They are EVVA branded Protected 18650 batteries, with rather wide/broad Button Tops.
What I am concerned about is the size of their Button Tops and their fitting or not fitting the Reverse Polarity Protection in the shipping BLF GT's Battery Carriers.
Their Button Tops are about 1 mm in height, and about 9.5 mm diameter, and I was wondering if they will fit in the BLF GT's battery carriers/holders.
I thought you had the Proto V2, and you could Please have a look at the carriers.
George… I just looked through my batteries an I have a couple of those. From what what I remember seeing of the latest carrier picture there is no way they would work unless the polarity protection was removed or you solder boobed them.
Hope this helps……
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EDIT……. TA beat me to it….
I suspected Miller might not have sent those out. Lol
Anyway, I wanted to point out that in this post [PART 1] Official BLF GT Group Buy thread. Group buy officially closed! Lights shipping. - #10100 by JasonWW I checked on those 22 names and 9 of those names weren’t on the down payment list. Some withdrew from the group buy and some just joined in for several lights, like slackwolf who wanted 4, then disappeared. Lol. IDK, I guess some people like to jump on lists and then never even follow the thread. So your definetly not gonna get responses from all 22 folks. I don’t know if this is useful info, but I just wanted to let you know.
Thanks for the info. I kind of figured this to be the case, which is good since if all 22 did show up it would technically put us over 555. I figure it should end up right around the target number all said and done.
After reading over many posts here, I guess being on the list to receive the 3rd batch of GT’s, I will be able to observe from others that have received their GT’s if anything may be defective. Also, I hope that the ones shipped through DHL express to the U.S. won’t have any issues such as the ones mentioned by strayz post!
I do have some questions pertaining to the battery usage and charging.
1st- Would it be ok to use protected cells (4) in one holder and use non-protected cells (4) in the other holder?
2nd- If I order the (8) 18650 cells with the GT, what amperage rate should I charge them at? I’m not sure exactly what capacity these are from Lumintop?
3rd- In the event that one of the non-protected cells in the battery holder/s would happen to go into a thermal runaway while inside the GT when in use, Could this cause an explosion, due to being in a sealed enclosure?
Your supposed to use 8 matching cells. But let’s say all 8 were 3400mah and 4 were protected, the other 4 non protected. Even though the 2 groups of 4 will be in parallel, the internal resistance between the carriers will be different (due to the added circuits causing higher resistance) causing one set of 4 to drain lower than the other set of 4. This could mess up the low voltage protection circuit. One carrier could be at 8 volts and the other at 12 volts and the driver will be reading 10 and think everything is okay. (I’m not sure this could happen) Anyway, that’s a bad situation. All 8 really need to be matched and married.
2. I think the 35E can be charged at 1.7A safely, but does reduce the # of life cycles a little. For maximum longevity (and you don’t care about how long it takes to recharge) you should stick to 1A.
3. I’m not too familiar with thermal runaway, but if there is a pressure build up in the light the pressure will push through the driver and out the side switch or else go through the wire holes to the emitter area and blow out the glass lens. This light is a seal enclosure, but it’s not a tightly sealed enclosure. Not like a pipe bomb which will build incredibly high pressures before bursting. I have no worries about this.
1: Yes, as long as all 4 cells in each carrier match you should be fine. I have tested this with 30Q’s in one carrier and laptop cells in the other, no issues and the voltage matched when I pulled them out. That said, remember, this is not recommended, just information.
2: They are 35E cells, I am not sure what the max charge rate is but 1A per cell should be fine, I generally charge my cells at .5A if I am not in a hurry. No need to stress them.
3: A cell going into thermal runaway will cause basically the same results no matter what light it is in. That said it is highly unlikely if you use good cells. Particularly in the GT as the drain per cell is very low (2.6A max drain from the cells as it is setup from the factory IIRC).
With 8 cells that is cut in half to 1.3A per cell. This is chump change compared to the 15-20A we run in other lights. So I would not worry about this as long as they are new, matched, equally charged (aka same charger and always charged together), brand name cells in each carrier.
That is interesting. I guess under load the higher capacity cells did more work so that the voltages stayed even? It’s weird. I’d need to think about it.
