I note that there are a lot of 18650 battery flashlights that use battery holders to hold 3 or 4 batteries. Examples include Jetstream, Thrunite and Fenix. Fenix does offer theTK75/TK61 battery holder separately as part of their battery tube extension kit but I do not see the battery holders from Jetstream and Thrunite listed as available accessories. IMO all flashlights which use proprietary battery holders should have them available as accessories that can be ordered.
I had a problem with my Thrunite holder as received and a new one is being sent FROM SINGAPORE! Seems to me also like making the holders available as accessories would be great for emergency personnel and others who need a rapid battery change such as cavers, military etc. Having a light that requires a battery holder and not having a spare available as an accessory seems to me like a soldier carrying a rifle or pistol without a spare loaded magazine available, DUMB.
How do you the members feel about this? Would you want a spare battery holder if available? If so please contact your light vendor to request it.
Should not NEED to build your own and many will require making boards and machining special hardware as well as access to taps and dies for threading etc. Not practical for 98% of light owners. Do you want to try drilling and tapping the quite thin aluminum rods used by the Thrunite battery carrier? A very difficult job without access to a metal turning lathe.
I think it is simply that manufacturers do not consider this as a part that needs replacing. Also, on this basis users could simply have more spare flashlights instead of spare battery holders.
If you read my post I did! One is coming from Singapore AND I did modify the short Thrunite one to solve my problem. I was posting to make people aware of the availability problem and hopefully have enough of them request availability of spare battery holders that vendors start making them available as Fenix does.
What you refer to as “Whiining” is raising the point publicly so hopefully others will help contact manufacturers or importers to help change the situation if they agree wioth me and if they do not then they can ignore the post rather than make snide remarks!
I apologize. I did read the post and agreed with you about the need. Power tool manufactures recognize that people actually enjoy snapping in a fresh pack of cells as do camera makers and many others. Clearly you want a solution but maybe are just being a tad resistant to alternatives. Suggestions were made regarding alternative solutions that you personally are not interested in or consider yourself capable of. You have raised a good point but may not be aware of the depth of talent (and I don’t mean me) available on BLF. A carrier does not necessarily need to be built in exactly the same way to accomplish its purpose so threading tiny tubes may not be needed, just a way to hold the correct number of cells in the proper orientation with contacts where they need to be. A closed pack should include some type of cell monitoring pcb but these also are readily available. If there is a particular pack for which you cannot buy a replacement then then you could start a thread including pictures and asking for assistance in fabrication.
I agree about the availability of battery holders. One of the problems here is that battery holders are rather failure prone. I’ve actually had a couple of old Lenser lights become useless bricks because the battery holders decided to give out on me. Of course, you also make a good point about battery replacement. Changing batteries on the run is a difficult thing to do if you have to worry about a battery holder. ESPECIALLY if you have to fumble around in the dark with the thing.
So what has been my solution to this problem? I don’t buy lights that use battery holders. If the light DOES use a battery holder, I don’t buy it. That might mean buying a Nitecore EA4 or Jetbeam SRA40 rather than a Sunwayman D40A. And the fact that 26650s are finally starting to reach respectable capacity means that single 26650 lights might be a better alternative to lights that use multiple 18650s in a holder. There may, of course, be some categories of lights that are hard to find without battery holders. And some one-of-a-kind lights just might not be available without holders. But generally speaking, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a light that fits your needs and doesn’t use a battery holder. Remember, people stop buying lights that use battery holders, manufacturers WILL listen.
At least Fenix makes their four 18650 battery holder available and after emailing Thrunite about their battery holder problem they did send a replacement for free, so I now have a spare seeing as how I fixed the problem one by adding spacer washers to spread the end plates further apart. The new one holds 69mm batteries without modification.
To me though the manufacturers should make battery holders a standard available accessory both for the reasons you give and as a added profit item. As I posted earlier it is like a semi auto pistol or rifle maker not offering spare magazines. Some makers do offer filters and diffusors as well as items such as AA adapters for some single CR123 lights etc. so why not treat the battery holder as a for sale accessory?
Another dumb situation is the Jetbeam Raptor RRT-3. The body tube is bored so small that many protected 18650 batteries are too large in diameter to fit in the light when installed in the battery holder and the Jetbeam battery holder holds the three batteries in about as small a diameter bundle as possible. It almost looks like the designers took the designation for the battery, 18650, as the actual diameter. That is the stand taken by Jeff at Jetbeam lighting who said that there should only be one size for an 18650 battery. He did not even want to pass my info on to Jetbeam in China! Unfortunately the 18650 designator was originally for the UNPROTECTED battery and adding the protection increases both the length and the diameter but no one has come up with a revised numeric designator for the protected versions. Most protected 18650 batteries would more accurately be called 19690 or 19700 cells based on a rounding up of the actual dimensions. The 18650 designation is a NAME, NOT a firm size specification.
I worked in reliability engineering and specification compliance in Silicon Valley for years and trying the functionality of a consumer used item with a wide variety of supplies likely to be used with it should be part of standard testing. I sometimes think that many of the Chinese designers and their factories have never used their lights in the real world and with a wide variety of available battery brands. If they did then we would not have the stupidities I see in some lights.
