FWIW, original-recipe Palmolive soap is a relatively quick and safe way to add patina. Basically, rub the dish soap onto the light for a couple hours, adding more soap when it dries. Then rinse it off and it should look older.
However, brass is much harder to treat than copper. It doesn’t react as quickly and doesn’t become as colorful.
I darkened my brass Pineapple using ammonia gas. I got a large empty jar (quart size, iirc) and poured about a cm or 2 of regular household ammonia in the bottom. Then I got a piece of string and ran it through the pocket clip of my light. I held the string taunt across the mouth of the jar, suspending the light into the jar but without touching the ammonia in the bottom, then I screwed on the lid to hold it in place.
I only left mine in there a few hours, but it was long enough for it to start to darken down in the “cracks” and low places, which is all I wanted it to do anyway. Developing a very dark or deep patina like this would probably take a long time since there’s no direct contact, but if all you want is a touch of “age” it seems to work pretty well.
emarkd thanks for the explanation on the reflector, I was wondering, is the driver epoxied?
I tried the Palmolive trick and it took off fast, so got my camera ask quick as I could and caught some pictures, I’d suggest thinking it out prior to application though, I just dabbed some on my finger and swirl rubbed it on the head and it was almost instant and worrisome, so the last two pictures in this set was after washing and drying the head, top left was within 2 minutes, enough time to go get my camera and back to the kitchen and it was changing, so now maybe a light double or triple O steel wool lightly and a more even application of the soap.
Post missing? 2 hours ago, I was about to have lunch and saw a post about the beam.
I think reason is the brass bezel reflects the light.
Yes Rey, I did post a double comparison beam shot then pulled it after reading a remark about what the cause may be but re-posted here for you to see, the circle just outside the hot spot shown with near identical LEDs put different reflectors of course, and could you please tell me is the driver epoxied in?
I don’t want to attempt to remove it and accidentally scrap across one of those traces, I’ve done that before and it is awful tight and it looks like epoxy just about the driver at thread level, so wanted to ask before really twisting on it.
Thanks Rey, Yes glue, I appreciate your reply and just wanted to check as it is in tight, so now that I know I can put some torque into it and not worry thanks for link also.
Looking at the light the next morning now after using Palmolive it looks dark for sure, very nice start really.
This is something I cannot get my head around. Why have PWM?
You have some here that don’t notice PWM, some here that don’t mind PWM, and some here that it bothers, and some that cannot tolerate it.
So what the hay!!
What is the problem with constant current? Who would cry if PWM suddenly disappeared from the planet?
So … why negotiate to even have PWM?
Rey, c’mon… why can’t you simply specify a constant current driver? Raise the price if you have to, everyone will be happy to pay a little more for a superior constant current driver.
Please help me understand why people still negotiate with PWM… just because it doesn’t bother everyone doesn’t mean it is not a menace.
/rant
I think that true current regulated modes require a driver that is more expensive, has many more components (so =bigger, probably double layer) and there are not so many people in China who are actually (able to) making one. And for some of the modders: PWM-ed drivers have more options to change the UI by using a different firmware.
Appreciate this posts and your other helpful ones.
Pwm is ok. But 9-10Khz is better. Much harder to notice.
New driver will use 9K Hz. It will be rarely visible.
There are a few reasons we don’t use current control on this light.
It is AA/14500 light,
CC has 20-30% less runtime than PWM.
The output level can be hardly controlled, when it’s 5mA on LL with AA, it might be 50mA with 14500.
Nothing about the cost.
Whether PWM is visible is hardly the issue. Painful migraine is the issue. Also, in point of fact, in general, CC drivers are more efficient, so on this efficiency business I know you are mistaken or mislead. One of the benefits CC drivers have over PWM drivers, it is widely known, is that CC is more efficient, longer runtimes, etc. Also, there are at least a few CC driver flashlights that accept both AA and 14500.
CC drivers are usually more expensive, but not much, so cost should not be much of a factor, but it is a valid argument for PWM.
