Q8, PMS SEND TO THOSE WITH ISSUES BLF soda can light

teacher · 2017-07-01T02:22:48.000Z

Use it with 4 cells at it was designed… then nothing will melt. Use it with one cell on Turbo & melt a spring…. tough luck.

IF… as it appears, this whole search for a new spring has been so the Q8 could be run in Turbo mode on one cell…. It has been a MASSIVE waste of time, energy, emails back & forth to China, and anything else you want to throw in there.

Your not the only one tired of parades either…….

hank · 2017-07-01T03:38:33.000Z

IF… as it appears, this whole search for a new spring ….

Doesn’t appear that way to me.

But I’m just an outsider kibitzing. They don’t need my opinion here.

The people managing this deal clearly know what they’re doing.
They have been checking into this sort of possible improvement.

That’s why djozz had that kind of spring made in a batch a while back, for its advantages.

But we don’t expect the best-possible to become the enemy of the good-enough.

Maybe we’ll see a later BLF group buy of that alloy used for springs come along, now that we all have learned about its advantages.

DavidEF · 2017-07-01T03:44:33.000Z

teacher:

Use it with 4 cells at it was designed… then nothing will melt. Use it with one cell on Turbo & melt a spring…. tough luck.

IF… as it appears, this whole search for a new spring has been so the Q8 could be run in Turbo mode on one cell…. It has been a MASSIVE waste of time, energy, emails back & forth to China, and anything else you want to throw in there.

Your not the only one tired of parades either…….

So say you. Some of us don’t count quality as a waste of time. Getting the light done right regardless of taking a long time to do so was one of the original goals of this project, thankfully.

guerrilla154 · 2017-07-01T03:51:05.000Z

If we want to get really fancy with this, I’m wondering about a few things - is it possible for the chip to see how many batteries are installed (perhaps by the rate of decline of the current or something similar)? If so, it shouldn’t require too many tweaks in the programming to prevent the light from running on higher modes with fewer batteries. What do you think, Tom? Or maybe you can provide some insight about this, ToyKeeper?

teacher · 2017-07-01T04:11:39.000Z

DavidEF:

teacher:

Use it with 4 cells at it was designed… then nothing will melt. Use it with one cell on Turbo & melt a spring…. tough luck.

IF… as it appears, this whole search for a new spring has been so the Q8 could be run in Turbo mode on one cell…. It has been a MASSIVE waste of time, energy, emails back & forth to China, and anything else you want to throw in there.

Your not the only one tired of parades either…….

So say you. Some of us don’t count quality as a waste of time. Getting the light done right regardless of taking a long time to do so was one of the original goals of this project, thankfully.

What a BS post…. :person_facepalming:

To imply that I said or meant that quality was a waste if time is nothing short of an outright lie.

Yep… I said “outright lie”.

Let us just double the price to $80 & get every little bell & whistle you seem to want. Or would you then be whining like a young girl child about price?? (that is a question too… not a statement)

Just go buy you one of THESE at a little better than three times the Q8 price. Then you can have your precious springs.
Of course make sure your batteries are on it’s ‘guaranteed to work list’.

teacher · 2017-07-01T04:41:31.000Z

guerrilla154:

If we want to get really fancy with this, I’m wondering about a few things - is it possible for the chip to see how many batteries are installed (perhaps by the rate of decline of the current or something similar)? If so, it shouldn’t require too many tweaks in the programming to prevent the light from running on higher modes with fewer batteries. What do you think, Tom? Or maybe you can provide some insight about this, ToyKeeper?

I’m on a roll now, I might as well throw my worthless .02 at this too….

In theory, this is probably a wonderful idea… or at least a good one. :+1: It would idiot proof the light even more it seems.
BUT, I bet what is left of the farm it ain’t gonna happen with the Q8.

In the real world…. you can’t fix stupid, no matter how hard you try.

If someone is “challenged” enough in their thinking process to use this light on TURBO or even HIGH, for whatever reason known only to God…… after being warned not to… my feelings are summed up by… “Oh well”

If my car is designed to run on gasoline, would I say hmmmm, I’ll run it on 1 part gasoline and three parts diesel. I might…… IF I were stupid. But I bet I’d only do it once after I paid to have all the damage repaired.

Just run the Q8 on 4 cells as it was designed. If for some reason you are forced to run it on 1 cell…… just run it accordingly.

