On this one, I had already done a standard spring bypass before I added the wire through the pcb. Now I just drill the hole and run one single wire from the switch to the top of the spring.
I like to find the place where the spring starts, there’s always a gap there between the pad and the first coil. I exploit this to enable getting the wire through. Starting on top of the board, beside the switch, I drill a small hole through at an angle, aiming to come out inside the spring. Then I use a drill bit big enough to allow the wire to just fit, and enlarge the hole. Starting with the switch, I solder the wire on the inside of the tab, between the tab and the body. Gotta do this quick or too much heat will go into the switch and mess it up, I like to clamp small curved jaw hemostats on the flat part of the tab right at the switch body to act as a heat sink and try to avoid this damage. Then I run the wire through and cut it off a little long, this enables a slight coil to be twisted onto the wire before soldering it to the top of the spring. This coil lets the wire stack just like the spring so it doesn’t end up breaking. I’ve also found that laying the stripped end over the end of the spring and wrapping it around the spring wire gives a good solid solder joint that won’t break lose or come undone.
And there ya have it! More to writing it up than the actual doing of it.
Edit: if the start of the spring isn’t in place to be beside the switch, I remove the spring and drill the hole, then place the spring back on it’s pad so the gap portion straddles the wire.
The main problem that I’ve always run into is not within the switch itself but the spring getting hot and sagging, breaking connection to the cell. The wire takes the current and keeps the spring from getting too hot. I’ve got an Eagle Eye X6 running a Luminus SBT-70 at 17A through a bypassed switch like this. I’m using the big copper pill I drew up for a quad, and the X6 still gets too hot to hold in 26 seconds. I know this because I’ve used this light to run down 18650’s and could only hold it 26 seconds at a time. That’s right at the point the turbo step down kicks in, but I still had to shut it down and set it on a heat sink to cool off. The SBT-70 is a horribly inefficient driver, burning off tons of current in heat while making relatively low lumens. In this case, only 1500 lumens for 17A of draw.
So yeah, the bypass helps switch life in that it delivers a steady current and saves the spring.
“Would it be okay to just do the spring and not directly to the switch?”
Yes
As long as you’re not running over 6A or so, or using it for prolonged periods that may tend to heat up the spring/pcb.
Edit: You really don’t need to worry about it with the A6. The new emitters don’t allow much over 5A so it’s not a big deal. If you want to squeeze every last drop out of the emitter, do the spring bypass. If you’re going to be using it hard, go through the pcb directly to the switch.
No. Suddenly you realize that your friends that thought you were crazy and strange at best will not put your lights down...and sometimes not even back...thus extras.
The 4.35V cells should give a bit more at start up, but from what I understand the gains are balanced out pretty fast. I don’t have any of those, so I didn’t test any.
Send me some and I’ll add the results to the list… lol
Compression, this light will work fine with pretty much any cell you choose to install. The new breed of emitters tends to limit forward voltage, making it more difficult to get the current up where it does the damage. Now, when you start using triples, or putting in a MT-G2 or XHP-50 or XHP-70 or SBT-70 or…… well, you see what I mean. A triple with XP-G2’s can easily do over 6A, triple XP-L or XM-L2 will easily pass 9A and sometimes go to 12A or a bit more. This light, with a triple XP-G2 and Carclo 10507 should be a pretty potent little beast, easily doing over 2000 lumens. There will be those here that will exploit this driver in just about every way possible. There will be those that pull this driver and put it in a larger light, swapping the less capable driver into this smaller tube light. I’m sure there are plans to do just about everything.
And it’s all, right around the corner… first one’s should be in-hand in the next week or so.
Thanks Dale. So in stock form there’s no need to worry about frying anything due to high amps no matter the battery. It feels wrong calling this light stock. :bigsmile:
I haven’t been this excited about a product for a longgg time. Thank you everyone for making this happen. Everything about this light is brilliant!