FW3A style light with Rotary Interface

What are the chances we would ever see an FW3A with an HDS style rotary interface?

Personally, I think it would be very cool if the quality would be good and price under $50. Possibly under $75.

Rotary as HDS or infinite brightness via magnet as in RRT01?

Rotary is only HDS…

Fenix has a largish 21700 rotary that looks pretty nice. I want one but it would be financially silly since I have no use for a monster light like that.

That shop has a 20% off sale this weekend so it’s just under $100, shipped in CONUS.

An American company that likes to sue other companies has patents for some designs of rotary flashlight switches. That may be a reason why we don’t see too many of them.

I did not realize they have a patent on the rotary.

the problem with rotary is, it takes 2 hands to change light levels

I have 3, all used with one hand…0_0

ok well i can;t do that.

I have 1 rotary light (a small one) and 1 handed operation is quite easy. It looks easy on the Surefire light (Minimus headlamp) that used it, but I haven’t tried. On bigger lights I could imagine it being more difficult.

When I posted about the Olight i1R EOS keychain EDC that’s a twisty, a few people were like “Meh, not one handed, that’s a pass.” I’m like, seriously? I activate mine one handed all the time. I guess they forget that such a light is anchored to something larger, like a keychain, which serves as an assist with twisting. So easy…

But if this one has a very firm detent, or is rather large, it might be too clumsy to do one handed.

FWIW… I think the FW3A’s main draw is Anduril. Rotary? It won’t be Anduril then. So I’m not really sure why FW3A was mentioned. Maybe a single LED with 1” deep reflector could be a good host, but then… there’s that patent problem again.

Anduril would still be useful with a rotary to allow programming the levels, if the rotary is a digital switch. Yes the code would have to be extended but it shouldn’t be too bad, just some more FSM event handlers.

A patent is supposed to cover only the specific implementations documented in it, so if you can find another implementation method you are in the clear. The Surefire PD40 is a really great looking rotary. I have no idea if they encountered any patent hassles but I expect they knew about the situation.

IIRC, Surefire was actually the one who created the patent.

Doh! I got dyslexic when I typed that. I meant Fenix PD40. There is a link further up the thread. It looks amazing. I don’t have a real use for one and I’m not in the greatest financial shape to buy more useless lights right now, but I’m tempted to grab it anyway during the promo.