Not all Arc's are equal?

[yclo]

Not all Arc\'s are equal?

I recently (today actually) aquired 4 white Arc AAA lights (1 LE). It is now dark and I'm playing around with them.

I've found out that not all are of the same brightness, so I took readings of the current draw on the battery.

Arc (1) 100.6mA
Arc (2) 97mA
Arc (3) 61~70mA
Arc LE 105.3mA

The battery used has a voltage reading of 1.53v

Arc (3) flickers!! Help Peter!!!!

Visually (1) is brighter than (2) & (3) and is pretty much equal on the LE.

Can someone clarify this for me please?
Thanks!

YC

 

[yclo]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

The three Arc AAA's side by side
image

The LE added on the far right
image

Two per photo with LE on the right
image
image
image

Maglite Solitaire and Arc LE
image
image


YC

 

[Badbeams3]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

Hi, my Arc started flickering just a couple days ago...I wiped all the contacts and still flickerd. Seeing throu my tears as best I could I decided to try a differant batt. I had a Ray-O-vac in it and put a Ace hardware batt in there. And it`s back to it`s bright old self.

I looked at the Ray batt and found that it has a wider positive nipple than the Ace. I still don`t know for sure but suspect the foam ring with the wide contact might be why it was acting up. But I have used the Ray`s all along with good results. Hmmm, hold on I`m going to try a diff Ray in it.................................Well, works perfect with a diff Ray. Hmmm...could it be a bad batt..I`ve never heard of such a thing?

Anyway, I would try cleaning the contacts (top and bottom) on the light with a Q-tip.

 

[KenBar]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ken B:
Hmmm...could it be a bad batt..I`ve never heard of such a thing?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I had a similar thing happen with an Eternalight. The last thing I checked was the battery.....one of the 3 from the SAME box went bad...and it caused all sorts of wierd things. It measured fine on VOM. When you put it under A N Y load it dropped way down. I chunked the ONE bad battery, replaced it with a new one, left the other two there ( as I had only had them in a day) and all was well. ?????

The way I found this is I have 2 battery voltage measurers. One of the "better" ones ( actually a digital VOM ) puts the battery under a slight load and measures the voltage. This one caught the bad battery.
Energizer battery..

 

[StarLite]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

I have a handful of ARC-LE & ARC-AAA and noticed the same thing. The variation within ARC-AAA is big, ranging from CMG level to matching ARC-LE and within ARC-LE, the range is smaller but in general it's brighter than ARC-AAA. One of the LE has a blue tin to it like ARC-AAA but it was one of the brighter LE.

 

[remuen]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by yclo:
I recently (today actually) aquired 4 white Arc AAA lights (1 LE). It is now dark and I'm playing around with them.

I've found out that not all are of the same brightness, so I took readings of the current draw on the battery.

Visually (1) is brighter than (2) & (3) and is pretty much equal on the LE.

Can someone clarify this for me please?
Thanks!

YC<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

In the last few weeks I got 6 ARC AAA and 2 ARC LE - a few of them for friends. I made the same experience: Whereas the 2 LE are almost equal, the standard version are quite different. I kept 2 of them which are very similar to the LE and sold the other ones.

Unfortunatly I have no digital camera. The difference in the brightnes and the beam color was really interesting.

 

[Gransee]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

Some people may have not read my post on this in the other thread ("Arc Flashlights")...

Over the past 6 months the standard Arc-AAA has had three different ranks of white LED in them: R, B1S and B2S.

R is the standard Nichia white. S is the high brightness rank. B1 and B2 are the tint ranks with B1 being less blue and B2 being more blue.

Right now, we put the B2S in the standards and B1S in the LEs. But for a short time, we ran out of the B2 and where putting B1 in the standards. It was a hasty decision because we where out of stock and people had been waiting for a long time for their orders to be fullfilled. So some people may have standards that have the LE led. These should be all sold by now, there were only a few to begin with.

We are currently manufacturing standards with B2S Nichias and LEs with B1S Nichias. Notice both have the brighter S rank, the difference is in the tint.

Once the S rank stock drys out, the standard will go back to the R rank.

Sorry if this sounds confusing, the whole idea here is to make the light as bright as possible. I think the picture above with it next to a Solitaire kind of demostrates that.

Peter Gransee

 

[remuen]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

Sure, I did not read your information before. I think it is really customer friendly of you to put the LE LED in the standard AAA. With my reply in this thread I don't want to make a complaint - it was just what i noticed. And as I now own 2 LE and two standard AAA's with almost the same brightnes and beam color I am happy.

 

[Darell]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

Geez. That poor Mag Solitaire looks like it's caught fire.

 

[JollyRoger]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

Peter, could it be that some B1S and B2S got mixed up and both went into the LE production? I'm just noticing some LE's have more "blue" than others, while some are more green....There just seems to be a very noticeable variation among the ARC LE's. Is this just due to the variation among the same rank nichias?
Thanks.

 

[Gransee]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

Well If they did, it sure was not intentional. We make a point to only put SB1 rank in the LE. There is some variation within the rank, but not much since the 1 and 2 are actually half ranks (they split the normal size rank "b" into two halves).

Peter

 

[sylvestor]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by yclo:
The three Arc AAA's side by side
image

The LE added on the far right
image

Two per photo with LE on the right
image
image
image

Maglite Solitaire and Arc LE
image
image


YC<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Hi YC,

Great pics. Can you tell me how far the flashlights (Arc AAA & Maglites) were from the wall ?

thanks,

sylvestor.

 

[txwest]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by darell:
Geez. That poor Mag Solitaire looks like it's caught fire.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
*****************

I think if it had caught fire, it would improve its brightness. TX

 

[yclo]

Re: Not all Arc\'s are equal?

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by sylvestor:
[QB]
Great pics. Can you tell me how far the flashlights (Arc AAA & Maglites) were from the wall ?
QB]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It was about the length from the end of the keyboard to the screen on my laptop. The *wall* was actually a piece of paper on my laptop screen.

YC