Arc AAA...Beam Pattern

Hi: I just purchased this light and wanted to know if the beam pattern is suppose to have a bright uniform center. My beam appears like the following:
- it has a light blue center(dimmer than a photon),light whitish halo then a thin real blue ring, followed by a wide light whitish halo. (hope this is not confusing!)My thoughts are, had I sampled the light before purchase, I would not have bought it. I have heard great things spoken about this light and maybe I am being over critical. In a beam shot of this light on a review, the picture showed a bright center spot(whitish) with a halo periphery.

Any comments on the performance of my light would be appreciated. BTW: the first light I mail ordered worked for only about 30 seconds then went dead!! I received the present one as a replacement.

Thanks! Dave

Hello DDS and welcome to the CPF! On the CPF, you have the benefit of having an Arc representative (me! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif ) available to answer your every question.

I am so sorry you have are having such bad luck! First you order an Arc-AAA and it doesn't work. Then we replace it for you and the second one isn't as good as your photon. Sounds like you have all sorts of junk in the beam. What a waste of time! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif I think you shouldn't have to spend one extra minute bothering with this. But if you would like, how about you give us an email and we pay for you to ship the bad light back and we refund your money? If you send your Photon we can find an LED that matches it. Otherwise you could post a beam picture of your Arc here in the forum so we can all see what kind of LED you have (this is probably the best idea).

As you already know, there are quite a bit of variations in LEDs. This is useless information to you though since the product is not perfect (and that is all that matters).

My email address is [email protected] you can also call and speak to me directly at (480) 752-8544 x202.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve you!!!

Peter Gransee
Owner
Arc Flashlight LLC

Gransee: What a fast and accomodating reply to my post...thank you! First, I am not really complaining about the Arc as being unfamiliar with the expected beam pattern. I have heard such rave reviews about the light that I feel these more experienced posters would probably not feel that my beam pattern was "normal"... I don't know though. I don't want a refund but just an Arc like all others are raving about. BTW, on the same day I received my Arc and bought a Surge light and it failed after about two minutes of usage!(the bulb fell off the mount). PT was very responsive to my return and sent me a replacement. Unfortunately, this light too, failed within minutes! I still have not received my replacemnet but they assured me that their solder problem has been resolved. Needless to say, I have spent alot of money for this light in shipping charges alone. So what I am trying to infer is that all manufacturers products can have lemons ! I have just had bad luck! I will try real hard to take a decent pic of my beam and post it here. If the way I described my beam is not normal for the ARC, I will contact you as recommended and request a replacement. Once again, thank you very much for your prompt customer service attention that I did not expect! Your concern for my satisfaction is very enlightening. I will now make the pic atttempt and its posting. Regards, Dave

DDS,

FWIW, I have bought three current model Arc AAA's, one of which was an LE, and all exhibited exactly the beam pattern you describe. The same exact beam pattern is also seen in several other LED lights I own, e.g. Inova X5. So I am going to guess that this is NORMAL. But I still don't like it...

Now, I have also owned (and still own) ONE Arc AAA that did NOT exhibit this beam pattern, and it is a very old LE, a couple of revs back. It has a perfectly smooth hotspot, no artifacts of any kind anywhere. It's not as bright as the others, but it's the one I kept.

I suspect current Nichia LED's sacrifice a little in terms of beam pattern in order to achieve a little more brightness, compared to previous years' products. But there I'm just speculating.

In the image below are beam shots for 3 of the four AAA's, the leftmost is the older LE, the middle is the new LE, and on the right is the new standard AAA. [The colors, especially the green, are way exaggerated by the camera, but it is basically also true that the older LE is greenish and the new AAA's are bluish. The point of the picture is the beam pattern]



I'm going to be very jealous if your replacement does indeed eliminate these artifacts...

[edit: fixed up image link, hope this works...]

Kill-O-Zap, you pic turned into an ad for imagestation.com. DDS, I will try to post a pic of my AAA beam in a bit but I can never seem to get the camera to show it like I see it.

Hmm the LE I got has a very light blue center, followed by a normal yellowish ring and then a dimmer blue ring. Nichia LEDs unfortunately seem to vary greatly in quality as I found but ARC from my experience is more than willing to swap you for a better one if you ask.

Hmmm. All my ARC AAA's display that same pattern when projected on a white wall, especially from close range. I don't think LED technology can make a perfectly smooth pattern yet. But it's hard to say whether your pattern is "normal" or outside tolerances without seeing the beam pattern.

If the pattern is indeed extreme for an ARC AAA, and this is your second ARC AAA being returned, Peter should give you an ARC AAA Premium for your frustration, time spent, and to maintain ARC's customer service reputation.

Of course Peter can't be make this public or everyone would ask for an upgrade to Premium, claiming a "substandard" beam /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif.

Further thoughts

CPFer's want PERFECT flashlights. A few recent threads attest to that. But the technology is still young, still in the Ford Model-T era, and much needs to be learned about manufacturing LED's and LED flashlights, especially for young companies like Nichia and ARC.

