I could have sworn that somewhere in the middle of this massive thread you yourself claimed that using springs in head and tail made spring bypasses unnecessary, and this claim is repeated in the first post.
What’s going on here… how come you’re seeing an increase of ~350 lumens with the reported unnecessary spring bypass? What is the point of the head spring, again? Thanks.
Thank you! You made me smile with this. idky everyone else insists on calling what is clearly a firefly mode instead a moonlight mode, and usually denying that a single lumen is not a “true” moonlight mode, when in fact half to full direct moonlight itself is 1 to 8 lumens per square meter. I feel in good company. Those super-dim modes are firefly lumens! ToyKeeper is not swayed by the romantic poetry of named flashlight modes to mislabel them, and neither am I.
lol no I want to see a triple because that's what I want to do and I don't have a lumen machine jig measurer box ball thing.
thanks for that TK, I don't think you get the amount of credit you really deserve, but I for one really appreciate your efforts. I was skeptical of your blf A6 firmware, until I tried it, now I realize it's about perfect for the general public. Now that some info has surfaced and I'm understanding more about this updated Bistro firmware, it's just crazy. I think you hit all the bases this time, can't wait to try it out! I was hoping to get the firefly/moon with a good low/medium for tailstanding and turbo. 4 modes is just a bit much for me in the A6 firmware. Now I just have to get it flashed onto a bunch of MCU's and order some fet+7135 drivers.
Y’all already know my sample Cu X5 is a quad XP-L HI making right at 3000 lumens at 11.5A on the little Purple Efest 14500.
You probably already know I’ve got a quad Ti X6, 3 triples (one a shorty with an 18350 cell) and an MT-G2 as well as an SBT-70 X6. I rebuilt the XHP-70 one to make a 100Kcd XP-G2 de-domed variant for a friend.
Remind me…Why would I build one on a Limited Edition light? Especially with 5 X6 hosts sitting here waiting for the next brainstorm? (and 2 more waiting to be made into a quad/triple for 2 friends, one of which is Neal himself as the first one got nabbed in customs somewhere in China)
nocturne, that’s not correct. I have always said that a through pcb wire to the top of the spring is a good idea in these hot rods to ensure that there is enough to carry high current for a longer duration. When getting up over 5A, the trace itself on the pcb has been known to fry when using the light for a long time in a work environment. So I ALWAYS bypass the spring in the tail, through the board, connecting a single wire from the switch to the top of the spring.
A double spring can help carry current, it doesn’t bypass the trace on the pcb though.
Springs top and bottom keep the battery in contact so rough use doesn’t change modes, like handlebar mount on a bicycle.
Springs tend to overheat when carrying a high current, this allows them to collapse, which breaks the cell connection leaving you in the dark. I like to bypass. Put the current in a wire and let the spring be a spring.
I was probably the one that mentioned the double spring would eliminate the need for a bypass. That was simply an assumption, and I believe Dale corrected me at that time…I think…lol
BTW, did you notice the spring pad on this new PCB is filled with vias? It looks like it might finally not need the bypass to go all the way through the PCB.
I haven’t heat-tested the production units yet, but they should be less heat-sensitive for a few reasons:
The pill is much bigger so it doesn’t get as hot.
The driver has thermal regulation so it doesn’t get as hot.
The driver components have been upgraded and should be less temperature-sensitive.
The lighted tailcap’s current draw is now the biggest factor in button timing. The steady current flow makes the offtime capacitor discharge more slowly.
The main risk now is that the button timing can end up being too long, especially if the light is at or below freezing. My tests so far show that the button timing is longer than the samples, and we’re trying to figure out why and how to reduce it. It looks like a medium press is about 1.0s to 4.0s on a full battery instead of the target range of 0.5s to 1.5s.
If you disable the tailcap light, the button timing gets faster.
If they kept the “traces” anywhere near what I had them as, I’d be willing to bet there would be 0% gain by bypassing the PCB.
Bypassing the spring is always a good idea though. I think of the double spring as half-way fix to help out the people who don’t have the equipment/desire to do a bypass.
We get to chasing absolute maximums and eliminating resistance with thicker wires and such, get to a point that a short circuit can be BAD, really bad! With smaller wires and an un-bypassed springs there are “fuses” throughout, but once we take all the shortcuts things get much more critical.
That’s the main reason I’m leary of making lights for people I don’t know, there’s just no way to know how they handle or treat a light and the potential is there for an accident, with the light pushed right up to the edge to begin with.
Some of the lights go together rather difficult. And I’ve grown to realize one of the first things people are going to do is crack it open and see what you did in there! lol, after spending sometimes an hour getting exact focus, that’s gone in seconds. If they don’t realize what they’ve compromised, it can be pretty easy to put it back together with a heavy gauge wire pinched, direct short on a 60A cell, or a bank of 60A cells! Scary thought.
I built a 3 cell light not long ago and was prompted to test it with all 3 cells… I’d designed it to run on 2 cells with the 3rd in the carrier being a dummy. I ran it in the light box long enough to get a reading then shut it down. 20,000 lumens and then some! Took the cells out of the carrier and noticed that the copper traces on the battery carrier had vaporized! Blackened pcb where the traces had been. One more second and it would have shut down by itself. I rebuilt the carrier with much thicker copper sheet material, haven’t tried the 3 cells again… and am being pushed again to do so. Not sure about it, whole lot of power going on there!
I’ve got a couple that are on the scary side, multi cell lights and a whole lot of amperage going through, IF anything major ever went wrong…
all pics have LIMITED EDTION numbers and additional serilas but we are talking about this samples but doenst matter watch them a bti longer and you will also get it.
its just an example and impression how they do it, and on sunway man and sure fire you can also clearly see that the branding is not shouting and killing the whole field good branding is always decentnot plaring at you ;et the product speak not the braning. kronos is not a brand yet anyone know of (and for me i thought its a groupbuy light not a branded one). Kronos “Brand” is put on a light made by a group borrowed the body desing from a chinese light with a driver designed by wight a software written by TK a tail light design by PD68, planned in cyberspace and produced in china.
to talk about branding is i think a bit exaggerating to say the least.
When you mentioned before the shear number of 18650 cells you own, that in itself gave me concern for your own safety, but only seen from the eyes of one that is not experienced. Personally, I can only keep track of so much before things start to slip out of my awareness. In the end, however, as a believer I give up my fears. You simply could no longer be with us unless… the truth must be along the lines of…
