Can't say I've ever thought much about it. I do leave them on the strips and pull them off as needed, which with 7135s is pretty easy. With the smaller stuff like for the BLF FET boards, I generally build 5+ boards at a time, so I'll pull off five of the components I need, place them, then repeat with the next part. I bought some bins but I haven't transitioned to them yet and don't know if I will. The strips do offer some advantages, such as easily being able to count out the number of parts I need and easily being able to see how many I have left.
I've seen the suction setups, etc., but I don't think it would save me much time.
I received the parts for my SRK mod yesterday, and finished the mod and write-up today. It’s online here:
The result turned out surprisingly close to what I expected. And I wouldn’t have been able to do it yet without RMM helpfully doing the hardest parts for me (acquiring legit parts, building the driver, reflowing emitters onto stars).
Thanks! I probably wouldn’t even be modding yet without RMM’s store, and instead I was able to completely replace the guts of a multi-emitter photon grenade.
Its probably a foolish question but can the 16340 light take a 18350 by tweaking the springs or is the diameter too tight? Oh and are there holes to fit a clip?
Oh, and some other questions. Can the 16340 EDC light be had with a zener modded driver. Do you know how many amps the Efest 16340 IMR can put out? Can the little EDC light be obtained as a host?
BTW, nice work. All this, work and school and you are really nice to work with. I envy that. I have it on good authority that I was a challenge to get along with while working and going to school. Therefore, I really respect that.
Looking at your tag line I think that the S3 I ordered from Richard will come close to doing what you want. The technology limitations on small light output at the moment are heat and battery power availability I believe. Seeing as how it seems like the 18650 battery size is where high current technology is reaching the retail market first anything taking a smaller battery size is going to be battery limited for output.
Speaking of battery output did anyone watch the electric motorcycle Isle Of Man TT race last week? A battery powered electric bike got around the 37.75 mile course at a lap speed of 113+ MPH! Maximum throttle output from the battery pack was a reported 100 KW or about 130 HP equivalent. And they did it quietly!
Scotty, what would be the point in an Zener modded driver for this small light? Do they make 16170’s? And if so, why? The Zener mod allows use of 2 cells to an MT-G2, right? I don’t see where you’re going with that, the Zener mod doesn’t allow 2 cells to a 3V emitter, so even if you could put 2 half 16340’s to an MT-G2 it would maybe, maybe, run all of 1 1/2 minutes? If voltage sag didn’t kill it right out of the gate.
Isle of Man, silently. Why? I always felt that racing was a spectator sport, the sights, sounds and smells of high drama racing is the main attraction. Take out the sounds and smells, well, lose the crowd. I sure wouldn’t go to watch em buzz silently around the track! Geesh, everything is getting ruined these days…
1. No, a 18350 won't fit. There's actually quite a bit of size difference between 16mm and 18mm and it's just too tight to fit.
2. I'm not sure what a zener modded driver would give you in this case, since we're only running (and there's only space for) one cell. Did you mean an FET driver? In that case, yes, there is room, but an even IMR 16340 isn't going to give you much over 2A into an XP-G2.
3. No holes for a pocket clip. The one I sell is maybe longer than this entire light anyways! Of course you could always drill some holes if you found an appropriate clip.
Dale, I was under caffeinated when I posted. I was thinking FET. I would love for it to put out so much light that it sounds like an arc welder from the shear volume of light coming out. Of course then I would complain about the noise. That brings me to the Isle of Man electric motorcycle, silent would be too cool. Just the sound of the bike ripping through the air. Oh yeah!
I feel your pain, and hear your needs, but Alien technology has yet to trickle down to Earth making what you ask possible. Stay tuned…
I put an FET in my Sinner Cypreus EDC 18350 copper light. With a de-domed XP-G2 R5 1A it only pulls 2.71A through an AW IMR18350. I tried it with an Sony C5 and it doesn’t do any better.
I can see that with the little 18350...but I can hit 4.5A with a qlite, dedomed XP-G2 R5 1A, and 20R, so 2.71A seems pretty low. It will only hold 4.5A for a little bit with a fresh cell, but it will do it. I've got that setup in a UF-T20 I built for my dad.
But when I stuck a Sony C5 in the 18350 light I still got around 2.7A, what’s up with that? And for the record, the 18350 should be able to hit 11A, it did in my L2m Triple.
Actually, come to think on it, my Texas Poker is using a BLFTiny10 with a small FET and pulling 3.04A through an Efest IMR10440, same XP-G2 R5 1A de-domed.
Maybe you broke one of the bond wires or something? I would expect at least 4A direct drive through a VTC5. The 18350 will never hit 11A with a single XM-L2 or XP-G2, you know that (some little thing about forward voltage... )
Ah, darn. EDC lights really are best (IMO) with a screw-on clip. But maybe I just think that because I almost never have pockets in my clothing, so I clip stuff to my purse instead.
I’m still debating whether I can justify one of those nice 16340 EDCs. I have quite the pile of lights in front of me and a bad habit of carrying at least four of them everywhere I go. Deciding which ones to take with me is like deciding which shoes to wear. But despite the excess, it’s still tempting because it’s soooo nice.
BTW, on the 16340 EDC driver options, how bright is “moon” in “group 4”? I’ve seen moon (on a qlite driver) mean ~0.3 lumens sometimes, while on others (NLITE firmware) it’s actually more like 3 lumens. So, I’m not sure if it would be useful to have a level between moon and 5%.
With the pill out of the light, using a rested Efest 35A, 2.85A is the best it’ll do. I wonder if I may have gotten an emitter mislabeled and this is an XP-E2? Would that account for it? It’s de-domed, looks just like the one in my TP side by side. (which IS an XP-G2 R5 1A)
Anyone want to give a % list of the levels of Richards 7 levels firmware for the M6 and SRK light upgrade modifications he offers. I did not note it on the web site. Also a full explanation of the UI would be appreciated.
Not percentages but there ya go… the firmware is set from 0-255, so that should show you where the chips fall pretty much. A click or soft press goes forward, a long press (approx half a second or less) moves backwards through the firmware. So from off it’s easy to soft press into moon, then back up with a long press into the off position. Or, conversely, a long press from off goes straight into full Turbo and a soft press goes into off.
I have tweaked the above numbers (the firmware settings) to suit my fancy.
Dale, those are from the M6, right? The top four modes are very similar with the SRK, but the bottom three don't go nearly as low. The gate drivers/FETs on the M6 board allow me to get a much lower moonlight/lowest mode than with the setup I use on the SRKs.
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