All good. 30T is pretty extreme. Mainly for hotrodding.
BG will never publish a bad review afaik…
Yeap!
If you mark with less then 4 stars your post will be automatically deleted, like happened with my FT02 2020 feedback.
What junk...
What I have seen are five star reviews with the bad news simply in the text, they scan for stars, not for content, so that makes it through the screening.
Thanks for the pro-tip on leaving a ‘negative’ review. Will have to do it.
I hope it works, I have seen it work but that I does not prove that it always works.
We couldn't get hold of them as manufacturer shutdown for CNY holiday before 19th. Do wait for manufacturer to provide us the answers for the issues when they resume work soon. Please be patient as I believe Wuhan coronavirus will definitely impact work progress of all trades.
How are the issues going to be addressed? It seems to me there are two major flaws.
1. The went cheap and used 20 gauge wires instead of 16 or 18.
2. Bad refector design.
3. The andruil that drives the light is half broken with throttling issues and a broken muggle mode.
We can be shipped a new reflector but how will the resoldering be handled?
No clue -
Replacing wires and anduril are doable enthusiast fixes -
Resoldering is fairly simple.
Reflashing anduril is possibly somewhat easy, We’d need a better suited version of anduril, perhaps the MF01S version. There are pogo pads, which is great, but they’re not in the same configuration as the emisar lights, theyre 6x1 as apposed to
00
0000
which is obnoxious by honestly not that bad. either make your own row, solder tiny wires to it, or do a combo, hit 4 with with pogo pins, solder two.
Reflector fixes without them producing a proper reflector is essentially impossible for us.
Speaking of the reflector, mine is as expected the “bad” reflector, but by doing the “look into the lens and see how much of the reflector shows the diode at a few feet away isn’t doing the ”center of reflector isn’t showing it” which is what I heard I should see. Anyone have a photo of what that should look like not with other lights, but with the FT03S? Maybe some of the “bad” reflectors aren’t bad, or the led height is slightly different?
I don’t have measuring equipment, and the only throwers I have to compare hotspot size to are a SST-20 3000k D1 and D1S, and SST-40 D1 unfortunately.
Unrelated - Is 75C the max anduril can set to?
We shouldn’t have to do any of this of course, but at least some are possible.
Ramping Problem not solved, but a workaround - for me at least…
Mine does start dropping off at the 20-30 secondish mark.
When it does that, double click back to turbo, and then it stays there for quite a while. It does seem to be a problem of speed of temperature rise, not an actual temperature problem. Since it becomes somewhat stable after initially heating up, it stops doing the yo-yo, for me at least. The external temp settles around 60C with the ambient set properly and max temp set to 75.
Anyway, this is my take on the situation. Maybe some other people have opinions on the situation?
PS, I know muggle mode steps down early on the FW3A due to some software bug. Does it do it on the FT03S as well? I don’t have much to contribute on this topic. Maybe the bug can be fixed on later revisions of Anduril. We don’t even know what version Astrolux is using in the FT03S. Might be pretty old.
It would be interesting of someone with both a FT03 and FT03S were to swap the SBT-90.2 into a FT03. Then see how that driver and reflector combo acts. How is the stepdown working? Much better, poorly, acceptable?
See how many amps it pulls, I suspect no change here.
See how the throw improves. We already know it does, but still not as far as the rated specs.
The counter argument to this is that the people who own other FT03 variants have swapped reflectors, and are still _significantly _under the advertised throw.
I seem to recall something like 280 with bad reflector, and 320 with a “good” reflector. Nowhere near 510.
So maybe they tried to redesign the reflector for the FT03S, and either did a poor job, or there was a manufacturing issue with them. Alternatively, they calculated the theoretical throw (and potentially messed that up too) of the SBT90.2 in an FT03, and slapped that number on, even though it’s completely unreachable with current manufacturing limits.
It’s anyone’s guess though. M4D MAX has reached out to some contacts to try and get some info but they’re on their CNY break, I believe.
I know you can trick the light to thinking it’s colder than it actually is. Just tell it a lower ambient temp. This effectively raises the max stepdown temp.
I’m not sure what the max temp Anduril can be set to. I’ll ask Toykeeper.
The inherit problem of lower than advertised throw and lumens is due to the 20 gauge wire. The while system appears to be power starved on turbo at least. Perhaps it was a engineering choice to limit the heat generation but there was significant jump in performance when ZozzLights stepped up to 18 gauge. He measured around 14 amps on 20, I bet he was pushing closer to 20amp on 18 gauge.
He said after doing the wire swap, he got much closer to the advertised lumens, and probably candela as well. We all know heading into this as well that the SBT90.2 could eat 20 amps easily. ANSI specs 20 gauge is rated up to around 11 amps. Therefore it really leads me to conclude two options; 20 gauge could be a cost saving move, or a thermal regulation move. I’m leaning to the former.
Only 14 amps? People measured that on the xhp50.2 version. Did Zozz post that somewhere in this thread? (I may not remember). Or did he post in a different thread? (I may not have seen it) Anyway, I’d like to read up on his results.
M4DM4X got 433.5Kcd with the old FT03 reflector which isn’t bad at all. That’s 1316m of throw which is good for a light of this size, output and price. Even with a good reflector and wires I doubt it’ll be able to hit 500 cause of the single cell which won’t able to push the SBT90.2 to it’s limits. I mean it might but just at turn on. Once they fix the issues this will be a great light. Wonder what they’re gonna do with the existing ones though…like mine.
That’s a good point. The 510kcd definitely seems too ambitious regardless of whether the reflector is perfect or not. Maybe they tried tweaking the reflector shape due to the domeless design of the SBT-90.2 and accidentally made it worse? I think it’s focal point might be slightly different and/or the height of the led might not be the same as the SST-40 and XHP50.2. I haven’t looked at the led dimensions in the data sheets. So far I can only find the first gen data sheet and it doesn’t list dimensions such as the height from the base to the top of the glass. :weary:
EDIT:
The height of the base for:
SST-40 is 0.60mm
XHP50.2 is 0.65mm
SBT 90 is 0.91mm
Dome heights vary:
SST-40 is 3.01mm
XHP50.2 is 3.50mm
The Cree data sheet shows the “optical reference” at the top of the base which is 0.65mm. I assume this is reference to the focal point in which reflectors need to be designed and shimmed to. So SST-40 and XHP50.2 are virtually identical.
Edit, I found the mechanical specs for SBT-90. I assume it’s the same for Gen 2.
So there is a difference in the focal points between the SST-40/XHP50.2 and the SBT-90. Not much, but a little.
I’m sure you can set it higher. Just haven’t tried it. Don’t see why it would make a difference to the turbo runtime though as 65 and 75 both perform the same.
Something’s not right about those readings. Maybe that’s why his numbers are so low. I’ll measure mine tomorrow. Has anyone else checked to see if they also have 20 gauge wires? Maybe they changed them after they already had made some.