An "Engineer's" Opinion on Surefire Lights

An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

I have a long time friend that happens to have a degree in computer engineering. This seemingly gives him a free pass to be an annoying know-it-all about basically everything.

He was exposed to my Surefire M6,A2 and L2 this evening. These are among the best flashlights in the world.

To him, they are very easy to build and WAY overpriced.

He put a value on the M6 of $40.00, the A2 and L2 about $15.00 or so.

He also said the regulation circuits in the A2 and L2 were really cheap and nothing to get excited about. The terms "simple" and "easy" were used extensively.

I really don't care what he thinks, but I would like to solicit some opinons from those of you who really know the mechanics of these superlights..

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

No offence to you or your friend, but every day I meet so many computer engineers with, or without degrees who couldn't engineer their way out of a paper bag. I especially love it when they look down their long noses at the rest of us, only to be shown up when their equipment and especially their DESIGN falls apart like a busted sack of wet rice. I'm also in the networking business but I choose to defer to the experts in their respective fields like PK and Dr. John Matthews. Excuse the rant.

That having been said, why not offer him an opportunity to build a light of similar or BETTER caliber than the M6/A2/L2? That is what the modding scene is all about, any and all are welcome to buy the parts and spend some time at a workbench. I didn't understand why certain things were done certain ways until I was sitting in front of a soldering iron sucking down rosin fumes, then I realized perhaps it's not as easy as I assumed it would be /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif (but it has been a vastly enriching process)

I would say what really enriches a SF light is the thought and the design that goes into them. It is easy to build a circuit once someone has done the thinking and layout for you, but to put in the thought yourself, that's quite a lot of work. I believe for each project you get *ONE* solid shot at design, and if you fail there, everything else you do will be damage control.

PS: if anybody can offer a great light with SF's kind of capabilities on the cheap, there's the whole of CPF waiting to beat a path to their door - look at the waiting lists for the custom creations of some of the modders here.

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

He may be right about the M6 and A2, if you were making them in large enough quantity. He's wrong about the L2, because the 5W LED in it is over $20 all by itself, even in quantity, if I'm not mistaken.

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

a cd also costs a penny to make so a $15 dollar cd is rediculously over priced! yet people buy them in droves. you have to factor in that sf and other high end light makers spend alot of money in r&d that has to be re-couped and how their lights stack up to whats out their. if your light is better than a light costing less you can charge more for it because more than likely it cost more to make that the inferior light. does it mean that sf lights are not overpriced? no but i think if your engineer friend would not buy much if he found out how much it cost to make first. people sell things to make a profit just about anything is way over priced now a days. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/broke.gif o and if the light were so simple and cheap to make why hasn't a company like maglite built similar lights and sold the heck out of them for $20?

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

Anyone with real experience in manufacturing knows how time consuming and expensive it is to do all the millions of little steps involved in bringing a product to market. Think of the machinery, tooling, electronic components, outsourced services like anodizing and the reflector coatings, advertising, web design and the zillions of other hidden costs and expenses. I can tell you right now that they are charging what they need to charge to stay in business.

Oh, and I forgot to add, SF has employees. Do you know how much it costs for health insurance and workman's comp for a real company these days? Your friend may be right that it would be fairly easy in principle to produce a product that looks like that but the function is much more subtle and the infrastructure behind it is a whole other thing.

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

I"m afraid I have to agree with these guys around here /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Shipping a product that works and is reasonably well built is a great accomplishment!

Just because the regulation circuit isn't built with area-51 tech or contain a pentium processor why is that a bad thing? You want a reliable efficient circuit. You don't want anything fancy.

The engineering on SF lights is very good, meaning that it's tight and works and is reliable and does what they want it to do. And then that same quality is carried through production and manufacturing which is incredibly complicated to do. (ask any of the guys around here that run smallish companies that produce high quality gear!)

If your time were not worth anything, and you already owned several tens of thousands of dollars in shop tools and you had many skills, you could certainly build better lights yourself /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif But just because you spent $15 on the raw materials, doesn't mean the finished product isn't worth what SF is charging for it.

It's like the guy at the magic show that sneers at the magician because he knows in theory how the tricks are done /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif But he didn't invest the thousands of hours of practice and practical knowledge to learn to actually DO them. Don't worry, your friend will mellow in time, or choose a different profession...

