Changes in a fast pace market

[Rick Law]

No doubt some of us on this site may play around with flashlights.  With 12 recovered laptop cells sitting on the shelf, six months ago, I decided to get some 18650 flashlight to play with.  I show this not because I am unhappy about the product; true they were advertised as "CREE" but are really Latticbright LEDs, but that was expected.  This is more about how they look the same but are not.  I am not referring to the LEDs but instead I am referring to the body and the way parts are designed and fitted.
 
These three flashlights looked the same on the sellers' web page to me, so, wanting the same for interchange-ability, I ordered them.  Well, they are not the same.  Again, this is not a rant about being unhappy with the product.  I am amazed at the variations.  I suppose with so many manufacturers copying/imitating/faking-as others, this is to be expected.

[picture 1]


A closer look at them, they are very different.  They are different size too!
The MXDL……  (main tube) 20.5mm diameter 78.3mm length
The KYWD-EYE……  (main tube) 21.1mm diameter 77.9mm legth
The UltraFire……  (main tube) 22.5mm diameter 80mm length
Nope, the difference is not just wide tolerance.  The design of the tube is also different.

[picture 2]

Note also the the metal ring secured tail-cap switch for the black UltraFire verses the plastic friction secured tail-cap switch on the other two.

Another significant difference is how the zooming-head is fitted to the body.  The UltraFire's O-Ring is not on the body but instead it is on the pill.  The UltraFire is on the right-most in the picture below.

[picture 3]


Now look at the zoom head and the pill.  The red one (which is also an UltraFire branded) has a shallower pill with fewer threads.  The O-Ring on this pill and the paper insulation on the driver are added by me so those are not manufacturer's differences.  The MXDL (in the middle) has a pill with more threads.  The black UltraFire (on the right) has the zoom-head's securing O-Ring on the pill instead of the body.

Left-to-Right, the red UltaFire came with a smooth top-ring.  The black MXDL came with a "window-breaker" ring with 5 protrusions.  The Black UltraFire with the longer zoom-head has a "window-breaker" ring with 3 bigger protrusions.  (In one seller page, it was said to be the emergency car-window breaker, so I called it a "window-breaker" ring).

I have the MXDL top ring installed in the red-UltraFire since my wife wanted it.  So in picture 1 the MXDL has the smooth top ring.

I ordered a few of those because I got the black MXDL first.  My daughter wanted one, and then my wife wanted one.  With three similar ones, I ordered the forth as parts donor for future needs.  I wanted exactly the same thing (except color).  They look the same but are not.

Well, it is not just this particular kind of lights.  For the next power outage, I got some larger flashlights in case I need to fix things in the dark…

[picture 4]


You can see that the silver one is actually quite a bit shorter than the black one.  Tail-cap for the silver one is significantly shorter than the tail-cap for the black one.   The silver one has the zoom-head O-Ring on the body instead of the pill.  The black one has the zoom-head O-Ring on the wider part of the pill.  The top ring is also different.  These are the "minor differences" that the seller didn't even think of mentioning.  I needed to add a few O-Rings to silver one for it to take the longer protected batteries.

[picture 5]


None of my flashlights are using the original LED or driver anymore.  I had them all standardized on Nanjg 105c driver with home-grown firmware.  They are all on "XML2-U2".  The smaller flashlights has a timer that limits full-blast to 60 seconds since they don't have the metal to deal with the heat.

No, this not a rant.  I am not unhappy with them.  In fact, I am quite happy with them.  I am just amazed at how different they are when I thought I was buying something exactly alike but for color.  Amazed at how a little more aluminum is stripped off (or an O-Ring skipped) to save a few tenths of a penny each revision cycle…