Bad Arc heads

I ordered ten empty heads from Arc's website and all of them are badly blemished. Anything from discolored blotchy anodizing to gouges in the sides of the heads. Some of them are cadmium coated and some are not. I'm not sure why the threads are so different from one head to the other either. I e-mailed there [email protected] address. I'll see what they say.

boy oh boy. I have been trying to decide about getting an Arc6 but when I see crap like this I edge closer to not doing it. There is NO excuse for that .

I recall ArcMania making a similar observation a while back. Good luck.

I believe that Arc had a terrible time with their contracted anodisers, eventually resulting in the change to black anodising in place of neutral due to black anodisation being a more forgiving process.

Whilst I believe that most of badly anodised batches should be off the shelves by now I'm not surprised that bulk buys of body spares are still including such pieces.

err0r said:

I believe that Arc had a terrible time with their contracted anodisers, eventually resulting in the change to black anodising in place of neutral due to black anodisation being a more forgiving process.

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I should take another picture of the gouged reflectors. Not that I'm concerned about that because I would cut the reflector anyways. It's just the whole thing. I spent $150 for scrap heads. I'm not about to send someone a head with gouges on both sides even if they are O.K. with it. I take pride in my work and I just can't work with these heads. These heads look even worse in person. I've done over 100 mods to Arc lights and I've never seen such a thing like this before. Someone at Arc needs to contact me soon....

Hopefully Peter will chime in here......
I am in CBUS (Reynoldsburg) also- I am a big PEAK fan but I have heard great things about your work. Never had any idea you were local.
I had read something about you not being able to use PEAK's for
mods- is there a particular reason- or is it just personal preference?

RAGE CAGE said:

Hopefully Peter will chime in here......
I am in CBUS (Reynoldsburg) also- I am a big PEAK fan but I have heard great things about your work. Never had any idea you were local.
I had read something about you not being able to use PEAK's for
mods- is there a particular reason- or is it just personal preference?

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I could probably mod peaks but I would have to look into it. The SS versions I won't mod however. My humble tooling wouldn't last long against the harder metal.

I just moved back to Columbus about 1 1/2 years ago.

Maria from Arc contacted me today with the good news that they are sending me replacement heads and I will ship back the bad heads.

litetube said:

boy oh boy. I have been trying to decide about getting an Arc6 but when I see crap like this I edge closer to not doing it. There is NO excuse for that .

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I agree. I've been close to buying one, especially since the Christmas special on the Arc6, but........

Ya know, I've been thinking about this. I bet those empty heads are production REJECTS. If that's the case, the production AAA's would not have such blemishes. That would indicate proper quality control for the Arc lights. This QC would also apply to the new (showpiece product) Arc 6. Don't let these non-production AAA heads influence a decision to get a premium light light like the Arc 6.

UncleFester said:

Ya know, I've been thinking about this. I bet those empty heads are production REJECTS. If that's the case, the production AAA's would not have such blemishes. That would indicate proper quality control for the Arc lights. This QC would also apply to the new (showpiece product) Arc 6. Don't let these non-production AAA heads influence a decision to get a premium light light like the Arc 6.

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I agree with you. These heads were definitely not typical of Arc's quality. They were much worst than any typical complaint of slightly off color anodizing.

UncleFester said:

Ya know, I've been thinking about this. I bet those empty heads are production REJECTS.

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Nowhere on their site does it say that they're rejects or seconds, blemished, or otherwise:

This is an empty Arc-AAA head. It does not include the LED or electronics! It is sold for mod projects. It includes the machined aluminum part, the HA anodize finish and the machined reflector.

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If they are, in fact, rejects, then they should be advertised as such.

They are rejects (and there are a bunch), I think there was some confusion about what units were to be used for resale. They are all supposed to be first quality, no seconds of anything. The rejects go to the recycler.

peter