I think it would cost than $5 to bypass the 4 springs, not sure it can be done by a machine.
> I think it would cost than $5 to bypass the 4 springs, not sure it can be done by a machine.
Most of the cost of spring bypass is the time involved in the setup: gathering materials / tools, heating the iron, etc.
It would take me over an hour to set up and spring bypass one BLF-Q8. It would take me under an hour to spring bypass an additional 20 Q8 boards if they were prepped and ready for soldering. Note: I am not the fastest solderer.
The extra materials would be under 25¢, and at $20 / hour (way more than Chinese line workers are paid) the additional marginal cost to the manufacturer would likely be under $1.
In manufacturing, every cent costs.
Also, time is a big part of it, because workers are the ones assembling them and not a machine.
$5 is a huge percentage of the total cost too, and profit margin for a project like this is very important for a manufacturer.
The Miller,
Please add me on the list. Thanx.
Any updates on the MCPCB?
good question Yokiamy, emailing right after posting this message 
Thanks Miller. This thread has been too quiet lately.
It’s kind of nice, no?
As it turns out, neither thread continued at its average rate. The Q8 accelerated while the what-you-got thread had almost no activity at all for a while. The Q8 took the lead 24 days sooner than predicted, at post #9030. In that time (just over a month), what happened was:
- What you got today: 22 new posts, 0.69 posts/day
- Q8: 879 new posts, 27.47 posts/day
I’m happy to see that the Q8 thread finally went 24 hours with no activity though, with no posts yesterday. I guess everyone was too busy celebrating Free Slurpee Day. 
Hopefully soon it’ll be Q8 Launch Day, which we can celebrate for a few weeks by complaining about slow shipping… and the quantum probability clouds which can, according to tracking logs, sometimes cause packages to behave like quantum particles and exist in multiple places simultaneously. Then again, the Q8 seems to have a high enough energy state that it might do that regardless, without help from the postal service.
wow, just wow like USB ports sometimes refuse to get out of their quantum state and require a little peek to fix it
No very well described tracking, order and forget is the way to go, just check it after a few weeks
I reject your model-dependent reality, and substitute my own.
I don’t blame you.……… … :+1:
My 4x batteries arrived. Now I need the Q8 ASAP or else I’m going to need to find other things to put these 4 into….
This was a few days ago, but I’m glad the springs have been handled. Hopefully all else is quite expedient.
Spring bypasses are pretty cake. I bought a few feet of both red and black silicone wire which is more than I will ever use on flash lights for just a few dollars. I guarantee China could engineer something that fulfills the role of spring, but without the resistance for pennies. I’m on the fence about the Q8 though because it is already being pushed pretty hard and I got the highest output cells I could find for max lumens. Looking back on it, doing a bypass along with Panasonic/Sanyo cells would have probably been the ideal.
I know what you mean. New cells, just waiting for a home…
If people want the advanced version with 16 AMC7135, SIR404 FET and calibrated temperature sensor you can answer to my 4. batch interest topic for Narsil drivers
also 2S/2P or 2S/4P drivers possible
Just FYI on the TA drivers, they were designed around the retaining ring we planned on the Q8 using. They don’t have the screw holes to mount like the factory driver.
These should still work fine but they will need to be glued into place if they are not big enough to press fit. This is not a big deal, this is how the SRK’s have been for years.
These batteries have been procured way before there were shipping restrictions, long before the Q8 and the Giga Thrower was born.
Now patiently waiting for their home….
Those shipping restrictions were already there for quite some time, (i’m sure its there for at least 5 years) but lately it seems that the Chinese webshops are following the rules more strictly.
My last employer used lithium ion packs in their devices as well, and shipping (especially to other countries) was always tricky (it also depends on the energy density of packs, if im correct it shall not exceed 100Wh))
I just viewed ‘My orders’ from GB, and they were made: Sep 16, 2015 05:01:32 AM , so up to that time shipping restrictions were not in place then, as I cannot order li-ions months later, I cannot recall when though, but not “at least 5 years”