My bare BLF-A6 (3D) arrived today. Worked out of the box. Comments:
*nice like it is, with no finish and black details (tailcap,clip,o-ring), when the 18350 tubes are there it will be a shorty. And it will be a beater :-)
*3D is too cool for me, but the plan was dedoming in the first place.
*very slight purple AR-coating, won't do much, won't disturb much
*battery tube boring is centered well this time
*pillar in silicon tailcap is too high, it engages the mode-switching too easy, needs slicing a bit off
*clip fits very well around the body, never knew this was a quality before I got my two black BLF-A6 lights
*they used thinner and weaker springs than in my black ones, feels nice enough but: longer path through thinner steel = more resistance. Perhaps they got scared of the stock current of the BLF-A6 and this measure gets the current down a little. Not a bad idea, and for the flashlight buff easily overcome with the spring-bypass
Thanks Toykeeper for organising this bare version, I'm really happy with it!
A bit of variability in the milling, the switch recess on my bare light was milled too deep resulting in the cap protruding beyond the tail and a black one did not have the driver retainer threads cut into the relief cut so the brass ring could not tighten against the driver.
Thanks to ToyKeeper for organizing the bare A6.
Placed my order already with GB, but expected restock after 26 October.
Hopefully the quality of new batch will be better over the earlier delivery
Head springs: Bare 5A (Left). Regular 3D (Middle), Bare 1A (Right)
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Tail springs: Bare 5A (Left). Regular 3D (Middle), Bare 1A (Right)
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They sure look like the same as the one in Djozz’s picture, which presumably is of the thinner type. My regular BLF A6 was from a rather late run, so that may explain why they are all the same.
Also, not sure why my Bare 1A’s tail spring is so scrunched down. I’ve used the same batteries for all three (Keeppower IMR 3200 mAh). And the barrel lengths for each is about the same (the Bare 5A’s tube is a slightly longer, by perhaps 1/4 of a millimeter). The Bare 1A works fine, so I haven’t bothered “un-scrunching” it.
By comparison, this is a photo taken by ToyKeeper in this BLF discussion, showing the normal tailcap spring:
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Looks like all of my flashlights are in need of spring bypasses. :cowboy_hat_face:
That is not an A6 spring; it’s not even an A6. It was only for demonstrating how to put a paperclip in. The picture is actually a Convoy S3 from 2012.
However, all the other springs you posted appear to be the newer, thinner style. The original ones were shorter, thicker, and lower-resistance… so they made a spring bypass less important.
Sorry, I was slogging through the literally hundreds of discussions on the A6 and came across that picture. It was just what I was looking for, a tailcap spring! (Just the wrong flashlight. :davie: )
Thank you for confirming that all of my flashlights have the thinner springs. I guess I should test the currents before and after undergoing the double-bypass operations.
Here are the two types of springs. Left is the new one, which feels soft and spongy. Right is the original one, which is pretty stiff.
The longer, softer, higher-resistance springs seem to reduce lumen output on turbo.
The spring that appears squashed has been overloaded with heat or a short compromised it. This is the reason for doing a spring bypass, the springs can’t normally handle the FET current ability. A wire bypass works such that the wire carries much more current, less resistance in the copper wire than the steel spring, so the current goes through the wire and the spring just keeps the cell in contact like it’s supposed to.
You might have run all the same cells in the light, but that one that is squashed might have run on Turbo longer than the others and sagged under the heavy load.
