I got the light about a week ago. I probably won’t spend as much time on it as I had originally planned. The light is very good as it is, but the twisty isn’t my favorite. Hopefully it will be better after I get some lube on it.
I’ll either post my findings here or start my own thread.
I lubed the threads on mine with Artisana Organic Raw Coconut Oil 
they felt really gritty before that, i only use food grade lube on flashlights & knifes, although i am sure that using some silicon grease like NyoGel would improve the smoothness even further.
If you are still searching for a better aaa/10440 host please let me know if you find one or get a lead on one, i plan to build a couple for gifting and this looked like the best one i have found yet, but i find since i got in to this hobby that i am always game to try some new budget flashlights, especially if they are a possible great host for mods
Love the QTC idea cajampa. Just ordered some.
Kind of weird. Looking at the CFP threads, it this stuff has really climbed price wise.
I like using food-grade mineral oil on my knives. Coconut oil sounds like it would be better because it is thicker. I'll be trying that out too. Thanks for sharing all these need neat ideas. :)
I have some silicone grease in the mail. I had been using white lithium, but it was making the o-rings swell.
I ordered an sf-348 at the $5 price. I think I’ll like the clicky, but it will probably be tougher to get a new driver in.
@ImA4Wheelr Thanks, my head is filled with countless great ideas from this place so it feels great to give back a little
Now i have the qtc set up so when i twist the top part full i get a nice maybe 150-200 lumens (but the hot spot is quite wide and soft so it is less blinding than one would think) and if i press the bottom i can get instant MAX :bigsmile: or i can fine tune the level from the bottom, or get even lower by twisting the top a tiny bit less.
When i change the battery i take it out from the top gently and collect the qtc square from the bat - , because it is the twisting action that wear it out prematurely, and then replace it on the new full battery and gently thread the flashlight body over the battery so the qtc ends up on the bottom spring, before i started to do that i saw some of wear on the qtc and it got off center easily with much less control over the lumens output.
It is kind of fun it is almost like the “qtc driver” is an organic analog part of the flashlight now it is weird to think about when you are used to the driver be an rigid driver with a lot of electronic components on it, the qtc feels more alive…….harder to control but with more control to give.
I think i would be possible to have it sandwiched maybe by the bottom spring or in a copper top on the spring or maybe on top of the driver board it should be possible to enclose it so it is not twisted anymore but only pushed, if it would show to wear out or if i would find i have the need to change battery in the dark and get tired of keeping track of the tiny little qtc square.
I think i lose a tiny bit of output from max on DD to max on gtc probably under 100 lumens, but without side by side comparison or proper lumens measurement it is impossible to be certain.
@pilotdog68, o ring swell hmm that i hadn’t thought about, i wonder how long it would take for something like that to show up……. thanks for making me look out for that, that should hopefully make me take notice before it is to late.
Besides flashlights as a hobby, i like to build budget water filtration systems for me, my friends & family(you can build crazy cheap builds from Chinese imports parts just like with flashlights), and for that the best recommended lube for all those massive 10 & 20 inch o rings for the filter housings, is an approved for food production machinery grade silicon called Dow Corning Molykote 111 Silicone Compound, that i know is the last thing that would swell o rings and it is food production approved also, i wonder if flashlight silicon grease is food grade, anyway for now at least until my first o ring swell i will probably just use the not only food grade but the most delicious and an actual food 
raw organic coconut oil.
Thanks for the SF-348 tips, it looks very slim, but a solid pill & screw on bezel sounds like a nice possible 10440 host :-), do you know how wide the driver is and how deep the driver area is?
I was thinking similar for protecting the QTC. Was thinking maybe under a copper disk under the tail spring. I read the QTC's are slightly magnetic. Is that the case with yours? If yes, do they have a weak magnetic fields?
BLF Member _the_ measured the driver at 10.1mm here.
Do you or pd68 have any recommended sources for 10440 cells?
Thanks for that link. The dimensions are really tight, it looks like I have a Tiny10DD in my near future
Thank you pilotdog68. I'll check them out.
Yes under a copper disk could work, but the spring that is in there now on the jexree mini is kind of pressfitted in so it may keep it completely compressed when under it, the spring sits in a hole thats just maybe large enough for a qtc if it is not i don’t think it would break if one would trim the edges a bit on it.
I don’t really know how to test if it is slightly magnetic? it is at least not magnetic enough to not fall of a battery - end when upside down.
BUT i have some small 1,5mm 5mm wide Neodymium magnets from fasttech and that kind of works for a protection, it would probably work better if i get some smaller 1mm and wider ones……so i will buy some, i will probably have solved it before i even get them, but a reason to buy some more fun magnets is a gift in it self and it is always nice to have a backup plan in the mail if i fail.
And the slightly magnetic question, could that be why they seem to have poles when i use the Neodymium on them, and as far as i know there should be only one producer of qtc Peratech so all are most likely the same.
For Efest 10440, you will probably have much easier to get from trusted sources living in the US check those Pilotdog68 suggested, to get some here in Sweden i ordered from fstoplights.com in Singapore, next time it might be http://www.akkula.fi/
That sf-348 looks to be a super tight build, we will have to use every trick in the book to fit a new led star & driver in that, i still hold out hope for that some day in the future wight will try to do a 10mm single sided slim fet driver with tiny tiny components on it to make i fit but until then we will have to make do with what we have available.
