Small indoor beam shootout + possibly crushed PCBs on my 3100 Panasonic NCR18650As.

LED Flashlights – General Info 18650 Flashlights
1

Well, I love taking beamshots, and I love looking at them too! Don’t know about you guys, but beamshots are a staple in my diet :bigsmile:

NOTE: I may have crushed the PCB on my 3100 Panasonics (pics at the bottom). I put them in my STL-V2 (wanting to use fully charged, same batteries in all the lights) and screwed it all the way shut. It would not turn on. I slightly unscrewed it, and then it worked. Wondering why that was I opened it up and noticed that my batteries were now significantly shorter, and the buttontops were now deformed. I may have crushed the PCB but I’m not sure how to test them.

Anyway, here are the pics;

Skyray STL-V2:

Crelant 7G5-V2:

Crelant 7G5-V2 w/ Collimator Head WITHOUT LENS:

Skyray KING:

Possibly busted PCB? The one on the right is a normal battery, the 2 on the left and right were the ones used in the STL-V2.
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EDIT: I just got my replacement DMM and can finally do readings again. When my light meter comes in I’ll add in the lux readings.
These are in amps btw:
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2

The PCBs (protection circuits) are on the bottom (negative terminal) of the battery. Unless they are damaged, you’re possibly still OK.

Have a look at this, so you can understand it better: The Anatomy of a Protected Battery

Perhaps all you’ve done is slightly crush the “optional top”, which isn’t necessarily tragic.

3

Yeah, I know that they’re on the bottom. But there’s a noticeable dent in the bottom of the batteries.

4

If you have a hobby charger I guess you could run a discharge test to see if the protection still triggers. Otherwise, you’re just going to have to make a judgment call. I’d err on the side of caution when it comes to multi-cell applications.

5

Looks like they’re going to be my permanent battery replacements for my Ultrafire UF H6

6

The H6 has low voltage cut-off anyway, doesn’t it?

You could also choose to remove all the extra nonsense and run them unprotected. If the H6 is OK with flat tops, anyway.

Bit of a bummer, but not a total loss :slight_smile:

7

Yeah it’s not too bad, but even if they’re stuffed, I’ll keep them on so I don’t convert them to flat-tops.
Well now that leaves 20 18650 cells to use in my multi-cell lights. Should be enough for now.

8

Nice beam shots.

As I mentioned previously, the metal on the negative end on these cells are so soft, that I too, have dented ALL of my cells and the only action they’ve seen is being charged in an Xtar WP2. Even my two year old *Fire cells have stronger material on their negative end than these cells.

9

Quoted from another thread.

10

Thank you very much, Scaru!

Mouse out: STL-V2

Mouse over: 7G5-V2

EDIT: For some reason I can't do it, I'm using the same link that I use to insert the pictures (HTML code), I put STL-V2 in the image URL and mouse out, and 7G5-V2 in the mouse over... doesn't want to work for me :(

11

Here.

12

Thanks, I’ll try figure it out tomorrow.
But I wanted to do a mouse over to show that the 7G5V2 has a tighter hotspot, due to the deeper reflector (looks like depth does make a difference, contrary to what I originally thought), since they both have the same width heads.

13

Hmm... Now I want one of those reflectors.

14

EDIT: added tailcap readings.
EDIT2: I seem to be reading 2amps at the tailcap on the 7G5V2 (*2 batteries, so 4amps to the driver)… I’m not sure if this driver has massive inefficiency or this light is just driven quite high.