Received a BLF 348 (240 lum) and a reg Singfire 348 (180 lum) today from Gearbest.
As noted by others the quality seems excellent and very solid.
Will need to get a 10440 to see full potential as they are frankly a bit underwhelming with Alkaline and NiMH. Both fairly floody with the older Singfire having a much warmer yellowish tint.
In terms of brightness I would say the BLF 348 is a bit brighter than the Lumintop tool on medium and considerably less than the Lumintop on high and the Hugsby XP-1 (which is more spotty)
Have more BLF 348’s coming for gift lights but will get some 10440’s for mine to try
Any recommendations for 10440 batteries and charger (thinking Xtar MCO)
Received mine and love them. It remains just sightly warm with an eneloop and doesn’t need much to figure out how to use it, perfect for gifts. Construction is excellent and it’s hard to see where the tailcap meets the body which means good machining.
I ordered 2 but wish it have been more, although people have mixed feelings when I gift them a flashlight, they give me this strange look :~ until I explain them why this is superior than their 2D incan in the kitchen drawer. I guess flashlights are not that common in my country.
I did a 1 hour test on a new cheap alkie; it got warm but did fine. Switched to a Trustfire 600mA 10440, ran for a few minutes before getting hot, back to alkie showed no visible light loss. Efest with sticker intact drops right in all 3 of mine as does Energizer Lithium primary.
A darn fine little light so far, wish I’d bought more.
The thing is is that AK007 driver is made of 2 boards. The “front” one is smaller, and I think might fit diameter-wise. The problem that I am wondering about is the “height” of the two-board driver. The BLF-348 has a kind of long spring on the tailcap. Would that give enough leeway so that if the driver was “taller” that it would still work. That’s kind of what I was hoping someone might know or have tried (avoid being the “guinea pig” :laughing:.
How did you get the bezel off? There’s so little of it to grab hold of and it’s on there pretty tightly. I considered trying to grab out with pliers but I think it’ll just slip, too, and I don’t want to scratch it up.
I dropped an Efest 10440 in mine and it fit just fine. The light got very hot very quickly when I used it with the 10440, so I went back to AAA. I saw in another post somewhere that since the light is stainless, it does not have very good thermal conductance as far as moving heat away from the pill, as well as not radiating that heat away after the light is off. They recommended very short bursts of use if using a 10440 to keep the emitter from overheating.
For what I am using it for, and for what I believe anyone I gift with one will use it for, a AAA cell, either alkaline, lithium primary, or NiMH will work more than satisfactorily.
I got it by using pliars on the bezel, and another pair of pliars on the body, and using wide rubber bands as padding/extra grip. My threads were very tight and the body was slippery.
I run a 10440 lifep04 in mine (xp-e - not nichia) with no overheating, but that’s probably closer to a nimh than a li-ion in wattage pulled.
Being a boost driver it should do just fine with a lower Vf emitter. Probably better since emitter current will be the same but supply current will be a bit less.
The stack height is too great, the pill just isn’t deep enough. It barely has room for the inductor. It might be possible to design one around the Attiny mmu that fits but it would have to be a two sided board and probably need 0603 or smaller auxiliary smd’s. Going to a .8mm thick board would help.
True but only with thin pcb’(.8mm) and an Attiny mmu so it’s not going to be a mass market driver any time soon. The spring is fully compressed by the pill so it takes up ~2 mm or less. If it did then wire pad layout would be critical since there wouldn’t be any room left to bend the wires. I’m still just hoping for a stacked option for some of the small boost or buck drivers. There are other hosts for which a taller stack would fit.
