The Miller and the whole Q8 team! Just received my light a couple of days ago and I must say: hats off guys. I had taken part of some group projects in the past but every time I got the actual light after huge anticipation I was always somehow pissed either about the quality or the function of the thing. Or both…
Well, not this time, to tell you the truth for 40 bucks I was not expecting too much. This Q8 however is way above any group projects I have seen here. Mine is from the later batches, good ano, uniform screws, centered leds, working switch. I like the whole thing, the body the ui the beam. To get this short, I only wanted to say all of the members who made this thing happen a HUGH thank You! There is life beyond brands and tons of money and that is called: dedication and knowledge. Thanks and keep up dreaming, cause I am holding one piece of it already in my hands
Remember the second run of the S70?
Thorfire used a darker switch cover and some members swapped it, maybe some can be found that have it laying around and want to part with it…
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.
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’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: