It might be interesting to see if Manker can buff these bare aluminum lights. Might be really nice to have some with a high polish finish on them. All they need is a buffing wheel and some rouge for aluminum.
Might also be nice to see some done with a "brushed" finish. Done the same way, with a different polishing wheel and different rouge, which makes the finish rough, giving the brushed appearance on it. Surely, they must use buffers in China?
The least Manker could do, is to look over the ones they will assemble and send, that are bare aluminum, as their methods of handling bare aluminum parts, before ano, mean that there can be small nicks, scratches and dings that would be covered up by ano, but will show easily without ano, so they might want to be a little picky as to what they send out bare.
For anyone not wanting the dull look of an oxidized aluminum, you can polish with Mothers or any other aluminum billet or aluminum wheel polish and it should make the light shiny and help protect it from oxidation as well.
No, I don't want one, I'm just running my mouth as usual.
I think I speak for a great many when I say that we greatly appreciate you running your mouth… and your lathe! :bigsmile: Thanks for the advice. I for one wouldn’t have known where to start if I wanted to polish this bare light and may do just that.
At home easy polishing of a tubular light can be done with the assistance of rubber sanding arbors. Slide the arbor into the tube, tighten the drum screw, and you now have a way to mount it to your handheld drill. A bit of polish on an old wrag, some slow spinning with the drill, Presto!
Of course, you have to be proficient in disassembly/assembly of the light as it will have to be the bare tube, head, tail cap in order to do this. One could probably put the tail cap back on the light, empty of course, and run the arbor out the front such that the bezel could be put back on the pill… essentially the entire body of the light spinning on your drill. Polishing the entire thing at once would allow for all 4 parts to match.
Final polishing with some Mother’s on a newspaper should allow a nice mirror finish. Maybe 30 minutes all told, if you’re any good at the assembly operations…
It is not a time issue as much as it is a quantity issue. Neal needs to order a set quantity such 50/75/100/500 etc. and that must be done wile production is at the pace it is now so they can be piggy-backed. Once production of the A6 slows he will have an M.O.Q (minimum order quantity)...usually 500 and a pretty big commitment to put on the shelf.
If you and anyone else have ANY interest in a bare A6...PUT your name on the list so the proper quantity will be ordered now. There may be some extras but not many and when the bare A6 units are ordered gone they will not come back. The same will apply to the shortened tubes.
I think that Neal's deadline will be this week or next BUT NO PROMISES...could be tomorrow.
Stupid question but… does electric current flow through the body of the flashlight? If so, could a bare-metal flashlight be a risk, if you were to ‘ground’ yourself or the flashlight body?
Current does flow through the body of the light. This is how it works on almost all metal flashlights. There are a lot of lights (by high-end brands, even) which are made in bare-metal, and I’ve never heard of anyone getting electrocuted by one.
I did a quick web search, and the only case I could find was when someone got zapped by a prank buzzer disguised as a flashlight. But it was specifically designed to do that.
I managed to burn myself while testing a light last month, but it was because I accidentally shorted my test leads while holding them onto the ends of a high-amp cell. The flashlight itself wasn’t even part of the circuit. And what I got was a heat burn, not an electric shock. It was like what would happen if you were to hold on to a wrench while laying it across the leads of a car battery. Don’t do that.
So be careful with the batteries… but the light itself probably can’t zap you.
I think the resistance in the skin is so much higher than the circuit in the flashlight that nothing happens, but i am sure some more versed in the technical details will explain how & why better
For example that is why nothing happens if you “short” a cell with your fingers
And that is also why swallowing a lithium cell is a very bad idea because wet conditions with plenty of free ions will make current flow, the skin though……not so much.
The greater problem might be accidentally touching the flashlight to a live wire. For example, when looking into a switch panel. Anodizing might offer a little bit of protection, but who knows?
Yeah, disregarding electrocution: could laying this flashlight down on a grounded metal surface which is grounded, cause it to drain faster, and/or spark? Ideas of grounded metal surfaces could be a car chassis, or a metal tower. I’m basically asking if it’s possible for there to be an electrical path from the battery (via the body of the flashlight), to ‘anywhere else’, while it’s on. Alternate question could be: should one be concerned about the flashlight contacting grounded metal surfaces when it’s on?
I don’t have a bare metal flashlight which I could try to hook up to a ground via an amp-meter to see if current can actually flow from the body into another circuit. I have actually always wondered about this, even with coated flashlights, even though I’ve found the coatings to be good insulators.
I used to have a yo-yo milled from aluminum. Bare metal. I loved that thing when I was into that. Felt, looked, and performed excellently. But it didn’t have a 25R battery in it… :bigsmile:
When the switch is on, the light’s entire body is a negative pole for the battery. However, the positive pole doesn’t go anywhere near the outside of the light. Electricity can only flow when both are part of the circuit.
In order to cause the type of accidental shorts described above, you’d have to explicitly connect the positive pole to something outside the light… like, drill a hole somewhere and run an insulated wire from the battery’s positive end to the outside world.
… and even then, touching both ends to your skin wouldn’t really do anything. Same reason it doesn’t hurt to touch both ends of a battery.
My main concern would be to verify that this is actually waterproof before using it underwater. But that’s the same as any other light. Impure water inside could cause the battery to short itself.
Maybe 30 minutes all told, if you’re any good at the assembly operations…