LRI Proton Problems.

Well my LRI Proton came today at around 9pm. This light looked great and felt great too. I was so happy to have one of these lights. The happiness quickly dissappeared, the Proton came with a energizer lithium and i wanted to put my Sony NiMh. When i took the battery out this piece of Gold plated metal fell off with the battery, Wow thats not good i thought it was going to be ok, but it was not. The light only functioned sometimes and i had too rattle the metal piece in place to make it work. Without that piece in the light it will not work. I think that piece is the contact that transfers the current to the bezel. Anybody else have similar Problems? I want to return but affraid of the surefire Effect of taking forever to send it back. Any Suggestions?

This is a known problem with this light. LRI has really good customer service and I think they are repairing these. There is a thread in the reviews section that has a lot of info in it.

http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=118092
CandlePowerForums - Review: LRI Proton is ***HERE***NiMH Runtime Added...

Good luck,
Alex

wow, this happens alot. I need a reliable light and i think The proton just wont cut it. Thinking of selling this light and buying another more reliable light. Thanks for the info Pesky.

A quote from my Photon email news letter arrived, today.

"The new single-AA powered Proton is on the way and we should have all remaining pre-orders shipped by the end of the week. That means you only have 3 days left to take advantage of the 10% pre-order discount! Despite all of the rave reviews, the Proton has gotten off to a bit of a rough start with numerous delays from last-minute production changes."

Does this mean this problem and other's discussed in the review thread are being addressed?

geepondy said:

A quote from my Photon email news letter arrived, today.

"The new single-AA powered Proton is on the way and we should have all remaining pre-orders shipped by the end of the week. That means you only have 3 days left to take advantage of the 10% pre-order discount! Despite all of the rave reviews, the Proton has gotten off to a bit of a rough start with numerous delays from last-minute production changes."

Does this mean this problem and other's discussed in the review thread are being addressed?

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Hmm, it would seem so but if skalomax just got his today and it broke, it seems they still have a backlog of bad ones left.

More like "That means you only have 3 days left to take advantage of the 10% Beta Release Program discount!"

skalomax - will you please explicitly confirm that this Proton is from the second batch of pre-orders from photonlight, as seems to have been assumed in this thread? The elimination of this flaw was supposed to be the major reason for the holdup on the next batch. If they're still sending out flawed units, whether new or old stock (it didn't sound like they had any of the first batch left, why would they have stopped shipping if they did) I will want to consider cancelling my order quickly. Thanks.

When did you order it?

I'm surprised that with how many people posted this problem here and returned it that they're not double checking to make sure new shipments are secure, if not the fixed version.

I ordered the light on Saturday. I dont i never preordered.

I purchased a proton from the first pre order batch. I was just not happy with it (I posted reasons in the review thread). LRI has a 30-day satisfaction guarantee and I returned it for a refund. I am impressed with their customer service and would purchase from them in the future. I recommend that you phone them and let them know what's happening with your light. There are many that are happy with the light and have not experienced any problems. Myself I will check it out again in the future when they work out more of the details that I am concerned with and maybe give it another try a purchase it.

Alex

I have found that normally, with any new product, it is often advisable to wait a while before purchasing one. This gives the little bugs time to be worked out, and almost every new product is going to have them. I learned this well from working many years in the manufacturing environment in DP, and writing a Quality Control reporting system. Everything, including software will have bugs to be found and worked out in later revisions.

Lol, the first Systems Analyst I worked under blew up my first program I wrote in business by running their hand across the keyboard hitting every single key as fast as they could back and forth. I almost had a heart attack, and he said "You have to make it be bascially able to withstand whatever your normal monkey would do to it. The average user will do just about any fool thing just to see what happens". I never forgot that. No matter how much testing you do, when the product gets to the public it will fail, inevitably. Usually because of something you never dreamt of.

skalomax said:

I ordered the light on Saturday. I dont i never preordered.

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Where did you order it from? Was it someone re-selling their Proton from that first shipment? I believe nearly every Proton from that first batch went through us. LRI received the second batch last week but I don't believe they've actually been sending any out until the last couple of days. Apparently the tailcap threads have been changed somewhat, but the actual physical design of the positive contact has not yet been changed with this batch. The assembly process has been corrected though, which should greatly reduce the number of failures. All Protons are being double & triple checked to insure there are no failures. There are still plans for a change to that contact that should absolutely eliminate the possibility of this sort of failure as even a remote possibility, but it may be another month before we see it.

wow, i ordered from Brightguy. This light came with a scratch in the bottom Tailcap.

PhotonLight said:

but the actual physical design of the positive contact has not yet been changed with this batch. The assembly process has been corrected though, which should greatly reduce the number of failures.

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Doesn't this seem to be a serious enough problem that it should be eliminated rather than just greatly reduced? Even the Chinese light du jour nuts around here (my workplace, not CPF) are shying away from the Proton with the apparent number of known but uncorrected problems it seems to be exhibiting.

I guess what I'm getting at here is even though you seem to have prompt, efficient warranty service, one shouldn't have to shell out a significant amount of money for a light and still have to worry about field failures immediately. I might expect it from a $.84 Walmart light, but not one with the cost of a Proton.

rider said:

Doesn't this seem to be a serious enough problem that it should be eliminated rather than just greatly reduced? Even the Chinese light du jour nuts around here (my workplace, not CPF) are shying away from the Proton with the apparent number of known but uncorrected problems it seems to be exhibiting.

Click to expand...

Agree.

For me to buy the Proton, I have to hear about real design changes that fix this flaw once and for good. The Proton is a premium priced product and its construction should reflect that. I was all set to buy a Surefire U2 but the number of failures was unacceptable

I really wanted one of these but I guess the only thing to do now is to wait and wait until this light has been proven in the field by other CPF'ers that take the plunge and report back after using these for a while.

I was just about to pull the trigger on buying this light when I came upon this thread. I too am going to back off until it's all worked out.

I base many of my final purchasing decisions on the ratings at flashlightreviews.com - and at 4.5 stars, this one seemed good to go. I wonder if he will maintain the current rating in spite of the reported problems?