How come we dont have Tungsten Carbide flashlights?

I was looking at wedding bands with my fiancee and we were looking at the Tungsten Carbide rings. Then i thought, "why dont we have flashlight bodies made in this stuff?"

Granted Tungsten carbide is tough. But if they can machine rings out of it, they can make a flashlight body right?

Think of it, it is hard. It will probably not scratch. No need for hard annodizing.

How many rings make a flashlight...100? 500?

obi

Tungsten is heavy. Way too heavy.

And it definitely still scratches. And it's really expensive to both work and source. Go for something like a carbon fiber flashlight body with woven steel for heat conveyance if you wanna play with weird materials.

Well if it was something like 1xAA sized then only like 4-5 rings width. If it was a Surefire 6P then maybe 10 rings?

Doable. but im sure it is cost prohibitive. However Titanium for a long time was expensive and hard to work with. But in the past several years, titanium is seen almost as common place as Aircraft aluminum.

I love my tungsten wedding band and I love heavy flashlights. I think it would be interesting, although I'm not sure how practical. Perhaps something in a single AAA form factor would be feasible on a small scale. Neat idea though.

I gave my girlfriend a tungsten carbide ring and she dropped it once when she was taking it off and it hit hard tiles and shattered. I'm not sure if mine is an isolated incident or what, but I think if you made a light from tungsten carbide, it would shatter upon impact because of it's brittle nature.
Correct me if I'm wrong!

Also, I tend not to listen to people saying you can't make a flashlight out of whatever material you're talking about. Titanium is too tough and expensive, copper is too soft and expensive, etc. My Maratac Cu seems to be working just fine and it's solid copper. I don't have a Ti light, but plenty of people do and they love them. I saw we build a tungsten carbide light, regardless of its thermal conductivity and cost, just to say nay to the naysayers.

And on the subject of scratches, my wedding band has been rocking its place on my finger for almost three years isn't a scratch on it.

CheepSteal said:

I gave my girlfriend a tungsten carbide ring and she dropped it once when she was taking it off and it hit hard tiles and shattered. I'm not sure if mine is an isolated incident or what, but I think if you made a light from tungsten carbide, it would shatter upon impact because of it's brittle nature.
Correct me if I'm wrong!

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I have heard similar warnings from the jewelery store.

I once had the privilege of handling a tungsten Larry Light and the weight to size ratio was insane.

Be careful of fancy/exotic materials.
I spent $220 on a titanium light and it took me 6 weeks to realise that conventional aluminium is still the best.
I have a Jetbeam TC-R2.
The titanium has it's ups and downs.
The titanium styling is great - it makes flashlights like jewelry - it matches a Rado wrist watch.

However, it took six weeks to really sink in that this flashlight is not just a little heavier, but 1.5 times heavier.
Titanium is in fact 1.66 times heavier than steel.
It makes my fingers/wrist sore, esp holding it by the cigar with two fingers over technique.

Furthermore, the surface finish of titanium is not exactly the same as hard annodised aluminium.
Titanium has a glass/mirror-like polished surface that is smooth, and feels greasy and slippery in the hands.
When we hold by the tactical grip with four fingers over the top, and the thumb on the tail end switch, pressing a slightly stiff tail end switch makes the slippery titanium TC-R2 slide through the hand.
On the otherhand, conventional aluminium with HA finish is not coarse, but has a slightly "textured" finish.
This textured finish is not so slippery in the hand.

Finally, titanium feels hard and cold in the hand.
Aluminium feels softer, and warmer in the hand.
Titanium is in fact a much harder metal than aluminium.
Aluminium conducts heat some 15 to 20 times better than titanium, hence the quickly warmer feel, where Ti feels colder.

I haven't dropped my Ti on the ground at all so far.
My daily activities don't roughen the surface of the flashlight at all; for example, I don't carry my flashlight with keys, and I don't mix my flashlight in the same tool box with metal tools like hammers and screwdrivers etc.
However, I am led to believe that if I do drop my flashlight on the ground a lot, then Al will easily dent, while Ti is much more resistant to dents.
Also, mixing flashlights with keys and metal tools, will cause the surface annodising of Al flashlights to scratch easily, compared to a Ti light.

Thus for normal use, I prefer conventional aluminium.
For rugged use and beating around, then titanium is superior.

Therefore, if you would like to use tungsten carbide as a material for flashlights, just be careful - there's a lot of homework and testing to do...

Only problem is tungesten carbide rings arent machined They are sintered, and then ground/polished with diamond tooling/abrasives. So youre paying for molds to be machined, then sintering, and then post processing. You could buy just a big sintered rod, and take it to an EDM shop and have them use a sinker machine to burn a hole though it, and put threads in it. Only problem is a 1" diameter 6" long tungsten carbide rod costs $200, and youre probably looking at an hour or more of machine time on a fancy 4- axis sinker EDM. Open your wallet kids, youre looking at a $500+ 1x18650 body, not even counting a head for it.

peterharvey73 said:

I spent $220 on a titanium light and it took me 6 weeks to realise that conventional aluminium is still the best.
I have a Jetbeam TC-R2.
The titanium has it's ups and downs.
The titanium styling is great - it makes flashlights like jewelry - it matches a Rado wrist watch.

However, it took six weeks to really sink in that this flashlight is not just a little heavier, but 1.5 times heavier.
Titanium is in fact 1.66 times heavier than steel.

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I'm sorry - you're incorrect; titanium is 1.66 times denser than aluminum. Titanium's density is 4.506g/cc, aluminum's is 2.70g/cc and mild steel's is about 7.85g/cc.

The thing is, given titanium's strength it might be possible to come close to an aluminum light's weight - because there is less wall thickness needed for the same strength - but then the thermal conductivity problem might be worsened by less thermal mass.

I think your ultimate conclusion is still correct, though - until we come up with something radically high-tech, aluminum's balance of strength, low density and relatively high thermal conductivity will remain the best general choice for most flashlight designs.

Tungsten Carbide is 9.5 mohs, 2000 MPa, 90 W/m-K

StarHalo said:

Tungsten Carbide is 9.5 mohs, 2000 MPa, 90 W/m-K

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It is getting too technical in here ahhhhhhh hahaha j/k

Ooops, sorry. I was half asleep - I typed "steel".

Yes, Ti @ 4.506 grams per cubic centimeter, is 1.66 times heavier than Al @ 2.70 grams per same cubic centimeter.

There is no data on the density of tungsten above, but looks like tungsten is even more extreme than titanium - with double the strength and hardness, but the same thermal conductivity as aluminium...

Tungsten is also heavier than lead; a McGizmo Lunasol 20 made of tungsten would weigh three-quarters of a pound without the battery..

I have a tungsten guide rod filled with mercury in my 1911 to retard recoil. Due to their weight and hardness, tungsten guide rods have been used in custom competition handguns. I can't imagine any practical benefit to constructing a flashlight from this material.

Try machining it. It would be insanely hard to machine threads.
Most items you see are sintered and then polished.
It may be possible to make some kind of Tungsten Carbide accessory though.

There have been many threads about this in the past.

It would be very cool.

How about Al alloyed with scandium like the S&W superlight handguns