Code now public! BLF A6 FET+7135 Light. Short 18350 tubes and Unanodized Lights Available

[DB_Custom (Dale)]

Another analogy might be, in the car comparison, how far will your car go if you mash the gas pedal to the floor and keep it there? Will it run out of gas first? (battery life) or will the engine blow up? (overheat)

The hot rod flashlight can be thought of in terms similar to a hot rod car. It has the potential to self destruct and it’s up to the user to keep that from happening. If you have a 700HP drag car, do you toss the keys to your 16 yr old son and say “have fun”? Don’t toss one of these lights to someone not well versed in their use.

We, as flashaholics, have the responsibility to ensure the dangerous toys in our keep are respected. If that means 1 minute at a time, then that’s what it means.

[SIGShooter]

Is there any advantage to soldering a solid copper plug to the driver in place of a bypassed spring? Or does the light not draw enough to make a difference? The only downside I can think of is that some protected batteries may not fit depending on the size of the plug.

[cajampa]

@SIGShooter

Is there any advantage to soldering a solid copper plug to the driver in place of a bypassed spring? Or does the light not draw enough to make a difference? The only downside I can think of is that some protected batteries may not fit depending on the size of the plug.

Lower resistance in the circuit in a DD driven light with a led with this high Vf will always get more output. But it would most likely be a very tiny gain if you already have done the spring & pcb bypass.

I know brass have been used with worse result than a well bypassed spring, but maybe a copper one could be better.

[plumrt]

Or just a piece of properly sized/shaped copper tube.
But, the spring is there to help prevent shock/breaking the driver if the light drops.

[keengeorge]

@Tom E

@saypat

Help please. Since I got a 5A tint and my lumens are less, they need a boost. I’m NOT a modder but perhaps I can do a tail switch spring bypass to get some more lumens. I have no wire on hand but I heard u can use solder wick, yes? Where do I solder the ends? One end to the top of the spring, right? The other end goes where, to the bottom rung of the spring? Don’t touch the PCB with it? With some advice, I’ll give it a whirl If this works most likely I’ll start offering custom mods! thanks for the help… edit: after some more thought on this, am I trying to have the battery NOT touch the top of the spring??? If it touches the spring, is it useless? Confused already.

Yes, you can use solder wick, but solder quickly so the solder doesn't flow up through the wick. If the wick takes in a lot of solder, it becomes stiff and subject to breaking when the spring flexes. The bottom should go to the PCB board - you want it to touch the ring of the PCB board where the spring mounts, but it can still touch the spring - that's fine. Clearly, where the spring mounts to the PCB, the electricity flows, so there's an electrical connection there.

Pat - plan on several attempts. You probably won't get this working on the first try. Test out your bypass by plunging the spring several times - compress it down pretty far to simulate what the battery will do when you screw on the tailcap. Verify the solder joints hold up and the solder wick is not kinking/breaking. Don't worry about the battery touching or not touching the spring. Electricity takes the least resistance path, so doesn't matter.

Tom E, I beg to differ regarding your statement: "Electricity takes the least resistance path, so doesn't matter"

Electricity will flow via all available paths, but more current will flow via the lower resistance path.

Best Regards,

George

[ToyKeeper]

@keengeorge

Electricity will flow via all available paths, but more current will flow via the lower resistance path.

I found results along these lines when trying to max out turbo on the FET+1 driver. I found that running full-throttle on the FET by itself produced more lumens than full-throttle on both the FET and the 7135 chip together.

But the difference was fairly small, and I doubt it’d be noticeable on a spring bypass.

[SIGShooter]

@cajampa

@SIGShooter

Is there any advantage to soldering a solid copper plug to the driver in place of a bypassed spring? Or does the light not draw enough to make a difference? The only downside I can think of is that some protected batteries may not fit depending on the size of the plug.

Lower resistance in the circuit in a DD driven light with a led with this high Vf will always get more output. But it would most likely be a very tiny gain if you already have done the spring & pcb bypass.

I know brass have been used with worse result than a well bypassed spring, but maybe a copper one could be better.

I always do spring bypasses. If there’s not much to be gained I’ll just do that for this light.

Thank

[SIGShooter]

@plumrt

Or just a piece of properly sized/shaped copper tube.
But, the spring is there to help prevent shock/breaking the driver if the light drops.

I have some lights with a solid driver post but I haven’t dropped them to see if the matters

[plumrt]

Yes, a Rocher I bought has the solid button. Seems nicer than a spring. So, what is it really going to matter unless you’re practicing bull riding at night.

[Jinx]

Will the switch stand up to the currents if this is modded further with spring bypass etc? I want this light to serve me EDC for years to come although I guess full blown turbo will be a tiny fraction of overall use. I’m sure it’s not too hard to change out if it fails but a failure might be a real pain until that can be done, reliability is key for EDC.

[keengeorge]

@Jeansy

Will the switch stand up to the currents if this is modded further with spring bypass etc? I want this light to serve me EDC for years to come although I guess full blown turbo will be a tiny fraction of overall use. I’m sure it’s not too hard to change out if it fails but a failure might be a real pain until that can be done, reliability is key for EDC.

From memory, if you go back in this thread about 2-3 days, you will find Dale's statement that the switch will be OK.

But if you go above about 6-7 Amps, then you may have problems with the pcb trace which may eventually fail (depending on how high is the current).

So in that case do the tail spring bypass connection directly to the switch terminal thus bypassing the pcb.

Best Regards,

George

[bugsy36]

@Jeansy

Will the switch stand up to the currents if this is modded further with spring bypass etc? I want this light to serve me EDC for years to come although I guess full blown turbo will be a tiny fraction of overall use. I’m sure it’s not too hard to change out if it fails but a failure might be a real pain until that can be done, reliability is key for EDC.

Just bypass the spring at the switch the way Dr.FrankenDale does it. It hurts nothing but the extra insurance that you will not burn a trace is worth the effort.

[Jinx]

Good to hear, great knowledge on this forum

[BLightSam]

@Jeansy

Will the switch stand up to the currents if this is modded further with spring bypass etc? I want this light to serve me EDC for years to come although I guess full blown turbo will be a tiny fraction of overall use. I’m sure it’s not too hard to change out if it fails but a failure might be a real pain until that can be done, reliability is key for EDC.

I wouldn’t do it because as it is the current is way more than enough even for turbo. It’s suggested that use turbo briefly.

[DB_Custom (Dale)]

A point to ponder, for those worried about TOO MUCH current flow and damages to the switch, LED, etc.

If your hot rod will do 6.7Amps and produce 1800 lumens with the top LG HE-4 cell fully charged, remember that pulling 6700mA through a cell rated 2500mAh will reduce the current flow in a linear drop as the light is used. In other words, it won’t be pulling 6.7A for very long, the available current will fall as the cell drains.

You can also control that by using a lesser cell. A Panasonic BD will allow quite good current flow and output, without quite getting into that realm of imminent self-destruction. So it’s up to you, the user, to know and understand your tool, it’s available fuel supply, and how it will react in different conditions.

I did a test with the Lucky Sun D80 Group Buy light using 15 different cells of varying performance capability. For those of you not reading the D80 Group Buy thread, I present this table so you can see how various cells act in a small high performance flashlight.

[Tom_E]

@ToyKeeper

@BLightSam

Interesting with all this dancing around. How hot does it get if left on for a minute? Two minutes? Three minutes?

It depends on several factors, like the ambient temperature, wind speed, how you’re holding the light, the type and state of the battery, etc. The short answer is: It can get very hot, so you should allow the turbo step-down to do its job and also manually turn down the power if it gets too hot. Unless you want it to melt itself. If that’s what you want, you could wrap it in a blanket on turbo and it’d probably start a fire. Maybe even explode. Great fun for the whole family. This light will not keep you from shooting yourself in the foot.

I had a full-up modded SupFire M6, does bout 5000 lumens @30 secs, high amp 2500 cells (4), and had it wrapped up in a small towel in a carry case - went on, hi I suspect, for a good 35 minutes or so. Burned in 3 LED images into the towel, could barely touch the switch quickly to turn it off it was so scalding hot. Had to let it sit for a good 45-60 minutes before I could even touch it. So, no fire, no damage - even the cells survived fine.

[chuckhov]

Yes,

But you do good work, Tom

Not everyone’s light would have made it.

-Chuck

[DB_Custom (Dale)]

Tom, I really mean no disrespect, but come on now!

1st… Why on earth didn’t you lock it out? I would think you’d know better, of all people! E-switch lights are very dangerous for this very reason, too easily engaged.

2nd… I’ve had my own similarly set up M6 burn holes in the acetate lining in my coat pocket in 3 seconds, so even IF you didn’t get a fire here, it’s only because you were fortunate, blessed and the flashlight god’s were on duty. Thank God you weren’t hurt!

3rd… I’ve roasted a flashlight in the oven at 600 degrees for over an hour, baking it from black to a vibrant orange, and it didn’t take it 45 minutes to cool down completely so I could disassemble it. So your cooling times there look exaggerated, I wasn’t there so I don’t know of course, but at the very least those cells should be disposed of due to the abuse they’ve seen. They will be much more likely to go pyro in the future, and you should play it safe. In a situation like this, it would be paramount to use gloves, pull the cells from the light, so they can cool as quickly as possible. One weak cell, that’s all it takes. One positive wire de-soldering under heat and flopping over to the flashlight body, grounding out the entire battery… surely y’all see how easily things can go horribly wrong.

4th… My own M6, equipped with Samsung 25R button tops, won’t run anywhere near dangerous levels for 35 minutes. It’s that first couple of minutes of the high power, while the cells still have it, that does the damage. After that the light is on a downward spiral in output and current draw, as are all of these linear driven hot rods. Turbo timeout in the first 30-60 seconds means it will not be on it’s highest settings very long in a situation like this.

5th… Everyone, Tom was trying to make a point here that it’s not a given things will go as wrong as they possibly can. That being said, he got very lucky and no one was hurt. Different cells in the light or a slightly different set of parameters elsewhere and things could have gone very differently, including the high possibility of people getting seriously hurt. Consider, if this “bag” had started fire, laying in the rear floorboard of the car as you drove… the car would have caught fire and Tom would have been lucky to get out alive, a flaming car could have killed others as well. My point is that we need to TRY to prevent the absolute worst case scenario, even while hoping for the best.

People that are new to this hobby need to be careful what they assume. These lights and the cells they use ARE DANGEROUS! Tom got lucky here, it should be obvious, but I urge y’all to not leave your lives and the lives of those around you to dumb luck. Leave the cells out of a light in transit, lock it out, or simply place a plastic disc between the springs and the cells to disrupt power. It really is true, the old saying… “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Again, Tom, I do not intend disrespect, but noobs can easily take your picture and words wrong and be far too lax in the safety department. 100 safe accidents do not even come close to atoning for one death, one disfigured member of this forum due to fire. Please everyone, be careful!

[DrafterDan]

Good post DB. I gift AA stock lights, and keep the powerhouses for myself.

I'm pretty new to this forum, but have been modding and building lights for years. Put myself down for one of these M-A6's today.

~Daniel

[Tom_E]

Ahh, this was before I got in to turbo timeouts - none of my early DD builds had turbo timeouts, found it to be a nuisance at the time. Yes, forgot to lock it out (now I do always ). Can't explain the cool-down time other than I didn't stopwatch it, but thought it was bout 45 mins, it was all closed up with the cells in it, so an empty shell would definitely cool off faster, the cells were quite warm when I took it apart. The M6 is a nice thick chunk of metal, but lacking in the cooling fin/surface area so I'd expect it to take a long time to cool.

Yes, we should be cautious, but many of us go wayyy overboard with the notion of heat causing explosions and fires. The amps steadily drop as the cell drains, so that helps big time as well.