"Petition" to persuade Emisar (Hank Wang) to make a larger version of D18

[loneoceans]

@CollectEverything

@BeardedRaleigh

@clientequator

The Acebeam x50 and Manker mk38 seem like the flashlight that check your requirements!

I have the NW X50. Great light. Does sound like what’s being asked for here. Mostly.

I don’t know about that. Hank lights tend to use standard cells. They don’t use battery packs that are sold as complete units with the lower half of the flashlight for $100. Personally I think that design is kind of evil since it means: * $100 to replace the batteries for those unable to rebuild a battery pack or are unaware of the option. Acebeam is apparently targeting users who they don’t trust to buy replacement batteries nor put them into a carrier in the correct orientation so they do expect to sell some of these. * If a couple of cells fail and degrade the performance of the pack or cause overall failure, the whole bundle of cells will get tossed. (again, by Acebeam’s target audience of non-enthusiasts) * The entire lower half of the flashlight also gets tossed and replaced for NO GOOD REASON if the batteries are replaced as designed. This means more garbage in landfills and more manufacturing emissions. I don’t consider myself to be a particularly “green minded” person but I think companies need to be making sustainable choices since every negative thing they do is multiplied by hundreds or thousands.

On the contrary, it's for your safety instead (the customer) that the manufacturers do that. It's almost important that very high powered flashlights like the X50 or MK38 have a built-in battery pack to properly and safely handle the charge and huge discharge requirements, as well as cell balancing and so on.

Tactical_grizzly has done a good teardown of a X50 battery pack: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/69378

For a variety of reasons, having such a high powered flashlight with individual user-replaceable cells becomes very problematic. There is a discussion of some of the issues on my MK38 thread. https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/69119 . Even flashlights such as the D18 which puts 3 user-replaceable high-powered cells in parallel is arguably (and I know an unpopular opinion) borderline dangerous as a consumer product (but yes I understand that it's fine as an enthusiast item). Any accident caused by improper use of the flashlight, even by the user, can be a big liability for the company since it is their responsibility to engineer a safe product.

It's definitely possible to design a decently powerful flashlight which accepts 3 individual cells, and has all the appropriate electro-mechanical protection, and also supports USB C charging and powerbank functionality, but you'll be looking at a $200-300 product at that point, not close to the $100 price-point of the D18 or similar. The MK38 comes in a user-replaceable version with no USB C charging, but I do hope it has the right protection inside. If you compare the integrated and non-integrated versions of the MK38, an extra $60 gets you a completely different machined body, a decently implemented USB charge and powerbank circuit, 3 very decent 21700 cells, and (hopefully, I haven't verified this yet, but high likelyhood) an integrated BMS. For a product that likely sells only in the hundreds, the profit margins are likely not very high and I think it represents OK value.