Good points about the using the QTC under the tail spring. I was thinking it would help hold everything in place, but I hear you on it possibly not allowing the QTC to decompress. Really looking forward to playing with these QTC's. I love problems like these.
So, no real magnetism. Was hoping they could securely hold a thin iron disk.
It may work if one would turn the spring upside down………but then the question is if the spring will connect by the sides of the hole it sits in and then it would bypass the QTC………
I checked the available fasttech magnets, i think the 1mmx10mm or 1mmx9mm should fit the best or possible the 8mm wide ones.
Yeah this is fun, do you have the jexree mini or the LZZ-06? and what kind of mod besides the QTC have you planned for it? or is it some other twisty?
If i succeed in encapsulate the pressing twisting force, i would like to try to use it in a BLF X6 so i can run it DD + QTC, the big head feels great as a two handed twisty but the big spring is way to large for a simple drop in test run, hmm i should probably buy some of the wider magnets if this turn out to be the solution.
One slightly annoying thing when the QTC is laying openly like this is that after ever battery change or opening and moving of the qtc, it feels different, so it is a bit hard to find the correct movement again to get the intended action, if one could stabilize that so even if its quirky and sensitive to very small movements it is at least the same movements that get the same reaction, now it is like a new tuning in process every time you take it apart………or it may also be that i have only played around with it for very short time…….
Encapsulating the qtc chip does sound like a real good idea. One thing I want to try (but it won't totally encapsulate it) is to use a copper disk that has 4 legs. The legs will go past the flat sides of the qtc (not the corners) into a plastic or fiberglass disk that will be about where the driver is currently located. The legs would have anchors on the back side of the plastic disk to keep the copper disk in place. Something that will kind of look like this (no plastic disk represented).
[_-----_]
Unfortunately, I have a bunch of Jexree Minis in every color. I bought them to be gifts, but the mode switching issues ruined that idea. I think I like the idea of just using the qtc to control output. All I really need in a light like this is moonlight and high. I don't mind if the qtc induces some resistance and limits high a little. I don't think I will use high all that often.
What a great idea for this light. It will be even more perfect for one of my modded ones ones because that one has a XM-L2 on copper completely direct drive without any electronics :-)
I ordered some too, thanks!
Cool stuff, I’ve used QTC in a couple of smaller twisty style lights that i modified to direct drive after mods gone wrong…
A Thrunite Ti, UltraFire UF-T1 and a DQG AAA - all have solid pills now with just the wires going through.
My method to keep the QTC material in place and free from torsional damage is to have the pill at the - battery end in the bottom of the tube, glued to a piece of cut out medium/low density compressible foam on 3 sides with a tiny amount of silicone or flexible glue.
The foam should be the same thickness as the QTC and a snug round fit. It’s not a good idea to have the pill centered as it can cause the battery to dent in the middle if you’re going for full twisty power.
Instead i keep it to the edge of the battery tube and trimmed like this.
This type of use requires fairly set tolerances on the cells used, I use Efest 10440’s with maybe a 0.5mm magnet if need be.
It’s like having mini fully variable RRT-01’s
I am going to start a thread on my QTC driver , but it clearly cannot wait.
The principle is simple but the secret ingredient , found by accident , makes all the difference.And it is…a silicon oven mat!
Mark the centre and cut out a disc from the oven mat , say 10mm diameter and then cut out a QTC sized square hole in the
middle.Make 2 more discs from , for example , margarine lids , also with the square cut outs.Glue small strips of copper tape
to the inside of the insulation discs , one will be top , the other bottom.I then made up 2 QTC sized squares of copper from
flattened water pipe and soldered them to the copper tape so they act like button tops.Glue the 3 discs together , oven mat in
the middle and copper tape towards the QTC. I used superglue. Do not glue the QTC.
Last tip , on the QTC cut out in the oven
mat ,
scallop or bulge the straight edges of the mat so it and the QTC have room to squish , but leave the corners alone to securely
hold the QTC in place.The oven mat , or cake mould or oven glove or whatever you find , needs to be the same thickness as the QTC , mine was anyway.
The QTC is spiky zinc nano particles in a silicon matrix , so they squash the same.
My QTC’s have suffered no degradation , because they are isolated from the twisting motion.
Remember , the secret is in the oven mat 
This thread suffers badly from lack of pictures!
^ Hear, hear. My imagination muscle is starting to get sore.
Look forward to your thread Billy X.
Thanks djozz, this means a lot coming from you, i would never been able to do it so quickly without your prior mods on this, and everything else of great stuff you have done around here also, like all the testing the various emitter and mcpcb’s and more, you are a great inspiration for me.
Guys i tried to take some beam shots, but i only have access to a phone camera and with no setting + i am really not a photo guy, i totally failed at taking some beam shots that show anything representative unfortunately.
@ImA4Wheelr, sorry to hear yours where messed up, on my the modes worked fine stock when on NiMH, but if you mainly want a great moonlight + when you need it a blast of high, your are going to love the QTC that kind of setup is easy to get, it is more complicated to get perfectly controllable variable setting in between, but with all the new great influx of good ideas from you, CRX & Billy X we will hopefully have that to soon.
@CRX, Billy X, ImA4Wheelr & djozz, thanks guys i am happy we finally get some really interesting discussions on the QTC here on BLF, i have wondered ever since i started reading here why it wasn’t used more on budget mods, i always thought it looked like it was made for this.
@Billy X, is this the kind of silicone oven mat you are talking about, or maybe this Where did you buy yours?