Don’t they also have a 26350 size “TINY” or is that a different light I’m thinking of?
That is a BTU light
I would consider carry a 18350 light
and having a 18650 tube and battery spare to carry with you
the extra 18650 tube adds very little to the whole weight
18350 light + 2 spares is about equal weight and energy to 18650 light w/out spares. Somewhat higher bulk. If you need less energy, 18350 wins. If more - 18650. For me less is going to happen far more often then more and furthermore I tend to always have a spare (In case I forgot to recharge. Happened once.) so 18350 just seems better.
Carrying 2 tubes doesn’t seem worthwhile.
BTW how about human lathe shortening of DQG Tiny? 
Any specific challenges?
OOH… that sounds fun! :partying_face:
Sorry, I don’t know about “challenges” because I don’t have one of those. But I’d like to see you try it! :smiling_imp:
The new Aspire 18350 cell should change a lot of things in small flashlights. With 1200mAh capacity as compared to 650mAh, and with high discharge capability as well, our small lights should see nice gains. I have some on the way to try out. My small Sinner 18350 triples will be quite happy!
The specific challenge to shorten the tube of a DQG Tiny will be tube thickness. It would be best to cut the tube then cut new threads. The human lathe method, where the two cut off components of the tube are re-joined with a slip joint, might not work here due to the thin walls of the tube.
I have a DQG Tiny on the way and I’m digging deeper into this topic.
First, as a summary, I am aware of 3 people converting Tiny to triple:
http://forum.fonarevka.ru/showthread.php?t=31935
Each of them adds information not available in others.
The last one contains the following image of the battery tube:
// Doesn’t show as image on the forum, you have to click, sorry…
Doesn’t look like ome could cut a new thread in the middle of a tube; the thread diameter seems just as large as the outer that of the knurling, if not larger.
Any suggestions?
BTW:
it seems that one could shorten the bezel by 1-2 mm…
DQG Tiny modded to triple is the most compact you can get in 18650 format. If you run it with a FET driver at max power peak output should be north of 2000 lumens.
However, the downside of this is the DQG has no heatsinking and its head is very small. I have very similar modded DQG Tiny III 18650 triple XPL and it gets HOT. So hot that I had to limit output to 3 amps and even then it can’t run at that power for long.
Some other ideas:
1. I modded a Sunwayman C10R with triple XPL and FET driver. As a host this was a nice choice since it has a decent head with some heatsink fins. The stock light runs on one CR123/16340, but I managed to fit an 18500 in mine. At peak output on a quality IMR 18500 it’s as bright as a FET driven 18650 triple, but is substantially smaller and lighter than even a DQG Tiny 18650 and takes longer to heat up to the point where it’s too hot to touch. This is quite an ambitious mod though… definitely not for first time modders.
2. How about a Jaxman E2L host with triple XPL HI or XPL2 a FET driver and 18500 battery tube. The downside of this setup is it is larger than a DQG Tiny 18650 and runs on a smaller battery. The upside is you can get much higher output because heatsinking is much better than the DQG. Also with the switch in the tail instead of the hot head, you can let the head get hotter while still being able to operate the light. This is also a relatively easy to assemble mod even for first-time modders.
It looks like Emisar D4 wouldn’s be far off these two when it comes to cooling while beating them nicely in size. Looks like a great light, can’t wait for it.
Personally I’m looking into entering a smaller class. DQG Tiny shortened to 18350, with a bezel shortened by 1 mm is 25% smaller. This triple would have lower volume than many 14500 lights despite 30% larger battery capacity and 3 LEDs.
Hank just yesterday mentioned that there will be 18500 and 18350 tubes sold for the D4.
Yep I surely expect it to be a Pareto-frontier in each configuration.
Still, in thermally-stable modes a DQG Tiny (shortened or not) is going to have only marginally worse runtime and not-so-marginally smaller size.
Once you exceed DQG’s thermal capabilities, but stay within D4’s, the latter will provide longer runtime at the same output.
At the end of the range, cooling doesn’t matter; thermal capacity does. Still, D4 is going to be better….though probably with a smaller difference….while still having not-so-marginally larger size.
So I consider DQG Tiny to use the bulk more efficiently than D4 in the boring, but so useful modes. At the high end - I wouldn’t call any of them better, just different.
As you mentioned before, quality is another matter. 
As we’re at it, it should be noted that DQG considers making a 18650 triple of their own, shorter than a single:
As to DQG Tiny shortening…
I made a little drawing:
Green is the head.
Red is the tube. The light part is knurled.
If we machine like that and join with conductive glue, it should work, right?
This kind of thread has me interested. It makes me wonder what the capabilities of future lights will be. My first “nice” lights (a couple Fenix and 4Sevens) have been left in the dust, lumen-wise and that’s only with a handful of years going by.
When will keychain-sized lights (AA-sized) be able to hit 1000 lumens with respectable runtimes? Batteries continue to inch forward with more capacity and more efficient leds might arise.
Exciting times for sure. Let’s hope Elon Musk and his factory makes some more breakthroughs that will eventually trickle down into other products.