Yes Paulr, this test was just for the membrane switch (as I said). The passive mechanism in the tail could break before that of course. We have made those parts easy to get to incase they need any type of service.
Cause of death for typical flashlights switches like the Kroll or those used by competitors include:
- Excessive current causing contacts to oxidize. Contact resistance increases. Light flickers, is dim or fails to turn on
- Mechanical wear in the latching mechanism. Cause parts to come loose and rattle around inside the light, switch no longer latches, plunger is loose or does not travel, may be frozen in the latched or unlatched position, switch may not make correct contact with the rest of the circuit
- Abuse or trama to the mechanicals causes accelerated wear
- Rubber parts wear out. Switch leaks, binds, parts exposed to dust and dirt accelerates wear
- etc
With the Arc4 switch, the design goal was to reduce all of these effects in an effort to make the overall system more reliable. For example, the high power is switched by a transistor instead of a switch contact. As a result, the signal contacts required last quite a bit longer. The Arc4 will not flicker, dim or stop working if the switch contact resistance increases because the uC uses alogrythms to filter out the analog noise and overcome large variations in resistance.
Another things we did is to switch from a mechanical latch to a electronic latch. This reduces the complexity of mechanical parts in the switch which results increased reliability.
Finally, we made the mechanical parts easy to access just in case we missed something and it does fail and needs to be replaced. This is our insurance policy.
For a completely new switch design, we are quite fortunate to not have any major teething problems. It's not perfect of course. But the design has been kind to us. The biggest issue is with the tail cap not being screwed down tight enough and that sometimes causes the switch to be irratic. Of course, tightening the cap fixes it in most situations. Like I said, we are very fortunate with this switch design.
Peter
