I noticed that in my local Korean forum, some longed for the Jetbeam RRT-01 extension tubes to accommodate 18650 cells.
I was thinking that since the light itself has a dark tone, it would be interesting to have an extension tube with a carbon fiber sleeve around it.
I’ve found some eBay sources for carbon fiber tubes, and I was inspired by the work of Delghi at CPF.
He’s manufactured P60 hosts with carbon fiber sleeves:
Before:
After:
So the ends of the carbon fiber tubes are flush against the body… how does he insert them?
Delghi has been inactive for a couple of months so I’m not sure if I’m going to get a response from him.
Any thoughts and ideas would be highly appreciated. Thanks!
I’d love to see my little L2m shorty’s with that. Have a couple of others that might qualify as well. Very interested, seems relatively simple if you have a lathe…turn down the light so that the tube will over it, make precision cuts on the tube with square/true ends, epoxy the tube on, epoxy a lip on the exposed end. voila! Sounds simple enough, would be very exacting work though to make it look right.
It looks like the cf tube would have to be rather thick. That doesn't matter much if you're buying cf tubes, but could be a huge pita if you're wrapping the tubes yourself. If it's the latter, I wonder if he's using a second aluminum tube that the cf tube is bonded to, the end trimmed, and then that's bonded to the battery tube.
They are not cf tubes but cf wrap around the alu, you could get the same effect by using some carbon fibre effect vinyl which is exactly what I though that was when I looked at the pictures.
How do you know this? I don't see the edge of the fabric, and that would definitely show. Some people don't want to see that, which is why I think a tube is more likely. It's very easy to find cf tube in many different inner and outer diameters and weaves. http://www.rockwestcomposites.com/
I remember when he was doing this, it is actually cf tubes, he does the machine work and precise fitment, and they’re fairly expensive. I wanted one so bad….
I’ve made some simple carbon/glassfiber parts for rc airplanes, and imo they are very messy to work with of you want to make it from bare carbon cloth. You need a very-well machined molds, and it may need a lot of practice to make the surface this shiny, and good quality with epoxy resin.
They are not considerably shrink of grow due to heat, so thess tubes must’ve slid onto the alu body from one end.
Maybe he slides the carbon tube to the body, then heat a “locking ring”, slide the ring to the body, and wait to cool off. They cover the carbon before anodizing ?if needed?.
The tubes are made from carbon fiber “stockings”. They cover a base metal rod with release agent, then put epoxy to the carbon stocking, and slide it to the metal rod. And do it again many times. Finally they put the completed tube with the rod within into an air bag, and create vaccum, so the layers are bonded together evenly. After cure time, they simply knock the tube, and due to release agent it simply slips off the base rod.
I read it a long ago so it may not be the exact method, but basically the same
+1
end of the carbon fibre that attaches to the body will have a 10-20mm taper enough to insert to the body. Deduct 1mm to the inside diameter of the body(carbon fibre end) for epoxy bond. Just think of it as a male and female ends joined together.
If you really want the carbon fiber look without spending $100, take a look at the Spark SF3 and SF5. They both have carbon fiber sleeves, a nice interface, nice tint, and cost around $50 each.
The CF retaining ring might not be epoxied - it might be machined to a fairly precise fitment, then heated up (and/or the main tube cooled) and stuck on. When everything returns to ordinary temperature, the ring shrinks onto the tube and likely won’t ever come off.
I expect this will be machined in South Korea like your pills, so I understood that this wouldn't be cheap. I'm still in. If you decide to save money and effort by leaving out the cf, I'm okay with that too.
