Let's make a real BLF flashlight, calling up the brainstorm

[flashburn]

14500 with more than 1050mAh:

P1450C3

This is available in the tobacco shop in our small province town, so I thought it’s already a common product.

[Photon_Master]

I’d like a “super-MS18” myself. Eight of the new Tesla 4680 cells and 36 SBT-90.2s

[manithree]

@Photon Master

I’d like a “super-MS18” myself. Eight of the new Tesla 4680 cells and 36 SBT-90.2s

This guy doesn’t know the meaning of the word overkill :smiling_imp:

That’s 2.84 kg (6.26 lb) in batteries alone. Not quite the comical proportions of this light, but probably not far off.

I don’t know if the suggestion was in jest or not, but, sadly, I doubt it will get any traction here.

A BLF GT-90 with 2S 4680, and ONE SBT-90.2 would be awesome, if we can ever actually buy 4680s.

[Photon_Master]

@manithree

@Photon Master

I’d like a “super-MS18” myself. Eight of the new Tesla 4680 cells and 36 SBT-90.2s

This guy doesn’t know the meaning of the word overkill :smiling_imp:

That’s 2.84 kg (6.26 lb) in batteries alone. Not quite the comical proportions of this light, but probably not far off.

I don’t know if the suggestion was in jest or not, but, sadly, I doubt it will get any traction here.

A BLF GT-90 with 2S 4680, and ONE SBT-90.2 would be awesome, if we can ever actually buy 4680s.

Heehee ya. I went to a park last night and could’ve easily gotten by with a pocket light or my Emisar D18. Decided instead on the MS18 and the Firefoxes FF5 GT

[Agro]

@skinny_tie

@Chicken Drumstick

I’d not really want 16340, runtimes are poor due to very low capacity of these batteries.

Somewhat harder to find, but a 16500 would offer better capacity and allow you to run a 14500/AA or CR123/16340 as well if you wanted too.

18500 might be even better (more battery availability), although it would start to get chunky as a light.

The tiny size of the 16340 is part of the appeal of the Utorch S1 Mini for me, but your’re right - the capacity is pretty low.

USB charging partially mitigates the capacity issue, although not for all uses cases. I like integrated charging on an EDC light as I can easily top up the cell daily at my desk. However, that’s not much help if you need more the full capacity of the cell each day.

I wonder whether it would be possible to use a 14500 in a 16500 light, without an adapter, and without it falling around? If so, that could be a good option, but I still prefer a shorter light.

How about 18350? I think 18350s have a similar capacity to 16500s, but they seem to be more common.

For my purposes, I would want to make sure the tail cap magnet was strong enough hold the weight of the light with the heaviest cell it could use. I know some people don’t like magnets, so a removable magnet or alternative tail cap would be good.

Utorch S1 Mini was my favourite non-zooming EDC.
Capacity was not great but for EDC I don’t care…and even a slight size increase would be a big deal for me then. My usage patter has changed, so I don’t care really. A few years ago one good thing about 16340 was that cells with built-in chargers were easily available and not that much worse than regular ones. S1 Mini with such cell offered really nice size-to-capacity ration.
S1 Mini beam was very good. Size was good as well. I looked around for a compatible driver which would elevate it to something much better.
A BLF special would be a simple light to build. Wouldn’t really bring anything new to to the market but should serve its users well.
There are small improvements that could be done though. Among them:

• RGB button backlight
• BLF UI
• weaker lens closer to the LED would be more efficient and make the light a bit shorter
• LEDs could be better

[Chicken_Drumstick]

@skinny_tie

The tiny size of the 16340 is part of the appeal of the Utorch S1 Mini for me, but your’re right - the capacity is pretty low.

On reflection, yes I can see the appeal, so long as the light does remain small.

I grabbed my Jetbeam Jet II Pro off the shelf after reading this. I’d forgotten how compact it really is. But some 16340 lights just seem to end up being considerably longer and chunkier. If it was kept small, yes I’d be interested too.

Although if being honest. I’d hope lumen output and current would be limited. Not very BLF maybe in the lumen wars sense. But high lumens just means lots of heat and worse runtimes. I know people can say use a lower mode. But most UI’s don’t really support using the middle modes easily. They tend to allow instant access to turbo/high etc.