Is this stainless braid? Like for a oil cooler for a car? Or is it some type of conduit? Let me get this straight, you took a random spring wrapped it in this braid and just stuck it inside the tailcap/driver spring and let just chill without soldering?
IMO, even trying to solder this at all would turn it into a solid. PD is right though, you do have to fasten the spring to its base somehow.
So, what is the picture trying to say??? I can’t see ’em, so I guess they can’t talk to me… 
the braid is nickel plated copper. It was a piece of shielded electrical wire with a few strands inside. I did solder both end after tucking the braid into the spring. I’ts just much easier to solder the ends and not get the solder all through the braid this way, so the whole thing stays flexible.
Cool!
Thanks for clarifying! Sounds cool.
You can solder the spring to the PCB first, then pull the braid on it. It should be a bit less effective, but it circumvents the problem of the braid adsorbing solder and hardening.
Single strand of silicone covered copper wire, slightly coiled, is much easier and will last longer. The braid breaks with constant movement of replacing cells and/or sucks up solder and hardens. I’ve fixed quite a few lights with un-attached braid and strands poking out everywhere that came to me from other people. never used braid myself as it’s considered to be “solder wick” and not intended to carry current. Some of my heavy mods have 18ga wire inside the spring, mega current carrying ability! 
(especially when done in a through-board style where one end of the wire attaches directly to the switch and the other end is at the top of the spring in direct contact with the cell)
Looks like you had fun with the braid though.
Well, there you have it, straight from the horses mouth.
Dumb question, but how much improvement does bypassing the spring get you? Even with thin-gauge spring wire, the sub-inch length should still be measured in milliohms. Unless you’re building a shelf-queen that pushes 10A through an LED and has a runtime of like 10min, would bypassing the spring make that much of a diff?
Hell, lookit the thinness of the bond wires in the LED! 
Well for one, the actual length of the wire in the spring is much longer. Also lots of people EDC lights pushing well over 10A; high power does not a shelf queen make. Less resistance is almost always a good thing, though it may not always be necessary for the desired results. In general if a light will be doing 2.8A or more, I bypass the springs. Will it make “that much of a diff” under 4amps? No, but there’s no reason to not do it either
Over 6A the spring can heat up and collapse, breaking cell contact and rendering your light useless. I usually bypass at 5A and above in a single emitter (3V) and all triples/quads get the bypass.
My EDC triple uses an 18350 and pulls over 7.15A. I wear it on my person literally every day and use it sometimes multiple times a day, even before nightfall. Shelf queen? All my high power lights were modified for a purpose, they all stand ready with charged cells and get used on a regular basis.
I have no intention of being out there in the night and having a spring collapse, leaving me in the dark when I’m trying to do something.
Aha, okay, I get it. True, pushing multiamps through a thin spring would turn it into into a toaster.
I guess I’m coming from a different place altogether. My idea of an edc would be having multi-hour (or at least *1*hr!) runtime, so 2.8A from a decent cell, max. I almost hesitate to ask what you do that you need 7A from an edc light!
Criminy, I didn’t know an 18350 could do even close to 7A…
I imagine unprotected?
But see? That’s where I’m coming from. Limit current to the/each LED to a manageable level, use protected cells so it doesn’t go supernova and turn my edc into a pipebomb (yeah, I did once manage to turn on my edc right through its nice Jetbeam holster by bumping it on an armrest when sitting down, only to discover it much later when it was acting like a rather nice hand-warmer), and just in general keeping things all around to a manageable level (ie, trying to minimise the weakest link).
When talking about reliability as far as the spring, understood, as I kinda go for reliable, too, on both a system and component level. Yeah, can’t hurt…
An no disrespect to anyone calling a high-amps light a shelf-queen. To me (again, just where I’m coming from), I need to have some decent runtime for an actual edc. I’ve been through power-outages where I needed decent light for about an hour or more, so that’s always been a personal requirement. I tend to like 1-mode lights, so I (try to) pick a balance between lumens and runtime. And that kinda rules out DD in favor of a bunch of 7135s regulating the current.
Hmm, learn something new every day.
Well, that nickel plated copper braid spring bypass oughts to have some reeeally low resistance!
Spring bypassed with properly twisted and unsheathed AWG22 wire.
Cheers ^:)
So exactly how much is lost in the spring any way? Is the resistance due to a lack of surface area or the mechanical properties of the metal the spring is made of? Do the electrons flow on the surface of the metal or through the core? Exactly how conductive is solder? how much pressure needs to be applied to the contact surfaces so that maximum conductivity is achieved? Would there be any advantage to making a flashlight body a positive conductor and rewiring the flashlight altogether. If power runs to ground then why not put the ground closer to the business end? If the body of the flashlight would act like a capacitor, would that overcome the loss? Or better yet what if the body of the flashlight were some awesome meta-material the could transform heat energy into electrical energy?
That is what we need. A super conductive host that acted like a peltier junction to reclaim the lost energy from heat.
Just saying
:FACEPALM: 
Understand about maximizing run time, that’s what 7 levels are for. With ToyKeepers UI allowing a reverse action from the standard tail clicky the high drain modes need not be entered into. Mine always start on moon, off with the clicky, reverse down if a selected mode has been determined to be too high. Easy enough to manage cell life and heat, Turbo is there if/when needed.
I like little lights that think they’re far larger. 
The flashlight body can be made of pure gold if you’d like, meta-material, diamond, whatever your wallet dictates.
I know a guy that made a small EDC light from a bar of pure Tungsten. It’s only money, right?
I am thinking more exotic. How about a phosphor bronze coated carbon nano tube with inlaid rare earth magnetic crystals weaved in a counter opposing position binding an electromagnetic energy field which propagates an electric current into a hyper excited state thus releasing copious amounts of free energy that blue shifts an LED into releasing a spectrum of light that……………………….
what you really think I am going to divulge my plans to take over the universe? NEVER!!!
okay i got carried away.
Anyway good topic guys… keep up the good work!!
My old RayOVac 2 x D incandescent from Ebay had a rusty spring so I shoved copper braid over the wire of it, following the helix, and closed the ends with solder.