Turbodog, You did not answer my questions. Why?
I have examined closely my Novatac and HDS lights.
It is clear to me that both are well made. cleary design changes were made in order to bring the light into a lower price category. Keep in mind that there is a $100.00 difference in price. thats about 35%. If you bought car and then another similar car which cost 35% less I suspect that you ma not be able to expect the same level of quality on the less expensive car. IMHO the NovaTac is certainly not even close to being 30% less light than the HDS. In fact I find it to be a high quality flashlight especially for a "mass produced" flashlight.
I have some experience with retaining rings and I agree they can be the cause of difficulties. I will watch carefully to see if the "problem" crops up on my Novatac.
Here is the thing about this. The retaining ring is only under the kind of stress which would loosen it when the cell is being changed. I have had my light for about as long as anybody else and have replaced the cell maybe 6-10 times the retaining ring is still in place and is tight. How many times did you change the cell before you had the problem? If the light came with it loose to begin with then it is simple enough to tighten it up or send it in for repair.
My concern is that it is also easy enough to accelerate this kind of problem.
When I had this issue on a project I was working on I found that the solution was to tighten the ring during manufacture to a point where it would take a highly unusual amount of force to loosen the ring. That much force is unlikely to even present itself on the inside of my project. The issue was found during m beta and trial phase before production.
Now since Novatec has sold many of these lights under a government contract it would seem to me that testing of the design must have been extensive. Now if here on the CPF 500 lights were sold and somewhere around 10 of them have had this problem then I would Say this is a very LOW number of failures.
If you help the retaining ring to become loose then I can see this as being a big problem. I see no signs of loctight anywhere on my novatak. The retaining ring is VERY tight. The amount of force which will be required to loosen the ring appears to be significant.
I like the novatak. I hope this doesn't become a Huge problem as you predict it will.
I would be very interested in hearing what NovaTac's response to you regarding the issue was.
For some reason you seem to want to dodge this part of things.
So in fairness to NovaTac please answer the questions asked regarding this issue and what NovaTac said about it.
Without these answers. the thread may continue to appear to just be a campaign to put the novatak into a negative light. This can effect sales and if that is the intention of your posts it wouldn't suprise me to hear that Novatak had become upset.
The data set is too small to call this a defective product or a design flaw IMHO
As I said earlier I have a number of HDS lights and they all have different tail switch designs. Does that mean they were defective? No.
Does a couple of users who experienced a loose retaining ring make it a defective design or product? No.
But you thread can have the effect of yelling fire! in a movie theatre. This may be a non issue. More data please. To be clear what was Novatec response when you (did you?) reported the "issue to them"?
Yaesumofo
Just keep waiting. Those retaining rings are going to become the bane of their existence.