If your flashlight is normal, within the present state of manufacturing variations and not defective, just enjoy the benefits of the ARC AAA. My first criteria for flashlights is it's USEFULLNESS, then I worry about extreme quality. It's great when you can have both usefullness and near-perfect quality, and I believe we will in the next few years, but pragmatic usefullness should come first.

But....If your ARC is defective, raise a stink and demand a Premium Edition /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif. Good luck!

Try the tape mod - A carefully trimmed circle of the "cloudy" type adhesive tape applied accross the lens opening will wipe out all artifacts from the beam and doen't seem to effect brightness too much.

The reason that pictures of the beam fail to reveal the color variations and artifacts is that the camera is overexposing (slow shutter speed) the image and thus you see a bright white beam. If you overexposed it enough it would look like an LS beam. Underexposing it (faster shutter speed) will reveal what the eye does. My camera doesn't have manual exposure so I have been unable to render a true to life rendition of my beam either. Someone with a better camera should be able to, though.

All my ARC-AAAs have artifacts and slight color variations. Though it bothers me a bit, I understand that this is the nature of LEDs right now. Some are very white, bright and even, like one of my Photon IIs, (and apparently your too) but most LEDs seem to exhibit these flaws. Sometimes a beam will be very smooth and white, but trade brightness for it. LEDs are as individual as finger prints. Perhaps in the near future, LEDs will be able to give us the consistent bright white beams we would all like to see. My LS low dome beam appears very white with no artifacts. Very nice.

I think Peter's offer to hand pick one to match your Photon and arrange shipping is very generous. You might want to buy a second one from him while your at it.

The AAA is my favorite and most used/useful light. I'm never without it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif

[ QUOTE ]
gyverpete said:
The reason that pictures of the beam fail to reveal the color variations and artifacts is that the camera is overexposing (slow shutter speed) the image and thus you see a bright white beam. If you overexposed it enough it would look like an LS beam. Underexposing it (faster shutter speed) will reveal what the eye does. My camera doesn't have manual exposure so I have been unable to render a true to life rendition of my beam either. Someone with a better camera should be able to, though.


[/ QUOTE ]

Just out of curiosity, do you know how fast of a shutter speed you need to use before it gets to where it can closely match what you see? Kind of off topic, so you can pm me if you want.

Kill-O-zap,
Glad you fixed your image. That's pretty much what mine look like too.

My early black 3.1 looks just like your oldest one, Kill-O-Zap, except a more neutral very slightly blueish white. No odd artifacts in the beam, and veeerrryy smooth. Too bad all of them can't be like it.

I just got one, and the beam has a bluish white bright center, which is a little uneven, surrounded by a dimmer white area, then a dark ring which is slightly uneven, then a very small ring of light on the outside.

I believe the outer ring to be caused by the a difference in the machining of the reflecter cone as it approaches the edge. The unevennes of the bright center could be caused by slight imperfections in the LED lens.

Pic of beam

This is the best I could do to capture the beam appearance [image]http://hyperphoto.photoloft.com/view/exportImage.asp?s=cano&i=10803497&w=500&h=333>[/image]

Re: Pic of beam

sorry, don't know why pic did not display??

Re: Pic of beam

DDS, I took your pic and put it on my webhosting:



The CPF BB software doesn't allow any other formats than the normal picture formats (BMP, JPG, GIF,....)

Dan

Re: Pic of beam

I'd say that's a bit weird, and Peter can replace that for you. Beams should be smooth and white.

Dan

I just received 7 Arc-AAA's that I will use as Christmas gifts. I had to lubricate all of the O-rings, so I checked out the beams of all of them. (They seem to all have at least a little lube on the threads, but none on the O-rings, where it's really needed......go figure. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif )

The differences between all of these lights is nothing short of amazing. Some have a fairly even bluish 'beam', while others have ugly green blobs of light in the 'beam', with blue streaks in them.

Two are distinctly superior in color and overall light quality to the 'hand picked' replacement 'CPF Edition' Arc-AAA I paid $48 for. I plan to keep one, and spray paint it red....

These ones cost $15 each, delivered. At this price, even the ones with crappy 'beams' are a fairly reasonable bargain. (As long as I'm not going to have to use them myself.....)

I have had to sort the lights, so that the ones that aren't as nice will be the ones I mail to distant relatives, while people living in town will get the 'good' ones.

I have purchased at least 14 EternaLights, with 4 white Nichia's each, and not a single bad one in all of the 56 LED's. The color of each of the 4 LED on each EternaLight have all matched, and the beams have all been uniform.

The batch of 7 Arc-AAA's I just got look like they were made with some 'factory second' LED's.

I think it's pretty much 'luck of the draw' getting a good LED in recent production Arc-AAA's /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twak.gif

Thanks everyone for your replies!

I E-mailed Peter yesterday and will see about a replacement.

Thanks! Dave