I don’t understand most of what you two are talking about. My simple minded thought was the spring wasn’t allowing top of tube to make contact with head. The alkaline I used was a bit shorter.
I dont understand what youre talking about either… LOL
but if it works, it does not matter whether I understand
and I will still buy you a virtual Beer for helping nottawhackjob get his lights working. It does sound like the silver springs are preventing the body tube from reaching the pill
Hey Arow, I don’t blame ya at all here. If it wasn’t for that lucky one unit that had that chip corner pre-cracked down to its gnat’s a*s base this wouldn’t make sense fer sure. Butt I left in that stiff stock spring just as it came from the factory and lo and behold it now worked with an Eneloop. I know……
I hope I can explain something better here since ya have a Ti2 in hand.
If you remove the head from those where you’ve shortened the springs I bet you’ll find that “F” stamped black chip has one corner that’s at least partially caved-in or completely sliced off.
The combination of shortening the spring AND the F chip’s corner slight cave-in allowed as you say for the negative driver ring to eventually make contact with the tube’s negative end and the batt positive anode to also make contact with the driver ’s positive button. One without the other will likely not let these Ti2’s work. That little stock spring is deceptively stiff.
(Except in the one exception I show immediately above where the chip’s corner is completely shaved off down to its nitty gritty base. Then the stock spring will work with an Eneloop. In that case there is no chip corner interference with the positive batt anode and the negatives can complete their connection.) As you’ll see on your heads the chip corner is likely just caved in enuff and then WITH the shortened spring everything works as it should.
Nonetheless your solution still ends up as the simplest and most practical.
I still do not understand how the spring is the issue… but there are a couple of differences…
I took the silver spring out of my Ti3 and put it in the i3e.
I suspect the Ti2 and Ti3 use the same silver spring.
The i3e works fine with the silver spring from the Ti3, and also fine with the gold spring the i3e came with. This suggests to me, that the spring is not the problem… but then… I cannot deny all your reports that cutting the spring solved the problem, without chipping any corners off the driver components.
fwiw, the silver spring is Not fully concentric, the bottom wind sits on top of another, creating a 2 wire thickness when fully compressed.
The silver spring is also stiffer, it uses thicker wire… (and the silver spring is also shorter, but I dont think that is relevant)
otoh, the gold spring compresses fully concentrically, to a single wire thickness.
and it is easier to compress.
I do not know if the thickness of one extra wire, is the cause of the problem with the silver spring in a Ti2, it is not a problem with the Olight i3e. However, cutting off part of the bottom of the Silver spring, would eliminate the overlapping wire. That suggests that there is a logical reason for why the arow55 fix works to solve a possible issue with the body tube not reaching the pill. But the arow55 spring cut does not address the component that gets chipped because it sits closer to the brass button on the Ti2, than on the i3e…
(An update on ThruNite’s response to my issues and referencing this thread which they are now monitoring. This is now elevated to engineering. They’re not gonna like what they’ll find. )
Regarding the spring wire not being truly concentric on the silver I think you’re spot-on. This would help explain why cutting off the lower coils made a difference too.
Since we know the chip interference is also part of the contact problem there’s another little wrinkle here………
If and when the ‘F’ chip is even just slightly ‘chipped’ off at its closest to the brass button corner the batt’s positive anode is now effectively ‘cocked’ to one side of the brass button yet it still makes contact. This slight cocking at the brass button end translates accordingly to the batt negative end due to the non-parallel distance to gap law, where the gap increases accordingly. Soooooo…………we have two things going on here. At the batt negative it’s now not quite pressing vertically concentric to the stock spring. This causes the spring to cock as well. Now we have binding and friction and that would explain why the stock spring doesn’t give enuff to also allow the negative driver ring and the tube negative to connect.
When the ‘F’ chip corner in my one unit example above was essentially completely sliced off at its base the positive batt anode made full flat contact with the brass button and consequently concentric vertical compression occurred and the stock spring was now able to allow clear non-binding travel for the two negatives points to connect. This was the mechanical ‘nuance’ I briefly mention to Arow above.
If it is true that the positive on the battery is not making flush contact with the button on the driver, then your cocked theory makes sense
in fact, even without the positive post being cocked
the silver spring is prone to being pushed sideways instead of straight down
in my compression test of the silver spring it was difficult to compress without the spring getting cocked sideways… for a couple of reasons, one is that the bottom coil is stacking under the coil above it, creating a cocked base of the spring. The other reason is that the spring is so stiff, the top of it wants to move sideways instead of down…
so yes, I do think the spring is part of the issue, and I do think cutting a bottom coil makes sense
anyway, for the price of the light, and my consulting fees to solve the problem… I think were over budget… lol!
“……so yes, I do think the spring is part of the issue, and I do think cutting a bottom coil makes sense
anyway, for the price of the light, and my consulting fees to solve the problem… I think were over budget… lol!”
Yeah and cutting off the bottom coil part and using it instead makes more sense than using the narrower top part purely from the fact that it falls right out of the tube everytime ya change the batt.
I was thinking the cut should be where the bottom wire is crossing under the second coil:
my thinking is that the goal is to prevent spring wires stacking on top of each other, while also maintaining enough girth to stay stuck in the hole…
with due respect
I think the idea that the tail of the battery gets cocked by the F Chip is a non Starter… I am unable to cause any binding when using the base of a toothbrush to push the battery sideways down into the tube… its just as easy, or hard, as when I push straight down.
I remain convinced that the F Chip is too close to the button, and any spring machinations are just superstitious oblations. Meanwhile the real fix is that the head of the eneloop creates room for itself, after repeated insertions past the offending F Chip.
Hmmmm. Ok we’ll just havta agree to disagree. Second para we agree. :laughing:
PS. Pushing a toothbrush flat ‘sideways’ by hand against the batt is not the same as cocking the batt positive anode housed in a rigid threaded head and then chip cornered trapped as well. All yer doing is shifting vertical concentricity pressure sorta evenly over to one side of the tube.
I agree the toothbrush pushes in a different way than grabbing the positive post in a pair of pliers…
but the way I think about it, the body tube does not have enough lateral clearance to allow any significant deviation of the battery tube alignment… the moment arm is too long to permit significant displacement
all that to say… speculation runs rampant… given the dearth of evidence
Im just happy for you not to need to return your Ti2 lights
the results speak for themselves
even if I dont understand the reason… it works… so… enjoy!
Got mine today, and 9 of 10 had the screwup. To make it easier on others, I want to post the easiest method of modifying them to work. Use a long wood screw of sufficient length and diamater to screw into the top of the spring and pull out the spring. Cut about 3/4 of the bottom round off the spring with diagonal wire cutters. With the screw still in the top of the spring,start it down the battery tube turning backwards until started. Hold the upper rounds of the spring with needle nose pliers to remove the screw. Then use the battery to push in the spring the rest of the way. I have a theory as to what the issue is, but that does not matter. The first 2 took me 30 minutes, the last 7 about a minute each. Figuring out how to remove the spring and reinsert it was what took so long on the first 2. All ten work perfect now. Thanks for alerting me to the fix, and I hope the breakdown in a means of removing, and reinserting the spring helps.
My forceps and tweezers were too wide to reach the spring through that tiny battery tube, but the long wood screw worked really well. Without the Arow55 and the other posts, I would have had no clue as to what to do to fix them though. Who first came up with that fix is brilliant. I would have likely just filed them in the circular file bin if not for reading this first. It just would not have been worth the hassle to return them. Many who buy them are not on this forum, so I feel for them. That issue might be why these were so inexpensive. I think Thrunite had to be aware of the problem.