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

I am an engineer, too. Specifically, I'm a PRODUCT DESIGNER (electronics, robotics, photonics). I've designed high-volume products that have actually been manufactured and sold to both industry and consumers. Your friend the computer engineer doesn't have a clue.
If the quantitities were decent (10,000 units just to start), you had it made in China, were willing to accept crappy lamps and inferior fit and finish, and didn't need much margin or payout on your design investment, you might be able to reach those prices.
The electronics aren't the issue. Luxeons cost what they do (although I bet an order for 50,000 pices would being the cost down quite a bit). The regulation circuitry really IS cheap to build - but you have to recover the design and tooling costs, too, of course.
What really adds cost are the high-quality machined parts. That's EXPENSIVE. Expensive to design (properly) and expensive to make. M@g manages to make decent-quality machined parts at low cost because of their vast volume. They are WAY over on the edge of the volume/cost curve. They haven't released any new designs since what, 1990?? They've spent their recent efforts on PROCESS engineering, not PRODUCT engineering. Surefire, though, has vastly lower quantities and they change their products all the time.
Surefire's prices are fair, for what they are. Competition will likely force the price lower over the next few years. Consider this: M@g's used to be EXPENSIVE. I paid 2 days worth of minumum-wage pay (almost $50) for my first M@g 4C back in 1983. The equivalent today at minimum wage is over $80. The same job I was doing then (tour guide at a recording studio) probably pays well over $100 for 2 days work now. So in terms of real earning power of an entry-level semi-skilled job, a C2 or L1 costs now what a M@g cost 21 years ago.

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

[ QUOTE ]
paulr said:
He may be right about the M6 and A2, if you were making them in large enough quantity. He's wrong about the L2, because the 5W LED in it is over $20 all by itself, even in quantity, if I'm not mistaken.

[/ QUOTE ]

In low quantity it isn't bad, here is the high online price Future puts it at, 19.25:
5W Luxeon

......


Also, SureFire, being the market leader in their niche market, can put whatever price on their lights they please, as long as the market is willing to pay the price, and obviously, the market will bear their pricing.

Of course, his being a software engineer means he often has no basis in reality, as mechanically and electrically, and optically he is completely out of his field. Besides, since software has no substance physically, it should be free, right? Since software can be changed on the fly, if he makes a mistake, you just change a few lines, at a material cost of zero. Not so in hardware. Debugging software is free, since all you have to do is run it through all the possible combinations, and whip up some code to detect any error that could occur, so it should be easily possible to write 100% bug-free software. Debugging hardware, over temperature, humidity, vibration, emissions, suceptibility, voltage takes alot of additional equipment, which even the operation of which can be rather expensive. Plus in hardware, if a unforeseen problem occurs, you have to go design something new, model it, produce new hardware, then go back through rather expensive testing/evaluation.

Go tell your buddy to stay in his field of expertise, and take no stock in his rather ingorant opinions.

Heheh, that said, the asian flashlight makers are catching up in this field, at a rather amazing pace, even in the past year, they have made some significant strides. With their rather low overheads, and mass production abilities, prices for production are *rather* low. Once they figure out the correct quality/performance combination, they'll rule the market, such as they have done with so many products in the past...computers, DVD players, VHS decks, TVs, etc...

It would be interesting to see a flashlight maker with their own production facility in Tiawan, reduce the cost and hold the same or better quality. Both can be done in reality, and it has been done so on numberous occasions for other products. One of the nice things about volume, is you can often do things and use more exotic materials, that would be cost prohibitive in low volume.

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

Your friend is simply a certificated ignorant! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif He obviously knows nothing about machining time, production costs, economies of scale or the simple costs of doing business. Should he decide to go into business on his own and look for backing, hold on to your wallet!!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

[ QUOTE ]
Toecutter said:
I have a long time friend that happens to have a degree in computer engineering. This seemingly gives him a free pass to be an annoying know-it-all about basically everything.

Ever hear the joke

"What do engineers use for birth control?"

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

Toe,

It may take a year of passionate research to fine-tune a power regulating circuitry, even if it is a conceptually simple circuit like a step-up or step-down inverter. The switching frequency, the duty-cycle, the RDSon of the MOSFET, the heat dissipation, the overall efficiency... I can go on for pages and pages.
You do not need all of that if you stick by OEM application notes. Prototype it, then go to production.
Also, the machining. The comparison with MAG is unfair; they use a very coarse machining compared to SF.

May be the L2 costs to SF 15 $ by the aluminium weight and electronic parts, even if I believe should be more.
I think Intel has an expense of 2 $ in silicon, epoxy and copper for each P IV.
May be your friend was talking about the raw material cost, not the final price of the SF lights.