Yeah, I know; the car example was a dumb one. But I am not going to take the time to even delete it. :person_facepalming:
.

teacher · 2017-07-01T04:48:25.000Z

IF… as it appears, this whole search for a new spring ….

Doesn’t appear that way….

Excellent, then maybe we can just agree to disagree.

guerrilla154 · 2017-07-01T05:23:09.000Z

teacher:

Just run the Q8 on 4 cells as it was designed. If for some reason you are forced to run it on 1 cell…… just run it accordingly.

I seem to remember one of the “advantages” discussed earlier was this light’s designed ability to run on fewer cells. Granted, since they are in parallel, some design changes would be necessary to prevent this from happening, but you have to remember - this is a ramping firmware. There really is no way to tell if the current output is too much for one, two, or three springs to handle. I wholeheartedly agree that there is no such thing as completely “idiot-proof,” but that doesn’t mean we can’t throw extra features into the light.

Say I am in a situation where I only have one or two batteries available (or even 4 low-discharge batteries), and I would like to run the light as bright as possible without risk of damage. I really don’t want to be constantly checking on it to make sure I’m not overdriving anything in the present conditions, so it would be much more convenient to have the code worry about that for me. I’ve asked Tom and ToyKeeper for their input on this for a reason - they have experience with implementing flashlight-specific software.

teacher:

If my car is designed to run on gasoline, would I say hmmmm, I’ll run it on 1 part gasoline and three parts diesel.

Running the Q8 on a single battery isn’t actively introducing anything that would negatively affect it. Yes, it is designed for 4 batteries, but, to the extent of my knowledge, my idea wouldn’t be particularly difficult to implement from a coding standpoint. The issue is whether the chip is able to determine how many batteries are in the light.

I’m curious as to why you think this would be a bad idea; could you explain your reasoning? Are you worried about extending the release date, or is it something else entirely?

teacher · 2017-07-01T17:57:29.000Z

guerrilla154:

teacher:

If my car is designed to run on gasoline, would I say hmmmm, I’ll run it on 1 part gasoline and three parts diesel.

Running the Q8 on a single battery isn’t actively introducing anything that would negatively affect it. Yes, it is designed for 4 batteries, but, to the extent of my knowledge, my idea wouldn’t be particularly difficult to implement from a coding standpoint. The issue is whether the chip is able to determine how many batteries are in the light.

I’m curious as to why you think this would be a bad idea; could you explain your reasoning? Are you worried about extending the release date, or is it something else entirely?

I never said your idea was a bad one, in fact if you will read it again I think you will see I said I thought it was a good one.
I also said I do not think it will be used in this issue of the Q8. (edit: both said in post #8940 )
Personally, I do not care when the Q8 is released. Be that tomorrow or a year from tomorrow, makes no difference to me.
But, at the least; I think it probably does make a difference to TF as well as the Q8 team…. and rightly so. This project has been going on for over a year. That is a lot of time for TF to have no ROI & untold hours of free labor from the Q8 team.

There has to come a point when good enough is good enough. Otherwise, it will never get built because it will be in a state of continual change or update…. before it ever gets put into production.

Sure, solve the obvious problems like a delaminated MCPCB that show up before production. But can everything be updated at this point? Personally, I think not…. but whatever the Q8 team decides is good with me. :+1:

At a $40 shipped price point, I think it is a heck of a deal.

And remember what I said about my extremely poor car & gas example when I posted it. …

teacher:

Yeah, I know; the car example was a dumb one. But I am not going to take the time to even delete it. :person_facepalming:

JasonWW · 2017-07-01T06:36:40.000Z

Wow, I can’t believe everybody has forgotten the reasons for getting a good spring. Let me refresh your memory. It’s not because running max output on a single cell can cause a spring to heat up and lose its tension and free length. No, it’s because springs, in general, tend to lose tension and free length over time just through normal, everyday compression.

So what this means is, if you use a long protected battery it will compress the spring a lot. Over time it will have a shorter free length. If you keep using protected cells you will be fine.

But, if you switch over to a short, unprotected cell, you may not have enough spring tension or spring legnth to get good contact. This can cause one or more cells to not make contact and you get all kinds of weird drainage issues where some cells drain lower than others. Then the cell might make contact again and cause a large power equalization between it and the cells that are lower voltage. I don’t have any experience with this but maybe someone can chime in and tell us what happens when you connect two cells of different voltage together in parallel. Do the cells overheat and blow up or do they just get warm and equalize their voltage? IDK.

