Gransee
Flashlight Enthusiast
This might be helpful for some people:
The new Titanium Arc-AAA allows for easy swapping of the light engine (LED and driver PCB). This makes it somewhat future-proof since you can easily upgrade to brighter LEDs as they become available. The Titanium housing can last for generations so it makes sense to make it easy to service.
The downside to giving the customer access to the driver is that it can get rougher handling than a driver sealed with epoxy and not able to be removed.
The PCB is plenty tough as long as you don't remove it. I have already posted about how you should be careful when removing/installing the PCB. I have seen some pcbs broken by rough handling. For example, if the pcb is too snug and you don't size it to fit your head, it is going to be really hard to get it out of the head later. And this could result in having to use a lot of force on the pcb to pop it out. I have seen the black diode popped off the board from tools being inserted into the epoxy fill holes. This is also detailed in earlier posts.
My personal carry Titanium AAA (GS) I have had for awhile now, I had one before we began shipping of course so it has a good amount of use on it. my pcb has been ground down so it pops out of the head very easily. About a month ago however, it started only coming on intermittently. I checked all the usual stuff and didn't find any problems. The circuit was properly grounded, the diode was in place, etc. It took awhile but I found that the yellow capacitor soldered to the LED leads had a cracked solder weld. The crack was hidden so it looked fine on visual inspection and would work fine electrically until it was placed in the head (which caused it to flex enough to create an intermittent). The fix was simple, reflow the solder. It has a made a big improvement in the operation of the light. Until I had found this, I was starting to leave the light behind because I didn't feel like I could trust it and I didn't have the time to figure out what was wrong with it (I just used my Arc6 instead). But I finally set down and tested it more in depth and that's how I found the cracked weld. So if you have a unit that is failing to come on every once in awhile and you have checked everything else, trying reflowing the solder joints on the capacitor.
peter
The new Titanium Arc-AAA allows for easy swapping of the light engine (LED and driver PCB). This makes it somewhat future-proof since you can easily upgrade to brighter LEDs as they become available. The Titanium housing can last for generations so it makes sense to make it easy to service.
The downside to giving the customer access to the driver is that it can get rougher handling than a driver sealed with epoxy and not able to be removed.
The PCB is plenty tough as long as you don't remove it. I have already posted about how you should be careful when removing/installing the PCB. I have seen some pcbs broken by rough handling. For example, if the pcb is too snug and you don't size it to fit your head, it is going to be really hard to get it out of the head later. And this could result in having to use a lot of force on the pcb to pop it out. I have seen the black diode popped off the board from tools being inserted into the epoxy fill holes. This is also detailed in earlier posts.
My personal carry Titanium AAA (GS) I have had for awhile now, I had one before we began shipping of course so it has a good amount of use on it. my pcb has been ground down so it pops out of the head very easily. About a month ago however, it started only coming on intermittently. I checked all the usual stuff and didn't find any problems. The circuit was properly grounded, the diode was in place, etc. It took awhile but I found that the yellow capacitor soldered to the LED leads had a cracked solder weld. The crack was hidden so it looked fine on visual inspection and would work fine electrically until it was placed in the head (which caused it to flex enough to create an intermittent). The fix was simple, reflow the solder. It has a made a big improvement in the operation of the light. Until I had found this, I was starting to leave the light behind because I didn't feel like I could trust it and I didn't have the time to figure out what was wrong with it (I just used my Arc6 instead). But I finally set down and tested it more in depth and that's how I found the cracked weld. So if you have a unit that is failing to come on every once in awhile and you have checked everything else, trying reflowing the solder joints on the capacitor.
peter