If we look instead at another quality, the lens, perhaps my point will be clearer. A glass lens has very little advantage over a hardened plastic lens. In use, no one would notice the difference. It makes little to no difference over the life of a flashlight. Glass is more durable, can endure more heat, more scratch resistant, that is about it. Plastic is pretty durable, too, and lighter and cheaper. There are good arguments from either side for glass or plastic. Would anyone have objected to a plastic lens? I think most would, and I think it is vanity, because the lens material is irrellivant to the utility of a flashlight of this size and output.
I can understand not minding PWM. But I find it difficult to square that anyone would prefer PWM simply on the basis that they don’t notice it. Though the exceptions are the more powerful drivers, FET+1 whathaveyou, where PWM is actually required, not necessarily preferred, in fact PWM exists to make cheaper circuits, period. This is the BUDGET light forum, so cost is a valid argument for PWM. Why not a plastic lens?
Good, fast, cheap. Pick two. You can either have PWM, pay like $100 per unit, or wait a few years. Maybe wait and pay a higher price, because development time.
Current control is especially difficult to do on lights which support both 1.2V and 3.6V. It would require a boost+buck driver which is expensive and hard to fit into small spaces and makes heat management a lot more difficult. Doing it well is rare even for big-name premium brands. Even Zebralight’s new models (ZL SC5) dropped dual-voltage support, opting for boost-only instead of boost+buck.
The light could maybe do AA-only or 14500-only, which would simplify things, but then it’s ignoring half its market.
For a high-CRI light it’s also debatable whether PWM is really a bad thing. Tint shifts at different current levels, so a current-controlled light is a different color at each brightness level. PWM allows lights to stay a single consistent color at each level.
Of course, when PWM is used I definitely prefer fast PWM, around 20 kHz. This makes the pulsing too fast for humans to see or hear. The control chip might not run fast enough to do that though, especially at 1.2V.
Overall, I think the 9 kHz PWM plan is a good balance (though it might be even better at 15-20 kHz).
You’re welcome to add one yourself if you like. Glass and plastic tend to overlap in price and optical quality, but differ in scratch resistance and impact resistance.
Thanks for the explain. It was hard for me to translate what I was told by the factory.
Yep, the boost-buck driver, and bigger driver board is a must.
Thank you ToyKeeper for this excellent explaination. But I don’t see “fast” as a desireable spec for a CC circuit, so good and cheap will do. I think perhaps you are exaggerating a little with your $100 figure, as the CC lights I am aware of that accept both voltage levels are all well under $100 for the whole light (e.g. Thrunite T10; Olight S15 Baton; DQG Tiny AA; and possibly the Zebralight SC52, but ZL is debateable).
No one is certain why Zebralight dropped Li-ion support for the SC5. Your claim that CC dual-voltage schemed circuits are more difficult to create I would not debate. However, I can claim Zebralight dropped support for Li-ion in the SC5 because that AA circuit made Li-ion irrellivant. They figured out how to juice the same brightness as an SC52 with a Li-ion with the new SC5 with AA, so there is no longer any point to supporting Li-ion. Also, I am absolutely certain that Zebralight circuits are not strictly CC, but use a PWM-like pulsing scheme that differs from PWM because the emitter does not drop to zero output between pulses.
But in the end, with all the praise you can muster for PWM, even you seem to agree that CC is a superior circuit, and PWM is for getting the cost cheaper, except for tint shift in very low modes (you failed to mention that PWM only out-tints (whattocallit) CC in low modes… medium and higher modes, there is no tint shift to need to compensate for). Thus, the tint shift is specific to low modes in CC. I’m not sure how important that is in the scheme of things, if only the single lowest mode might suffer tint shift from an emitter with a CC circuit.
What you and others that “don’t mind the PWM” need to try is this: instead of trying to determine if PWM bothers you just using a flashlight for a minute, or as a flashlight is mostly intended to be used, i.e. as a temporary utility in an emergency, try using it as the single light source in an otherwise completely dark room for the duration of the cell capacity. Turn out all your lights one evening, and take your finest, fastest PWM flashlight with a fresh cell, tail stand it for a respectable ceiling bounce near where you are lounging, and try curling up with a book with that light source and only that light source for a couple hours.
