cobalt/gold battery contact material

[**DONOTDELETE**]

I can't find the thread where Gransee was talking about the silver/tin he would be using for the battery contacts in the ARC, and wanted to suggest the following material --
(I would sure like to know how to obtain some of this 'hard cobalt/gold' material, I'd crimp and solder it into all my flashlights where ever I could -- plus it has the advantage of being self-cleaning as the screen material rotates against a surface...)
(description is from the Actionlight website, thanks to Henry...)
"... On a conventional light, each battery contact is composed of a bent piece of metal.  Because the bent piece of metal is necessarily stiff so it can hold it's shape, it will only touch the battery at one or two points with a tiny contact area and a relatively high contact resistance.  The Action Lights, by comparison, use a flexible screen material that provides dozens of parallel contact points and a consistently low contact resistance.  The contact material is a hard cobalt-gold especially designed for low resistance electrical contacts..."
...see more under 'battery contacts' at: http://www.hdssystems.com/ActionLightTechnology.htm

 

[The_LED_Museum]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ted the Led:
'hard cobalt/gold' material, I'd crimp and solder it into all my flashlights where ever I could -- plus it has the advantage of being self-cleaning as the screen material rotates against a surface...)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

My Division 2 Responder (Koehler-Bright Star) seems to have something like this as its battery contact. It's a greyish-gold, fine mesh-type material on a partially compressed foam base. The surface area in contact with the battery is nearly as large as the exposed metal portion of the battery itself.

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

yup, that's what the stuff in the Action light looks like. The material isn't 'stretched tight' but has some give, so you can put stuff behind it, like the foam you mentioned, to help push it against the battery - and take up slack space - as in the Action light when I'm using an alkaline D cell instead of the recommended lithium D cell...maybe a better material than foam, which deteriorates eventually, can be found, maybe a spring? or that 3M nylon scrubbing material...?

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

If you find a source, I would be highly interested in it. I will check my sources as well and let you know if I find something.

Bye,

 

[Steelwolf]

The headlamps from Princeton Tec have that as well. Some greyish mesh on a foam base. I don't think Princeton uses cobalt/gold mesh though or they would certainly be crowing about it. I'm searching in the fly screen department to see if they make any screens with metal. Perhaps when I have more time, I'll investigate other ways of doing this flexible contact thingy that would be easy for all of us to make and use.

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

I don't think Princeton Tec used the cobalt/ gold either...if only because they had a problem with the first screen material they used in the battery compartment tops -- they recalled them and offered replacement 'snap tops' to me, which worked . I think they replaced a material that corroded with a finer stainless mesh -- I am not certain, though...