Hello, who is responsible for this creation? Was it a group effort?
This is probably one of the coolest things to happen in the flashlight world in some time.
Between color options, the led options and the amazing performance, this thing is nothing short of amazing.
In all fairness , it does look an awful lot like the HDS but who cares. You will never catch me owning an HDS light. Simply too expensive for what it is. Not to mention, from the CPF reviews, the quality control is not there either.
The FW3A is a true technological wonder. The performance, the price, the interface, make it probably my favorite light out of the 100+ that I have.
Thomas Edison? The BLF/Lumintop FW3A is an instant classic. I got mine with 3 x W2 emitters, 2,800 lumens, and 425 meters throw. The FW4a in 4 x W2 for 3850 lumens, 456 meters was an irresistible natural progression for me as well as the FW21Pro. I am up to 39 lights, not including two FW21Pros' that I ordered to make gifts of.
Largely the physical design came from BLF / TLF user Fritz15 (the “F” in FW3A), but many of our respected forum members were involved in aspects of the project (driver design, firmware, etc)
Those two links should pretty much cover the entire sum of the development of the FW3A.
From there, Lumintop has gone on to make countless varieties based on the original design. A lot of accessories have been designed by different people/groups. Loneoceans has also since developed a buck/boost driver for the light as well.
No problem, yet. My modder has made more than a few for more than a few people. Also, he has made lots of four times W2 quad in the FW3a host, but with edges of optic shaved down to fit.
I am very conservative about post external links on the forum, so here is two-thirds of a link: collections/v54-lights/products/lumintop-fw3vn-most-compact-18650-powerhouse-r
I only use higher modes in high performance lights for brief burst, to briefly light up a large area brightly, just to quickly see, before throttling down to normal levels.
For the W2, really high performing cells in FET could probably stress three of them in parallel, but I wouldn’t be too worried. And if I was, I’d use 30Q or 35E instead of VTC5D or something. The 2mm white flat can handle 8A comfortably (I think its ideal is somewhat lower), and you’d be hard-pressed to delivery 24A+ into them from a single 18650.
It looks like gchart and Scallywag already provided the answers… there’s a lot of detail in the FW3A project thread, for anyone interested in reading it.
But yes, it was a group effort by members of the community. The main components (host, driver, firmware) were designed by three forum members… but a lot of things were also determined by feedback from the community. And a lot of other people contributed to the project in pretty meaningful ways. Plus there are several years of prior development here on BLF which the FW3A is based on.
The FW3A is just one of many items to fall out of this little playground where we experiment with shiny things.