So we need to make sure the springs can handle both protected and unprotected cells without any issues.

teacher · 2017-07-01T06:40:54.000Z

/\\\\

Where were you several hours ago???

southland · 2017-07-01T06:48:08.000Z

Dermabond is the super glue used in medicine.

JasonWW · 2017-07-01T07:16:56.000Z

teacher:

/\\\\

Where were you several hours ago???

I sleep days, work nights.

Anyway, the amount of free length and tension that a coil spring may lose depends on several factors. The biggest being the type of material it’s made from. Some spring steals are less likely to lose tension than others. A low-quality spring material might lose 20% of its free length after being compressed for a while. A better quality spring may only lose 5%. Hopefully a company like thorfire will know the advantages of using a good quality spring.

So let’s say we have a coil spring that can give us 8 mm of usable travel. If we adjust the length of the battery tube so that a 70 mm battery uses 7mm of that compression plus we have a little bit of extra room (1mm). That’s pretty much maxed out and it’s going to create the highest amount of spring tension when trying to install the battery tube.

When you install a 65mm battery your only going to get 2 mm of compression. This is where it gets tricky. If thorfire can use a good quality spring that isn’t going to lose much of its free length, let’s say 5%, then we should be okay.

If thorfire happens to use a low-quality spring then we could have issues later on with 65 mm cells not all making good contact.

If we could bump this up to a spring that was slightly taller and had say 9 or even 10 mm of travel it wouldn’t make a big deal if it was a high quality or low quality. We would have three or four mm of compression on a short 65mm sale. So even if the spring lost some of its free length over time it should still always make contact.

The only bad thing about making a 4 cell light work with both unprotected and protected batteries is that the longer protected batteries are always going to be difficult to tighten up because you’re going to be compressing not one but 4 springs pretty much to their maximum.

The only way to reduce the tension is to go with a smaller diameter wire in order to reduce the coils spring tension while still keeping it’s free length.

teacher · 2017-07-01T07:23:07.000Z

Yeah, now that you have brought it up & elaborated… I vaguely remember a longer spring ended up being the main reason another spring was needed. A little longer, little stiffer, & of a bit bigger diameter wire.

I had totally forgotten what the real reason ended up being. :person_facepalming:

Thank’s Jason……

JasonWW · 2017-07-01T07:57:36.000Z

Tom E:

This is the round #3 Q8 with bypassed springs, using the tial PCB fro proto #1 (they are an exact match):

This was with VTC6’s w/boobs at 4.19V: lumens: 6,660 start, 6,190 30 secs, so about a 5% bump on account of the bypassed springs.

This I should have done a while ago, looking at the spring at proto #1, proto #2, and round 3.

Here’s proto #2 (left) compared to round 3 (right):

Proto #2:

Round 3:

Proto #1 compared to round 3. Proto #1 was a crude prototype in several respects. They were one of the worse set of springs I’ve seen. With the bypasses, doesn’t really matter.

Proto #1 on left, round 3 on right:

Proto #1 springs: 11 mm high, thick, single

Proto #2 springs: 10.5 mm high, thick, inner spring is 7 mm

Round 3 springs: 10 mm high, thin, inner spring is 5 mm

I think the ThorFire engineers were attempting to soften up the springs in round 3 to ease the tension threading on the tube tight. I think they went a bit too far with that though.

Footnote: that pile of fur under the table in the first shot is my dog, Rex

I found Toms post showing all three springs that Thorfire have tried.

First of all, I would recommend getting rid of the inner springs simply because they are not going to do anything when used with a short unprotected battery. They are only going to make contact when you use a longer protected cell. They are also going to increase the spring tension when you’re using a longer battery which makes it hard to screw on the battery tube.

Tom, can you check the maximum battery length that will fit in Prototype 3 if you use the 11 mm tall spring from Prototype 1? Keep in mind that the bypass wires may need to be removed in order to get full compression from the spring.

If the 11 mm spring can work with both protected and unprotected cells and give us a proper safety margin when used with short cells then I would say it’s the best choice.

