21700 battery advice needed

[Cloud]

@Correllux

Been pondering this and I don’t think I have great answers, but I do think this is worthy of doing it the right way and thinking it through carefully because we’re not talking about a trivial amount of current. Are you modding/creating in a host, or altering an existing light, or just trying to save pennies on the batteries it was designed for?

Ultimately, it makes so much more sense to change the host parts in a way that they will take ordinary-length cells, rather than having to change each cell each time and attempt to get their lengths consistent.

If the tail spring board is easy to remove, totally try a longer spring there that can handle the current and retain all or most of its height while doing so over time. If that can/should be done on both ends, assuming the driver board is compatible and accessible, then do that…or perhaps a button/slug can replace a spring.

I really really do not recommend soldering cells. Spot welding is the way to go, when done correctly, but soldering adds a lot of risk especially on the negative end, and you need to add a considerable amount here, not just a little dab. If soldering is the way you want, then do it on the positive end/cap and be careful about it so you don’t short, and quick about it so you don’t damage seals or cause it to vent. Overheating the negative end can spell bad news for the cell either in performance or safety and that’s true of these high drain cells that can take a lickin’ as well as it is for ordinary lower drain cells that are somewhat more sensitive. And of course if you were to use protected cells then you wouldn’t be able to solder on the negative end anyway. I’ve soldered buttons and blobs and tabs on dozens of NiMH and NiCd batteries over the years, but I won’t solder lithium…did once, but all things considered it’s not worth it to me unless it’s just a blob on the top to make a small button but I haven’t needed that in any of my lights in a very long time. I just wonder about all of the heat and current in this application. Plus soldering to nickel can be unreliable even with scuffing. We’ve seen springs literally melt from high current that was done wrong, and cells that overheated to a dangerous level through current or accidental shorts, so I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in solder here even though their melting points are above what we’d expect to see.

I searched the forum for a bit but couldn’t find posts that I think I’m remembering from the past about magnets and resistance/current limit. It may have been from Dale (DB Customs) in some thread, really can’t remember. But I was thinking that there was a medium-level of current that was a practical limit for magnets but of course most who use them are using tiny ones as buttons/spacers, not thicker ones to fill up space and cover a larger cell. I would try some kind of slug to use as a spacer on the tail end if you don’t want to modify the light itself. If nothing else, a copper pipe cap could be trimmed and filled with solder - a 1/2” is around 5/8” o.d. and I think a 3/4” will be too wide without a fair amount of sanding. I looked on Amazon to see if there were any convenient discs/slugs and there are lots of jewelry stamping blanks but most are way too thin - thickest I saw was 1/8” and they were pretty expensive for a smaller quantity of 10 or so. Washers and bushings present the problem of the spring going in the hole, so you don’t get the effect you’re after. If you have a very well stocked hardware store there are copper bolts that exist and you could cut the head off of one and grind it to suit….a little pricey but you could do the same with an electrical split grounding nut thingy. Heck, really for this purpose I think aluminum would be fine and if you can score a short length of 3/4” bar you could just trim pucks from it.

So the cost of parts and consumables, repeatedly for a trio of cells and more cells in the future, plus risks that are not zero…sounds cheaper and better to just spend a couple extra bucks on the ridiculously priced cells that fit the design of the light…and don’t buy lights like that again.

These are all good thoughts. I’m not trying to mod the light. I just don’t want to spend $75 on a spare pack of batteries and also it pisses me off that the manufacturer makes their money trying to get the customer shell out $75 on spare parts instead of making the battery size compatible with all the others , or springs that can stretch longer .

I’m not crazy about welding magnets, the spacers are a better idea, it’s just that magnets seem to be an easier and more available solution . If I can find/ make a spacer, that would be a much better option. Cutting off a bolt head seems like a simple enough idea, or some kind of aluminum puck cut to size. This being said, I still would need to solder a blob on the positive end, because it needs to stick out -there are so springs on the positive end, it’s a ring touching the end of battery.
And yeah I’d never buy a light like that if it wasn’t the only light of having this power and throw and the beam profile that I like. I don’t like flood lights, I want a wife powerful center that can throw. No other light I know does that.