If you already have the 18650GA's I would not worry about it. The 30Q will help get the most out of it but that is the difference between cruising at 90mph and 110mph....you are already up there and may not "see" any difference.
—
It's the simple things that we take for granted that cost us the most
Ευκαιρία λέει πιάσε με από το μέτωπο γιατί μόλις έχω περάσει δεν θα με πιάσειs
Mine seems brittle but we won’t really know unless we break one right? I did bend the little ramp down on one of mine very gently without snapping it. But how would you go about checking it David?
Some people have had success breaking the tabs off the two clips on the sides using pliers. If you can snap those off that way, without having to bend it, then you have brittle metal. Depending on how you feel about those tabs, it seems that would be a “safe” way to check. From what some people have been saying, if your clip is brittle and you don’t fix it somehow it will break during normal usage.
—
The Cycle of Goodness: “No one prospers without rendering benefit to others”
- The YKK Philosophy
My clip doesn’t seem brittle. I just took it off and flexed it somewhat more than you’d expect to ever subject it to.
The tight “u” bend is a poor design; increasing that radius 50% would make it 100 times less likely to break there. There’s still a lot of ‘art’ in tempering flat springs even with the exactness of today’s technology, so the best ‘fix’ is simply a replacement, hopefully coming from a better batch.
Holy crap! I just tried out my new 30q’s. My lights got too hot to hold! And my hands are pretty calloused! I’m sure my dmm sucks because amperage was high 4’s and I’m pretty sure I had that with my 26f’s. My lights have never ran that hot before. Pretty fun! I’m going to go wake up some neighbors.
Thanks TK! Yes I definitely wasn’t waiting on the timer. I didn’t want to mess them up. By the way. Timing was about the same as with the 26f’s. Needed to hit the switch about twice as fast as you are used to to cycle modes. I know people said these will drain faster but wouldn’t they be better than my 2600mah (vs 3000mah 30q) as I long as I stick with the regulated modes?
Would someone who has a brittle clip be willing to try re-tempering to see if it helps? If you have broken your clip in half, it’s obvious that you have a brittle clip. But, in that case, you may not want to waste your time and electricity baking an already useless clip. However, if you have “snapped” the tabs off the clips, as some have said that they did, you also have a brittle clip! Would you please be willing to try baking it to fix the temper? I put mine in the oven like the quote I posted above, and it is still baking right now. But, I just realized that I didn’t verify that mine was brittle to begin with, so I can’t tell whether baking it will help or not. Someone?
OK buddy you talked me into it. I was trying to get mine to be more circular. One side of both my clips had too small a circumference. I got that fixed so I moved on to the winglets. Snapped one. I’m gonna try 350 f in my little toaster oven. And then try another wing.
Note the tempering recommended at instructables is in Centigrade units.
175-350°C
and do read up on it a bit, it’s recommended to put the hot metal into ashes or sand (dry, preheated so there’s no moisture in it)
That limits the rate at which it cools down.
After that sanding and polishing to eliminate surface cracking.
It’s rocket science — doing it right. You’ll find a lot of failure analysis reports discussing how to do it wrong..
Note the tempering recommended at instructables is in Centigrade units.
175-350°C
and do read up on it a bit, it’s recommended to put the hot metal into ashes or sand (dry, preheated so there’s no moisture in it)
That limits the rate at which it cools down.
After that sanding and polishing to eliminate surface cracking.
It’s rocket science — doing it right. You’ll find a lot of failure analysis reports discussing how to do it wrong..
Or just turn the oven off while leaving the clip in…. It is insulated and cools slower than just pulling the clip out. This is not Rocket Science as we do not have a way TO do it right, yet… Some improvement however, is improvement in this case…
At times, too much information can be paralyzing… Thus the success of Nike’s “Just Do It” advertising campaign…
Yes, more mAh should mean longer runtime, at least on the low / med modes. The effective mAh value changes with higher current though, so a high-drain cell might last longer on high than a high-capacity cell.
Ok here we go. 20 minutes at 350f and another hour at 500f. Another hour to cool. Not much happened…. the other wing snapped off with about the same amount of pressure or maybe less! I’m not really going to try to understand the science of tempering as I feel my plate is full enough just trying to understand drivers! Feel free to chime in if you know what I could have done differently. But I’m still happy with the result after a little grinding and sanding.
Would someone who has a brittle clip be willing to try re-tempering to see if it helps? If you have broken your clip in half, it’s obvious that you have a brittle clip. But, in that case, you may not want to waste your time and electricity baking an already useless clip. However, if you have “snapped” the tabs off the clips, as some have said that they did, you also have a brittle clip! Would you please be willing to try baking it to fix the temper? I put mine in the oven like the quote I posted above, and it is still baking right now. But, I just realized that I didn’t verify that mine was brittle to begin with, so I can’t tell whether baking it will help or not. Someone?
