I would go with protected batteries, then you have never to worry about over discharge, a short, or a bad charger overcharging them.
These are good Sanyo protected http://www.fasttech.com/products/0/10001901/1143802-sanyo-ur18650f-18650-2600mah-protected-rechargeabl
The only disadvantage is that they are a bit longer about 70mm overall length, so some lights don’t accept them.
The xtar 2600 are a bit shorter and okay too.
Don’t buy trustfire cells, there was a time this was the best and only option but nowadays there are plenty of better cells out there. I got a batch flames 3000 from fasttech and on one the circuit burned…
I wouldn't suggest anyone buy anything but sanyo panasonics lg samsungs or sonys ..If you buy a real big name like nitecore or xtar etc , it will just be a sanyo or a panasonic with their name on it ..
trustfire flames were a decent buy 3 years ago ( i think the newer ones aren't as good )but why bother at this point.. just get the real thing .
Why not grab a new / unused laptop pack off of ebay ?
There was a whole giant month-long fiasco with trying to get lithiums shipped from china. People were basically having their packages “lost” in backlog stacks or just straight up scanned, returned, and refunded (paypal claims galore).
That seems to have subsided for the most part as HKP is pretty much back to normal. Personal experience, my batteries from the first week of october recently arrived and some others ordered after that as well. My most recent order landed at HKP yesterday, it should be flying to CA within 48 hours assuming it doesn’t get returned to FT.
I would say you’re safe ordering them now. The worst that can happen is you file a paypal claim and get your money back having wasted ~15minutes of your time.
not all have 18650, i heard of some having 18500, but most of them, in a very high percentage use 18650. try to google it when you find one. all the batts i opened had 18650.
the 26650 will not give you more power (if the compared cells are the same quality i.e. internal resistance), they will provide you mor runtime. I mean the size is not related to the power, but to the capacity. a better 18650 will provide more power than a bad 26.
the idea of forgetting about trustfire sounds perfect to me. some protected branded cells are not that expensive compared to the crapfires, and will give you rated capacity, more power and peace of mind
Those will serve you better than the cheap Ultrafires.
For the LGs, of course the higher capacity ones will fare better, but that increases your budget too. If you’re looking for the best value then yes, that would be the 2.2Ah version.
Also, the 2.8Ah and the 3Ah will need 4.35V charger to get full charge, so if you’re planning to use standard 4.2V charger, limit your choice up to 2.6Ah version.
Nice catch on the voltage, I didn't notice they were not all 3.7.
I am pretty sure my chargers don't do anything special like higher voltage. I have these 2 cheap Chinese ones:
Not sure about that. Those are old (old, old, old) and originally only about 1400mAh.
Edit: About the original question: You can't use drop-ins to upgrade that light. Actually, there's not much point in upgrading that light at all.. You can change the emitter and driver (most probably 20mm star & 17mm driver - requires only basic soldering..), BUT you would still have hollow pill. That can be fixed by adding a piece of (probably 19mm) aluminum rod, BUT you would still probably end up with a ringy beam..
I have done some that kind of mods for zoomies, but only when I really like the host and beam quality as stock. :)
No they aren’t. The recent spate of IMAX B6 clones are known to be fakes (well, they’re all sorta fakes… ). Unfortunately they are also less reliable and a lot of people are having trouble with them being accurate.
If a vendor does not SPECIFY it is NOT a fake….it probably is and I wouldn’t waste my money.
I would go for a higher power charger, I am always sad that I just can discharge with 1A…but I was Jung and thought that 50W would be more than enough to charge nobody told me that the discharge ability is different too.
True. Most charging newbies only see a small part of their options to start. In the RC world having more than 50W charging often becomes a limitation soon, especially if you want to do multiple charging.
Since it’s bad for lipo (not 18650’s as much) to be stored fully charged, being able to discharge to storage charge is important immediately. The 1A discharge limitation is VERY VERY frustrating. It takes f…o…e…v…e…r to pull down a 2200mA lipo. Unfortunately it’s a bit of a step up in $$ to get better discharging, but you get better charging too.
I saw the youtube you linked. My clone B6 actually looked like the original one, and the board was SMT as well. Very well made - this original clone. But the new clone looked quite bad, with different IC and poor soldering.
I take back what I said, with those in the market, better go with the original B6 now.
Yep, gets complicated. VERY challenging to keep up with the rapid decline of some electronics…. :~ :Sp
The Accucell works well but has a crappy fan. Lube it once in awhile and it’s fine. The new unit (last I checked) is not easy to lube.
Then they put out a version for awhile that would do IR. It was hard to get one you KNEW had that feature. But you lost the calibration option. Now I guess IR testing is gone again. And there’s at LEAST a dozen+ of these clones.
Totally different batteries, the lg are 4.35V batteries so if charged until 4.2 they have less capacity than 3000.
Also I got old LG cells when I ordered the items from the link.
But both are indeed the best cells I know, but also very different. The pana has more overall capacity and the LG has higher discharge voltage.
Enerdan rates 200 cycles more(400+200) if the LG gets only charged until 4.2V.
Both fastech batts are the same model.
I ordered the cheaper ones and they look different than advertised. The cheap ones look like the ones HKJ tested, compare the negative side wrapping…
Fastech said that I accidentally got a bad(older) batch but I guess it was a lie and all cheaper ones are so.
). Unfortunately they are also less reliable and a lot of people are having trouble with them being accurate.
… clones of clones.