do when vented….it is scary!!!
Now that photos are available, it looks like this whole MUST USE PROPRIETARY BATTERIES thing was overblown and pitchforks were brought out too early. All this light needs are button top 21700s and the black plastic ring removed. If normal 21700s are too short, then a set of matching protected ones from anywhere should work.
Yes the light needs a mod to take all button top 21700s. No, removing and replacing three philips head screws is not difficult
While I agree the mod is simple, it is still a negative that it was designed to only use the Thrunite modified batteries. There was no good reason for having both positive and negative posts on the button side of the battery, which necessitated the insulator ring in the first place. I do not think the fact that I could fix an issue that thrunite created in their ill advised design should negate the fact that it was a bad design as shipped. I fixed the issue, I posted the photos, so exactly how was the proprietary battery issue overblown? I suppose you can credit Thrunite in not glueing the insulator ring in to make the mod more difficult. They could however have used normal button top 21700 batteries without the insulator ring to begin with. Since the negative terminal on the positive battery side only contacts the insulator, it has no reason to be there. The only reason I can come up with is to cause most consumers to buy replacement batteries from them at inflated prices. The majority of consumers will never see my fix, so the light as shipped is using proprietary batteries. Not every purchaser of these flashlights are on this forum.