Black ring in the beam of my Arc-AAA -- off-center LED

choombak

Enlightened
Joined
Oct 5, 2009
Messages
415
Location
SF Bay Area
The AAA that I recently purchased a NIB arc-AAA from a fellow forum'ite, has dark ring in the beam. The LED is also noticeably off-center, which mostly produces this ring. Is there a way I can fix this? Thanks.

-Amarendra
 

ragweed

Enlightened
Joined
Dec 31, 2009
Messages
713
Location
USA
Major bummer! Dark rings in a beam are unacceptable in my book. I have a cheap doller light that is perfectly centered..!!
 

paulr

Flashaholic
Joined
Mar 29, 2003
Messages
10,832
If this is an AAA-Snow then it will have rings, one of the reasons that model never caught on so well, though it is still sought after by those who don't care for the Nichia blue tint.

The Nichia models will still have some artifacts compared with a reflectorized light, but shouldn't be that pronounced, e.g. compared with the Snow version.

Centering is a matter of how the die is situated in the led envelope (i.e. it's not a matter of how the flashlight is assembled) and is a hit or miss thing. It doesn't affect the usability of the flashlight and so Nichia goes ahead and ships the leds allowing a fair amount of slop in centering. Off-center beams bug enough users though, that for a premium light like this, there's something to be said for the idea of selecting leds with good centering before assembling the lights, dealing the less-well-centered leds out as surplus.

I compared a bunch of my 5mm lights and some are better centered than others. All in all it doesn't bother me and I didn't notice it before other people started complaining about it.
 
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