OK buddy you talked me into it. I was trying to get mine to be more circular. One side of both my clips had too small a circumference. I got that fixed so I moved on to the winglets. Snapped one. I’m gonna try 350 f in my little toaster oven. And then try another wing.
BTW. What were your results?
My results won’t prove anything. With a fair amount of twisting pressure applied to one of the tabs, it bent a little and didn’t break. The reason I say it won’t prove anything is that I failed to try breaking it before re-tempering. I don’t know if it was ever brittle to begin with. :~ Thanks for trying with yours. By the way, if the Instructables article is to be believed, it is supposed to be at temp for 1.5 hours and then slowly cooled. It could be that you just didn’t get it hot enough for long enough. I set my oven to 500F when I did mine. I put the clip in at the start so it would heat with the oven, and set the timer for two hours. If yours is still brittle, you may want to bake it again, hotter and longer. You don’t have any tabs left to break off for testing, but getting it done a little better may keep your clip from self-testing (breaking) in the future.
—
The Cycle of Goodness: “No one prospers without rendering benefit to others”
- The YKK Philosophy
My references are stored elsewhere and it’s been a long time ago, but IIRC the rate of heating is rather unimportant; the rate of cooling (quenching) can be critical, and the shock of cooling to quickly crystallizes the metal structure which is what causes brittleness. Some alloys will do OK cooling slowly, some need a more rapid but controlled initial quenching to avoid softening. It’s not as simple as the instructables thing would have you believe, but you might succeed with dumb luck and the worst that can happen is that you end up with a brittle or too-soft clip so go for it.
IMHO this is not a well designed spring; there are too many sharp radii and that is where stresses concentrate. That doesn’t mean it can’t work well but it does make perfect tempering a lot more critical and tougher to achieve. Good luck!
Quote DavidEF: "With a fair amount of twisting pressure applied to one of the tabs, it bent a little and didn't break"
This ^
I broke both of my tabs off while holding firmly in tabletop vice. The snap wasn't immediate had to wiggle each couple times. So at least the two little wings seemed to not be that brittle.
My references are stored elsewhere and it’s been a long time ago, but IIRC the rate of heating is rather unimportant; the rate of cooling (quenching) can be critical, and the shock of cooling to quickly crystallizes the metal structure which is what causes brittleness. Some alloys will do OK cooling slowly, some need a more rapid but controlled initial quenching to avoid softening. It’s not as simple as the instructables thing would have you believe, but you might succeed with dumb luck and the worst that can happen is that you end up with a brittle or too-soft clip so go for it.
IMHO this is not a well designed spring; there are too many sharp radii and that is where stresses concentrate. That doesn’t mean it can’t work well but it does make perfect tempering a lot more critical and tougher to achieve. Good luck!
Phil
Thanks. The Instructables article does talk about quenching first for hardness then doing the tempering to keep it from being too brittle. And they are talking about a knife, not a clip which is bent in several places and is going to be under daily stress. So yeah, it may not be the best application of that Instructables article.
—
The Cycle of Goodness: “No one prospers without rendering benefit to others”
- The YKK Philosophy
I’m kind of pissed, I haven’t received an answer to both my PM and email in a week now.
My BLF A6 is an useless piece of aluminium and malfunctioning electronics as of now.
I tested my order: one of each tint. The 3D didn’t light up. The others did.
I pulled the 3D tailcap and did the screwdriver bypass and it lit fine.
The 3D tailcap on the 5A didn’t light. On the 1A it will only if I really crank down.
Putting a paperclip spacer in the 3D tailcap causes it to work on any light.
So, the 1A lights on any tailcap. The 5A and 3D light only on the 1A or 5A tailcaps.
The 3D and 5A tubes are visibly shorter to the naked eye. I can easily pick them out (1A is longer, 3D is way off center).
So as I understand it, I have two short battery tubes (from 3D and 5A), and one short tailcap (from 3D). And I need to email that to heyanqing1@banggood.com
These things happen. I still have three functional lights at the moment. And if BG/Manker makes good, I’ll have a trio of perfect interchangeability.
I love the UI, the moon and turbo modes, the bike flasher, the batt check… Overall really love the design. I can’t wait to torture test these as a bike light on the terrible roads here.
I tested my order: one of each tint. The 3D didn’t light up. The others did.
I pulled the 3D tailcap and did the screwdriver bypass and it lit fine.
The 3D tailcap on the 5A didn’t light. On the 1A it will only if I really crank down.
Putting a paperclip spacer in the 3D tailcap causes it to work on any light.
So, the 1A lights on any tailcap. The 5A and 3D light only on the 1A or 5A tailcaps.
