Just to add to what others have said, I have run protected BT Panny “B”s in both my Q8”s & they work fine.
My Panny “B”s are 70.03mm long but my lights are both first batch, I don”t know if that makes a difference or not ?
How much distance is 1/8 a turn? Like a fraction of a millimeter? There may be variances in how far the springs can compress. It’s a conical coil spring, 2 actually, so they can compress until the coils bind up. Then you can probably compress them a bit more because the coils will shift slightly with more pressure.
So some lights might be at the limit with 70mm cells and some lights might be at the limit with 69.5mm cells.
If I were to run protected cells and had an issue with the length, I’d try and remove one of the 2 springs to get a little more compression out of it. You don’t want to put too much compression force on the battery as you could damage it.
Measured from my 1st batch light.
Thread pitch = 1.48mm per revolution (.0583”)
1/8 turn = .185mm (.0073”)
O-ring thickness = 1.38mm (squishable)
If o-ring is positioned forward of groove, battery tube bottoms out .48mm* to short of where the correct o-ring groove position allows.
* or greater depending on screwing pressure applied.
Pleased to say mine has arrived, had some use and switch led’s still work after being on 48 hours.
This light is fantastic, the UI is perfect for me out of the box.
A couple of fibres on the reflector I may or may not try to remove, from experience I know how easily they get in and as I remove 1 another gets in.
Dale, could you explain why brass screws help increasing output?
Less resistance in the negative path from the negative springs to the tube and the head?
You are speculating that the springs are bottoming out, preventing the battery tube from contacting the driver.
I think this is unlikely, take a look at stephenk’s x-ray, with Sony VTC6 button tops fitted, whilst I don’t know how long these are, there seems to be plenty of spring room still available.
However if you look in detail at the threading of the head/tube (download image and zoom in), you may observe a very small clearance before the shoulder of the O-ring groove might be about to bottom out in the head threading.
If tolerances went the wrong way, this might result in poor contact between battery tube and driver ground ring. Particularly once you start sanding the tube to smooth it out.
However that doesn’t seem to be this problem, since the torch is working once the O-ring is removed.
You might also observe the very small contact between tube and driver, right at the outer edge of the driver. This is where the first batch sometimes had problems with the drivers not sitting flat, or otherwise having poor contact. It is an area that I will be looking to improve once I eventually receive mine. but that will be a topic for the modding thread.
I have a problem on my 2nd and 3rd light is that while screwing it it is a lot harder to partly due to to the oring it seems.
My batch 1 light is a lot smoother to screw in and out
Sometimes it even gets stuck and wedges the oring outward
Tried the spare one I had but that results in the same
You cleaned and lubed the threads?
Love the tight fit of mine, I think it may really be waterproof. You will need to clean and lube this one with some regularity.
yeah rubbing 96% alcohol and then the nitecore grease
Is protected GA working full performance on this light ? I thought it is recommended to use Unprotected High drain.
The Q8 draws (stock) 16-20 A, that is 4-5 A per cell, low enough to not trigger protection.
I’m speculating with good reason. The max battery length was discussed ad nauseam many months ago. We had to find a compromise spring that would work well for both protected and unprotected cells. Back then the prototype light using these 2nd proto springs were binding up between 70-71mm. Somewhere around that point.
The xray is cool, but it is using unprotected cells, so about 5mm shorter than what we are discussing here.
Since others have used 70mm cells with no issues, the springs might not be binding. I see what you mean about the o-ring possibly being placed above its special groove and being squished. This should be easy to distinguish. We just need SolarLumen to say where his o-ring was at. It’s also possible that his o-ring might be the wrong thickness. If it was thicker than normal then it might make it harder to rotate the battery tube. Or if it’s too dry, as well. It should look like Etex’s pic:
Yes, the protected GA that Liion Wholesale carries is good for 12-13 amps. So no problems there. It might have a bit higher internal resistance than unprotected cells, but not much difference. It will still crank out very high lumens along with having longer run times.
Is your o-ring the right thickness?
I thought TK said she was going to tone hers down by changing something in the firmware or software or something. I would like to make mine less bright also but by some other way than with a sharpie.
Yes, she’s going to write new code and reflash the MCU. It sounds like a nice feature for future releases of NarsilM.
Can you reflash your firmware? If not, it makes it pretty hard to upgrade.
Personally I’d just swap leds and resistor. I’d do a custom color combo then adjust the resistor size to the brightness I like. That’s me, though.
It is easy enough to check the available room for the cells. Measure the thickness of the brass positive ring. Take a cell of known length, push it into the tube until the spring is fully compressed, then measure how deep below the end it is. Deduct the thickness of the brass ring, add the length of the cell, and there you have it, the maximum length of cell that will fit your torch, with your springs (standard or modified).
Less than a minute of measuring will give you facts and data.
I'm thinking ThorFire went back to a thicker o-ring. I'm seeing on recent batch #2 lights, it's really tight threading on the battery tube once the o-ring comes into contact. Plus they are lubing the threads lightly (least appears that way) but keeping the o-rings bone dry.
Way back on the earlier protos, I asked them to go use a thinner o-ring, and they did - think the last round of protos had the thin o-ring... Ok, not sure when/where it was transitioned though, think it was round 2 to round 3. I swapped the thick o-ring with a thin one and it was way better, easier to tighten. But the new batch #2's are so tight, I'm afraid to tighten them up even once without lubing the o-ring first.
Yes - the protected GA's from LiIonwholesale should work fine. They perform quite well in a stock Q8 compared to other cells. Used with the stock springs, longer cells compress the springs more, therefore causing a lower resistance from the springs, so they actually do better than you might think.
Oh, the code for the 3-level indicator is easy. It’s already done and works fine. I’m not sure how much is involved in getting it into Narsil though. Setting a single pixel’s color is a much simpler task than putting pixels together into a portrait of the Mona Lisa.
It’s probably worth mentioning that, despite being brighter than the lowest moon mode, the switch LED uses far less power. IIRC it should run about three months on moon mode, or about a decade with the switch lit up. Or more like three or four decades with the switch in “low” mode — way lower than the cells’ self-discharge rate. So, the switch brightness is mostly just an aesthetic thing. And depending on what happens with code, it may also be possible to increase moon’s runtime… up to about a year. That could be a somewhat tricky change though.
Regardless, this is only relevant for people who have hardware for reflashing and don’t mind doing it. That’s like 1% of the crowd.