When talking of high-end products, the cost of the raw material disappears in comparison with the engineering costs.

Anthony

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

Ask him what his time is worth to his company and how much several man-months worth of it is valued at (several man-months is very generous and probably takes much more time than that to produce something that has economic value). That value must be added to the worth of the product. Tell him that to sell those lights at the prices he quoted, his company must pay him $1.50 per hour to break even. Maybe he'll shut up.

And not all engineers are as arrogant and ignorant as this particular individual so please don't go bashing all engineers.

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

Just a network engineer's 2 cents (to reinforce the posts above):

While the material costs may be minimal and R&D is always on time and on budget (in a vacuum). Your friend does not account for the fact that Surefire manufactures their lights for use by the military/law enforcement market. The designs are meant to be very reliable and predictable in behaviour, very important factors when someone's life may depend on it.

Has your friend ever worked for a company who manufactured a product for the military? Testing budgets for an item to meet mil-spec requirements can run into the millions for a single product.

Believe me, when a product is being used by the consumer market, you can ship it with bugs to meet delivery dates as long as the product does what it was intended to do (and work on the fix later). Could anyone feel the same way about a product that is being used by folks at the sharp end of things?

If he brushes aside Surefire's work, then be happy for him that he will not be going broke buying Surefire's latest and greatest like the rest of us who understand value and not just cost.

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

I think Rackness has done the best in explaining how a capital economy works. Items, including flashlights, are not sold on a "cost-plus" basis. They are sold at a price determined by what the market is willing to pay based on supply and demand.

An economist would probably tell the "engineer" that if something sells in proportion to its ability to be produced, it is not overpriced. There is only what the market will bear.

Here is why Surefires were priced too low and they needed to raise prices: I ordered a SF C3 for my sister for last Xmas for $100. Because of military orders and limited production capability, the light didn't arrive until March. I thought, "SF can't keep up with military and police demand (or perhaps flashaholic demand). They need to kick up prices to get control." Well, it happened, and now we are paying for it. Look at how expensive their L5/L6 lights are and yet they are still backordered.

Frankly, I don't think Surefire flashlights make a lot of sense to anyone who isn't either an emergency services type (security, military, paramedic, fire, rescue, soldier, etc.) or a flashaholic (which looking at my CPF rating, I just became a few posts ago. ) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinser2.gif

Why else pay 50% more for something that is, subjectively, about 25% better? Well, if someone's life rests on the extra 25%, the money is trivial. This reminds me of the incident that got me into Surefires and flashaholism but I will save it for another thread.

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

[ QUOTE ]
Toecutter said:
I have a long time friend that happens to have a degree in computer engineering. This seemingly gives him a free pass to be an annoying know-it-all about basically everything.

He was exposed to my Surefire M6,A2 and L2 this evening. These are among the best flashlights in the world.

To him, they are very easy to build and WAY overpriced.

He put a value on the M6 of $40.00, the A2 and L2 about $15.00 or so.

He also said the regulation circuits in the A2 and L2 were really cheap and nothing to get excited about. The terms "simple" and "easy" were used extensively.

I really don't care what he thinks, but I would like to solicit some opinons from those of you who really know the mechanics of these superlights..

[/ QUOTE ]


LOL, tell your friend to go into business, I'll take ten of each from him at his quoted price! If the quality is the same.

GregR

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

Some background on my friend....

He worked on bank software for about a year.

Then he worked with Lockheed on stuff for the shuttle, transfered over to munitions.

Now he is a "product manager" for a small electronics company.

I asked him some basic questions about his business, such as who were his competitors and what his market share was for his top selling product brand.

He didn't know.

Surprisingly, he wants to start his own business. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/help.gif

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

All of the flashaholics opinions seem better informed than your friend. I hope when he admitted he couldn't answer "basic questions about his business" you laughed hard. Maybe he'll check in and do some research. Real engineers like to learn.

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

If your friend is so smart and wants to start his own business, tell him to build his better-quality $15 L2 equivalents and we'll buy all he can produce.

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

****** Deleted ********

EDIT: In light of Dano's comments below, I have deleted this post and will be happy to remove any other posts I have made in this thread. I falsly assumed that my comments would be viewed as a response to a few statements made by someone completely unknown to me and because of this, I felt I was being critical of certain ideas and presumptions, not the particular individual who could be my next door neighbor, for all I know! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

Re: An \"Engineer\'s\" Opinion on Surefire Lights

Hammering the initial poster's friend for his opinion is getting rather old in this thread...

Watch the personal attacks, and stay on topic, please.

-dan