The 3D and 5A tubes are visibly shorter to the naked eye. I can easily pick them out (1A is longer, 3D is way off center).
So as I understand it, I have two short battery tubes (from 3D and 5A), and one short tailcap (from 3D). And I need to email that to heyanqing1@banggood.com
I’m kind of pissed, I haven’t received an answer to both my PM and email in a week now.
My BLF A6 is an useless piece of aluminium and malfunctioning electronics as of now.
I’m sorry I can’t speak for banggood. But maybe Neal is keeping an eye on this thread.
I ALWAYS solder the bypass wire inside the spring. The spring is steel, usually, and the solder is likely to let go at some point due to the compressions of the spring when loading cells. So, if the wire is on the outside it is quite likely to cause a short at some point. Inside, it’s contained by the spring itself and can’t reach ground.
Edit: And also, if you must put a ring inside for proper tube to retaining ring contact, remove the retaining ring and put this spacer between the driver and the retaining ring so you don’t have loose parts. Once you re-install the retaining ring it will be spaced upward to meet the tube but everything will be snug and contained.
Before going to all this trouble, double check that the tube is inserted properly. Even if the clip is on the wrong end, I guess it’s possible the tube could be machined backwards, but it’s normal for the clip to install on the tail end of the tube. It only works one way, it’s not reversible.
The NCR18650GA are Protected, and they'll give you longer runtime.
The Samsung INR18650-30Q will give you a brighter/higher output, but shorter runtime, and they are Not protected.
Depends on what you want or need.
If you already have the 18650GA's I would not worry about it. The 30Q will help get the most out of it but that is the difference between cruising at 90mph and 110mph....you are already up there and may not "see" any difference.
It's the simple things that we take for granted that cost us the most
Ευκαιρία λέει πιάσε με από το μέτωπο γιατί μόλις έχω περάσει δεν θα με πιάσειs
Some people have had success breaking the tabs off the two clips on the sides using pliers. If you can snap those off that way, without having to bend it, then you have brittle metal. Depending on how you feel about those tabs, it seems that would be a “safe” way to check. From what some people have been saying, if your clip is brittle and you don’t fix it somehow it will break during normal usage.
The Cycle of Goodness: “No one prospers without rendering benefit to others”
- The YKK Philosophy
My clip doesn’t seem brittle. I just took it off and flexed it somewhat more than you’d expect to ever subject it to.
The tight “u” bend is a poor design; increasing that radius 50% would make it 100 times less likely to break there. There’s still a lot of ‘art’ in tempering flat springs even with the exactness of today’s technology, so the best ‘fix’ is simply a replacement, hopefully coming from a better batch.
Phil
Holy crap! I just tried out my new 30q’s. My lights got too hot to hold! And my hands are pretty calloused! I’m sure my dmm sucks because amperage was high 4’s and I’m pretty sure I had that with my 26f’s. My lights have never ran that hot before. Pretty fun! I’m going to go wake up some neighbors.
Dustin
FWIW, if it’s too hot to hold it probably needs to be stepped down.
Thanks TK! Yes I definitely wasn’t waiting on the timer. I didn’t want to mess them up. By the way. Timing was about the same as with the 26f’s. Needed to hit the switch about twice as fast as you are used to to cycle modes. I know people said these will drain faster but wouldn’t they be better than my 2600mah (vs 3000mah 30q) as I long as I stick with the regulated modes?
Dustin
OK buddy you talked me into it. I was trying to get mine to be more circular. One side of both my clips had too small a circumference. I got that fixed so I moved on to the winglets. Snapped one. I’m gonna try 350 f in my little toaster oven. And then try another wing.
BTW. What were your results?
Dustin
Note the tempering recommended at instructables is in Centigrade units.
175-350°C
and do read up on it a bit, it’s recommended to put the hot metal into ashes or sand (dry, preheated so there’s no moisture in it)
That limits the rate at which it cools down.
After that sanding and polishing to eliminate surface cracking.
It’s rocket science — doing it right. You’ll find a lot of failure analysis reports discussing how to do it wrong..
Thanks hank! I converted 175c trying to get the less brittle setting. And I’m off to finish a few articles about it.
Dustin
Or just turn the oven off while leaving the clip in…. It is insulated and cools slower than just pulling the clip out. This is not Rocket Science as we do not have a way TO do it right, yet… Some improvement however, is improvement in this case…
At times, too much information can be paralyzing… Thus the success of Nike’s “Just Do It” advertising campaign…
Lithium Ion Battery Safety 101
Old Lumens Competition 2020 Modified Light Entry
Oops I just realized higher temp= less brittle. Doh!
