jonhobart -
I got mine from Manafont, in April I think. There's nothing horribly wrong with them, I've just bought cheaper batteries that seem to perform better. I must stress however, this is all just casual observation . . . I have no actual proof other than higher tail cap amps, which can hardly be used by itself to judge a battery.
I think maybe we should buy batteries based on looks alone and I think the Xtar 18700 is the best looking, therefore,
itisthebestFoy
10-4 Foy. Manafont was where I was leaning toward buying my TF Flames from because of the iffy quality people get from DX and other sources. Seems like some sources get more TF Flames with problems than others, putting 2 and 2 together, I figured those places bought fake TF's. My thinking is that I'd rather spend a little extra and get them from a place that has a good reputation and likely does not sell fakes. This is also why I am leery from buying batteries from Ebay.
im looking for resistance reading's for a few reason's i belive it has to alot ot to with how much current the battery will give or not give, the resting voltage of the cells the life of the cell and for mutli cell use,s and how the cell,s charge, hold charge and discharge and any one that can give a resistance reading must be using a half decent charger so there is no quess work in how the cell,s perform
im doing test 4 of a 18650 trustfireflame battery now ill post up the results once the icharger has done its stuff.
while waiting for the next charge cycle i decided to kill a good 18650 trustfireflame battery to see what the pcb is in it and to see if it made a diffrence with current draw.
you can see it has two mosfet's installed and on a under driven P60 UF 3 mode drop in and TF C8 i have with out the pcb (IC) there was aproxx 0.07 amp (70 milliamp) increase in current draw lol about whats i expected
as a casual observation as the voltage drops on a battery or batteries the current draw increases ive noticed so on bad performing 18650,s i have brought off ebay they suffer from bad voltage sag once put under load, this makes them read higher when doing current draw test (tail cap readings) say compaired to my TFF this does not make the bad performing ebay cells better in my book.
people have commented on my TR-3T6 thread my trustfires read higher then say the sanyo batteries and so on due to voltage sag, they dont sag much to me compaired to others but i can agree with this to an extent.
but if a cheap battery pulls a higher current draw does this mean its becuase its suffering from voltage sag, it can not maintain the voltage under load so the current draw goes up. (this is not a question i know the answer)
so this means if a battery reads lower on a draw test then another battery, so the battery that reads lower of the current draw test is actualy holding its voltage better to the driver or led and a battery that read,s higher is not able to hold the voltage to the driver or led.
so is getting low current readings better then high current readings as its means the battery is coping under load much better its handling the stress so reading lower.
this is just an casual observation and there is many factors that will affect this, like internal reistance of the battery, moded or unmoded DDM leads, direct drive torches or regulated torchers or torches with buck or buck + boost, the charger, how the battery is chargered and the end user and some batteries simple can give more juice then others while holding voltage there is alot of factors in this and this is just a very casual observation.
i think most people will not be able to tell if a battery sags bad under load or if the battery is realy good or not with out a decent hobby charger and some testing equipment and will just regurutate whats they have read and will follow the masses as some people will recomend a 6 buck ebay battery or batteries but can not give an answer on the true mAh or any data on the battery at all.
i say these flames are half decent and are great for mutli cell lights and offer good run times for the price and the ones i get from here seam good to me for the price and take a decent amount of mAh and like i said great for multi cell lights, im not saying they are the best but they are not the worst and i will compair them to some high end cell,s over the next few weeks and ill have some more TFF from manafont to test as well to see if theya re still on par.
any way i hope these tables have been helpful to some people as its takes around 10 hours to do a discharge and charge cycle im upto 4 now and ive killed one of my best TFF batteries to provide infomation, maybe ill do more next weekend as it time consuming.
This is un-scientific but my flames charge in half the time of my xtars.
ok i finshed the 4th charge cycle of an used trustfire flame battery, this is another well used battery with the internal resistance of 249 milliohm's but you have to take into account this is a used cell and the resistance of my soldering, the the rare earth magnets, leads and connectors ive used but ill say this one cell ive abused going from the IR as none where that high when i first got them and some cells have had a flogging with my fiddling.
table of the start of the charge cycle
table of the end of the charge cycle
i did opean the draw and disconnected the battery from the charger and ended it early by mistake but as you can see it was pritty close to finishing any way, but going from the data logging tables the batteries do hover around 4.19 for a long time so i could of short charged the total mAh from 5 to 250 mAh so maybe i should not of posted this table, but not to bad realy 2193 mAh from 3.5 volt to 4.2 volt dont you think as thats 0.7 volt to take 2193 mAh.
where did you get them from as reports are the xtar 2600 are around 2400 to under 2500 and the flames are 2200 to under 2500 depending on witch post you read so charger time should be close unless they are fakes.
dx last year. One was a dud as well. Kind of turned me off buying them from dx.
i to got some dud,s from DX early in the year low mAh and they tripped on high in some of my torches so i pulled the pcb,s off but they where still crap and thats why i buy them from here
I see that the links here are for the 2400 mah TF Flames, Manafont also carries the "3000 mah" Flames. I seem to recall seeing another thread that the "3000" actually put out something like 2600 mah, which still beats the 2400 mah Flames. Am I wrong? Anyone know which thread that was in, as I've tried looking but could not find?
I have not seen it sorry, I did a 1amp charge last night I’ll post the data sheet when I get home from work
Interesting- I just yesterday got 2 Ultrafire *3600 mah Blacks yesterday -they were available locally by mail and they take much longer to charge than the Ultrafire Blue that shipped with the Torch and charger from Ebay-
Also un-scientific ( and from a novice about all this ) - they also last longer but these have an Ultrafire Name Logo etched into the bottom Negative plate of the battery-not from Ebay. But not as bad as some have said- dealer said they were from the Ultrafire Rep.
I ordered a Redilast 2900mah just to see what a real high capacity, honest rated battery is like- not from Ebay.
eBay is such a gamble hey, I’ve got so many dodgy torch deals off eBay I rather pay a bit more else were, but many people say ebays great… I’m going to get some red list batteries still undecided on 2600, 2900 or back order some 3100, I know you can get the same batteries unprotected cheaper but I like the idea of them being protected
I’ve got some the take 900 mAh out of 2400 mAh and suffer from voltage sag but the protection circuits work well every time so I gave them to my old man
The gray shell Ultrafire batteries are not reliable! I discarded lots of 18650, 16340 & 14500 already
I want to try out those 3000mAh Ultrafire flames but the nearly 12 bucks cost at MF puts me off (I'd rather spend $1.50 and get the XTAR 2600, but then i have over 20pcs of them so i don't think i need more LOL!).
Kaidomain is even better, 16 bucks. :) I can get Panny 3100s for below 20 bucks!
My 8pcs of TF Flames 2400 all tested to be 2200mAh range @ 1A though.... 4 more in transit. :)
It's $13.50 shipped here, no worries on the declaration as i'd imagine the import taxes are super there, "you can buy 6pcs and still won't feel a pinch", drop Serena an email. :) Add $2 for registered but that's not necessary.
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/72497?page=4#comment-82494
They are basically protected Sanyos, with a PCB current limit of ~ 5A. Slightly higher resistance than the unpro Sanyo 2600 due to PCB but not an issue in majority of the usage.
Where did you get the Trustfire 3000mAh flames? They are different in wrapped as compared to the 2400mAhs.
You can get 2200, 2400 and 2600 the 2600 test I’ve seen take under 2500 and most people seam to like them there’s a deal on here for 2400 and 2600
My trustfire flames work well in my TR-3T6 (tripple Xm-l) with or with out the extension tubes in 2 x 18650 or 3 x 18650 mode