(The 10mm proto 3 springs are already said to be too short and I don’t like the cyclinder shape of the round 2 springs. Tapered shaped coils springs are usually able to compress further because the coil on top can sit down inside the coil on the bottom. Maybe not all the way, but slightly.)

A single spring may not deliver maximum output for those people who want to measure and try to maximize it but then again they can always add a spring bypass to get that extra output as well as give them something to do to make them feel better. I would not recommend adding the bypass wire on the inside of the spring if you’re going to use protected cells since it may prevent the spring from being fully compressed. A bypass wire on the outside of the spring may be a better choice.

If you know you’re only going to use shorter, unprotected cells then you can stick a bypass wire on the inside of the spring like Tom did and be just fine.

teacher · 2017-07-01T08:08:31.000Z

Yep… post 8392. A mere 657 posts back. How soon we forget…. :person_facepalming:

Thanks Jason…. :+1:

The_Miller · 2017-07-01T08:31:47.000Z

guerrilla154 nice idea but not feasible if I understand things correct for a driver can detect voltage and amps
Voltage is the same with 1 2 3 or 4 cells and amps depend on cell used.

A bright piece of info, I treated the springs poorly by running 2 high drain cells on the same two springs and depleting them several times at highest possible output
Still using the shortest cells I have all four make good contact.

The bump needed to turn off the light is too easy for proto 3
So that is a good real reason for different springs and proto 2 has them bigger then 3 so I kind of think they are good.

We expressed the importance of good springs with them being a part on the long term quality
Driver failure is covered by good parts.

djozz · 2017-07-01T09:21:33.000Z

I have put bigger springs in my prototype, a mm longer than were in prototype2 and fairly stiff (I can’t compare the stiffness because the prototype2 springs are in New York), and they do not cause any worrying stress on the threading , which is even square so extra wear-resistant.

I think my springs in size and stiffness are about perfect, but listening to Tom and Thorfire about the springs in prototype2, they do the job pretty well too. So if Thorfire insists that those springs are what they think is best (they have actually experienced them and I have not), I’m not going against that, the Q8 is not perfect but full of details that we thought could be better, it is just a very good version of the soda-can light for a very good price.

Jtm94 · 2017-07-01T10:22:09.000Z

It was asked what happens when batteries of varying charges are connected in parallel. You want the voltages to be as close as possible ideally, but worst case scenario the batteries/the trace between them will warm up a bit as they attempt to balance out by charging the lower battery. Being within 0.2 volts is pretty safe, if there is some disparity between the cells you can connect them in parallel and let them sit for a few minutes to equalize. Things only get sketchy when the difference exceeds 0.5 volts. I looked into parallel charging and I’ll be charging my 4 18650s in parallel and discharging them in parallel in the Q8.

tl;dr don’t put in an empty battery and a full battery in parallel, it isn’t the best idea.

Also on the topic of springs, I think everything will be fine honestly. They can only be fine-tuned so far and I trust Thorfire to deliver on this. As you idiot-proof things it only opens the door for a dumber idiot. Like someone trying to put the batteries in series because they once hard something where the D batteries alternated every row and they manage to short it out.

JasonWW · 2017-07-01T10:52:25.000Z

The Miller:

The bump needed to turn off the light is too easy for proto 3
So that is a good real reason for different springs and proto 2 has them bigger then 3 so I kind of think they are good.

Proto 2 springs are only 0.5 mm longer (10.5mm). Any spring chosen may lose 0.5 mm over a short time of use. Plus the height of the solder blob becomes a factor.

I think the Prototype 1 spring, which is 1 mm longer (11 mm), would be the better choice for two reasons.

1. Even if it loses a little of its free length over time, it should still be better than the other springs.

2. It’s more conical shape, compared to proto 2 spring, which should allow it to compress to a lower height which is good for long cells.

Here’s a link showing why we want a cone shape spring versus a cylinder shape.

acxesspring.com

Contact Springs Custom and Stock Springs - Quality Spring, Affordable Prices

Definition: Springs used for electric connectivity. They are usually conical/tapered springs. Contact springs are the conical/tapered springs you see in battery compartments inside remote controls and other battery-powered applications, devices, and...

None of our choices can fully compress, but the cone shape definitely allows for more compression.

If they choose to go with proto 2 springs, those running short cells should make your solder blobs extra tall to help out or we may want to pull on our springs a little to stretch them out more. That should make a shorter spring work okay.