Dustin
Yes, more mAh should mean longer runtime, at least on the low / med modes. The effective mAh value changes with higher current though, so a high-drain cell might last longer on high than a high-capacity cell.
Ok here we go. 20 minutes at 350f and another hour at 500f. Another hour to cool. Not much happened…. the other wing snapped off with about the same amount of pressure or maybe less! I’m not really going to try to understand the science of tempering as I feel my plate is full enough just trying to understand drivers! Feel free to chime in if you know what I could have done differently. But I’m still happy with the result after a little grinding and sanding.
Dustin
My results won’t prove anything.
The Cycle of Goodness: “No one prospers without rendering benefit to others”
- The YKK Philosophy
My references are stored elsewhere and it’s been a long time ago, but IIRC the rate of heating is rather unimportant; the rate of cooling (quenching) can be critical, and the shock of cooling to quickly crystallizes the metal structure which is what causes brittleness. Some alloys will do OK cooling slowly, some need a more rapid but controlled initial quenching to avoid softening. It’s not as simple as the instructables thing would have you believe, but you might succeed with dumb luck and the worst that can happen is that you end up with a brittle or too-soft clip so go for it.
IMHO this is not a well designed spring; there are too many sharp radii and that is where stresses concentrate. That doesn’t mean it can’t work well but it does make perfect tempering a lot more critical and tougher to achieve. Good luck!
Phil
Quote DavidEF: "With a fair amount of twisting pressure applied to one of the tabs, it bent a little and didn't break"
This ^
I broke both of my tabs off while holding firmly in tabletop vice. The snap wasn't immediate had to wiggle each couple times. So at least the two little wings seemed to not be that brittle.
Thanks. The Instructables article does talk about quenching first for hardness then doing the tempering to keep it from being too brittle. And they are talking about a knife, not a clip which is bent in several places and is going to be under daily stress. So yeah, it may not be the best application of that Instructables article.
The Cycle of Goodness: “No one prospers without rendering benefit to others”
- The YKK Philosophy
I’m kind of pissed, I haven’t received an answer to both my PM and email in a week now.
My BLF A6 is an useless piece of aluminium and malfunctioning electronics as of now.
http://www.zebralight.com/Accessories_c_12.html
which one? I don’t know the diameter of either group of lights, they have 2 clips.
Googled and the two seem very close —- 0.9 inch, and 0.94 inch
Sigh: FREE Shipping Worldwide on Orders $50+
I have size issues.
I tested my order: one of each tint. The 3D didn’t light up. The others did.
I pulled the 3D tailcap and did the screwdriver bypass and it lit fine.
The 3D tailcap on the 5A didn’t light. On the 1A it will only if I really crank down.
Putting a paperclip spacer in the 3D tailcap causes it to work on any light.
So, the 1A lights on any tailcap. The 5A and 3D light only on the 1A or 5A tailcaps.
The 3D and 5A tubes are visibly shorter to the naked eye. I can easily pick them out (1A is longer, 3D is way off center).
So as I understand it, I have two short battery tubes (from 3D and 5A), and one short tailcap (from 3D). And I need to email that to heyanqing1@banggood.com
Is that accurate?
Sounds like you have it all figured out burnsd! Sorry that happened to your lights.
Dustin
These things happen. I still have three functional lights at the moment. And if BG/Manker makes good, I’ll have a trio of perfect interchangeability.
I love the UI, the moon and turbo modes, the bike flasher, the batt check… Overall really love the design. I can’t wait to torture test these as a bike light on the terrible roads here.
That clip though…
……………….
Copper washer from the autopart store
http://imgur.com/3NLNUvT
This is the one I bought for my A6.
http://www.zebralight.com/Pocket-Clip-for-H31-H32-H302-H51-H52-H502_p_80...
I’m sorry I can’t speak for banggood. But maybe Neal is keeping an eye on this thread.
Dustin
Am I the only one who likes the clip? It clips.
I ALWAYS solder the bypass wire inside the spring. The spring is steel, usually, and the solder is likely to let go at some point due to the compressions of the spring when loading cells. So, if the wire is on the outside it is quite likely to cause a short at some point. Inside, it’s contained by the spring itself and can’t reach ground.
Edit: And also, if you must put a ring inside for proper tube to retaining ring contact, remove the retaining ring and put this spacer between the driver and the retaining ring so you don’t have loose parts. Once you re-install the retaining ring it will be spaced upward to meet the tube but everything will be snug and contained.
Before going to all this trouble, double check that the tube is inserted properly. Even if the clip is on the wrong end, I guess it’s possible the tube could be machined backwards, but it’s normal for the clip to install on the tail end of the tube. It only works one way, it’s not reversible.
Good point DB. I’m having a tough time with flowing at the base of the spring. I think I need a better iron and some helping hands.
Dustin
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