BLF-348 - A quick look inside

Efest IMR and MC0 is a good choice. Brighter than XP-1 with 10440, wider beam, and gets warm faster. Not sure how well the switch will last on IMR.

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.

Phil

Hi,

Has anyone tried swapping in another driver, specifically the AK-007 that DX.com has:

http://www.dx.com/p/ak-007-0-8-1-5v-3-mode-circuit-board-for-flashlights-11-9mm-50526#.Vog2RPlunIU

I’d like to get some modes on mine.

I believe that one will be too big. There isn’t a ton of headroom in the pill, and the driver diameter is ~10mm.

I did my own pcb, you can swap parts from a nanjg (but it’s 10440 only)

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:.

Jim

More like the first seal to jump off the ice

Hi guys, would it be good to reflow an xp-e2 red emitter on it? Is the driver suitable for the emitter?

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 just grabbed it with my fingers.

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.

As for removing the bezel, I just pressed mine on a piece of rubber and turned it loose.

What lifepo and where did you get it?

Theres a few on this page but cant tell you if they are any good.

https://www.fasttech.com/search?10440%20LiFePO4%20

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.

There is some room to gain by removing the driver battery spring too.

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.

Modded one for dad with a tiny 10-7135. I started by gluing some chips together, it’s silly to just of one pair so I did several including one triple. After build up the driver I cut a brass sleeve just talker than the stack height to ensure an air gap between the shelf and the chip stack and filled it with Fujik. Side vew. LED+ wire extends through the board and JB’d to top of mcu and while at it dabbed JB on corner pads or smd’s not at ground potential. Side view. The spring takes up the depth occupied by the mcu so it fits into the light just fine.