What I predict is that you will not necessarily visually detect any PWM, which is ultimately irrellivant, but rather, you will feel the very real and bad physical and psychological effects of the best PWM you have available. At the very least I think you will notice your eyes getting tired faster, and you may get a headache. If you are at all susceptable to migraine, pass on the experiment, not worth the risk.
This experiment is not in any way authoritative, or conclusive, because we are not all camping every single night with a flashlight as a single light source. But it will at least open the eyes a bit for those that claim they don’t care about PWM, that it doesn’t or can’t bother them. We are all human. From the perspective of a hypothesized Martian, we are identical, they could not tell one human from another. If it affects me, it affects you, it is just a relative thing as to how much. Some people are more resiliant, so resiliant that they will be intellectually dishonest with themselves and others and deny any adverse effects due to pride or oneupmanship or whathaveyou, and these strong individuals can probably withstand more Chinese Water Torture than others. But it’s only a matter of time before that constant drop of water on the forehead drives the victim irrevocably mad. IMO, everyone will break… eventually.
That sounds like a normal night for me, and I’ve heard from several others who do the same — flashlights as a daily primary source of illumination for long periods. I find it relaxing. * However, I don’t pretend to be human.
But people are not all the same. If there’s only one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that different people are vastly, profoundly, amazingly different.
I generally see PWM even when I’m not looking for it, up to about 10 kHz. I see it in flashlights, of course, but also in fluorescent light tubes, computer screens, car tail lights, and a variety of other places. But I get no adverse symptoms from it, and at the ~20 kHz speeds I recommend, it’s too fast to see or hear and even cpfselfbuilt’s measurement tools can’t detect it.
The kinds of lighting which make my eyes hurt are good old incandescent bulbs and daytime sunlight (even with sunglasses).
Back on topic though, the planned 9 kHz pulses are twice as fast as some premium brands lots of people rave about. For most people, it’ll be fine.
FWIW, here’s a video showing tint shift between a medium mode and a high mode (~140 lm @ 0.35A, ~1400 lm @ 5A). The medium mode is on 100% via current control while the high mode’s lumens are reduced to match the medium mode via PWM. The effect is that the change in color is visible even though the overall brightness stays the same.
http://toykeeper.net/torches/blf-a6/tintshift.avi
The light on the left is there only for reference; the interesting part is the one on the right. It switches between power channels every half second to compare tint at different power levels.
LED tint typically shifts all the way from the very lowest modes to the very highest, from moon all the way to the point where the LED turns into smoke. Most LEDs have a sweet spot where they are perfectly in spec, where the color temperature and CRI are ideal. If tint and CRI are someone’s top priority, the most effective design is to use a single power channel locked to that sweet spot, with PWM to control brightness.
… and if efficiency is more important, current control tends to work better. Assuming a well-designed driver, anyway.
Me, I care quite a bit about the low modes. Most of the time I only want ~0.3 lm or ~10 lm. It doesn’t matter much to me if the 500 lm mode has a good tint, because I never use 500 lm.
LOL!
I agree, somewhat, that for most people it will be fine, but it will also be necessary for no one. No one will require their lights to have PWM. If we can agree on something, it is this one thin point, that PWM is a cheaper and easier way to make a circuit, and that CC circuits, while everyone does not require them, no one sane will be arguing against having a CC circuit based it’s lack of rapidly flashing the emitter. Compare the PWM/CC driver arguments to the glass/platic lens arguments. No one is going to require plastic, though some won’t mind it.
I think what we’re getting down to the crux of my point. PWM is a ultimately compromise, and in most cases except for tint shift and cost, CC is better, a finer and better engineered component. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to compromise. I’m not sure still, even with all your excellent points, why anyone would prefer PWM to CC. I don’t believe such a person exists. Instead, we have real people that don’t care, and that is not the same as preference. PWM is incidental to the Pineapple, not required, just an easier solution, not a better one. Rey could very easily have speced the driver be CC…
and no one would complain for the lack of PWM.