Any other good source for the AA version?
Only some brasses contain lead. It improves machinability of the material and is normally referred to as leaded brass by machinists and when sold in raw form. The weathering of brass, the patina, is relatively soft and is easily worn off the high spots just by the friction of handling and rubbing against the clothing when being carried in a pocket. Lower spots remain darker due to not being rubbed on by handling or friction from contact with clothing. One reason brass is so easily polished by brasso or other metal polishes is the relatively soft nature of the patina.
Meanwhile, I intentionally age the surface because I think it looks better that way. And with the patina being darker in the recessed areas, it really adds character.
I wonder if the reason it doesn’t get darker again is because the surface is covered by too many oils. Maybe I could re-darken it by polishing it lightly and starting fresh.
Anyone else figure out the memory mode on the AA? Seems a bit like the Thrunite ti4. Semi short term memory
I wish the AA had better spaced modes... and less PWM
Can these use 14500?
Hello Ric … ??
I have been trying for the last 3-4 days to get into your site, however all I am able to see is the following error message. “MySQL server error report:” That’s just the title, not entire error message.
It’s always so strange when I spend a month thinking about whether or not to spend more money and then by the time I finally decide that yes spending more money on flashlights is always a great idea, but by then the site I want to go to the most is now broken,
But hopefully it is up and running again soon and not something permanent ?
Thank you
+1, stock driver is terrible: it have consumption ~2A in max and ~1A in medium mode with PWM.
Changing driver is complicated because a pill don’t have enough height for the two-plated driver.
Sorry to comment on your conversation but this is not good news for me, I was really liking the looks of this light and the 18650, wanted to get both.
Any suggestions on drivers?
Thanks
I’m also looking for a suitable driver, it must be ~14mm in diameter (stock is 13.8mm) and not higher than 4.5mm in height (stock is 3.5mm).
Thanks for the dimensions, now if I could only get into CNQG’s website, keep getting an SQL error code, haven’t tried today yet but did go looking for drivers that might work and Mt. Electronics has some Fet/DD that are close to what your dimensions are, but I also bumbled upon a thread here by TK and some comments by Wight who knows everything there is to know about drivers IMHO, and here’s the link to that thread CNQG Brass AA light
I’ve only read down a bit as I’m in a rush right now but I think before you buy a driver maybe read this, I believe what Wight is talking about is about this brass driver and having no MCU…??
I’ll finish reading it later, but check out Mt. Elec also, they are having a sale and some of the Fet drivers are on sale right now and some are close to your dimensions so maybe they can be slightly modified bigger or smaller?
I know there’s some rule about posting links to outside vendors but it is a members store and not just any ole member so I hope I don’t get in some kind of trouble but here is where to go look at these drivers, if you didn’t know already RMM
Edit: Ha, CNQG’s site is back up and working so now I to will have to worry about this driver, getting the 14500 & 18650 maybe :money_mouth_face: , at least I have a head start and know it’s got some issues so at least it won’t be a surprise when it gets here thanks to you all…
Edit 2: Couldn’t resist and read some more of the above mentioned thread and they figured out what works for this light, here’s link Solution
No, that’s not a rule here. On BLF, outside and commercial links are totally fine as long as you’re not posting spam. Basically, don’t be a jerk and you’ll be fine. 
In any case, this light should be able to use a 14mm (or trimmed 15mm) driver from Oshpark now that they offer a thinner PCB option. In the past, Oshpark drivers were too thick, but I think the new thin boards should be able to fit.
I still haven’t put a new driver or emitter in mine, but the only thing in my way now is simply spending the time to do it. I’d be happy with a 1x7135 driver, honestly. I don’t really need more than 140 lumens in a light this small.
If anyone is interested, here is this. I don’t think anyone has tested it yet.
It’s the classic/oldschool FET+1 in 14mm. Order the 0.8mm option on Oshpark.
Please note the resistors are 0603 and the FET is LFPAK33 (smaller than usual)
Is it PWM only for the 14500, not for AA (without booster)? I don’t see place for coil on board…
It will only run at ~2.5V to ~4.5V. There is no AA support.
I was also disappointed in the stock driver - the high mode was barely brighter than medium in my sample. I couldn’t find any good multi-mode boost drivers small enough so I settled for a FET driver with a 14500 cell.
Picked up RMM’s single-sided 12mm: FET Driver - 12mm - Single-sided - MTN-12DD
Put it in this morning and it works great. No moonlight but the low is a good level. It gets burning hot on turbo since there’s so little pill mass; I would ask Richard to put the timer down to 15-20 seconds if he can.
MEE TOOO
beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Anti-oxidation coatings can be removed to achieve Patina.
In case anyone stumbles across this, I was looking for a driver for the AA brass beauty and figured I'd try pd68's 14mm driver layout so I built one and it does indeed work fine. In fact it even fits with a tiny85v in place of the tiny13a, on the same pads - you just have to bend the pins under the body of the chip. Furthermore, a SOIC-8 programming clip still fits, too.
It's a single-sided 1x7135+FET driver with 0603 components but not too bad to assemble. Works great, though if you don't reduce the duty cycle for turbo mode it'll draw close to 5A from the 14500 cell I have, which is way too much for something with this little thermal mass. Though it's holy-crap bright for a AA light! I'll probably leave it in though there's some appeal to keeping the stock driver and being able to use regular non-lithium AAs. Fortunately it's really easy to swap back and forth.
Here's one with a tiny85 and one with a tiny13a.
Looks good epv. Nice job.