Posted: Mar 23, 2007 5:58 am
For many regular people, headtorches only get wet rarely. For a significant number of buyers, they carry one as insurance and hardly ever use it.
If even people as dissatisfied as you keep buying lights, and treat them as partly disposable, why should mass-market manufacturers change what they make?
Are there any *extra* customers out there walking around in the dark but who might buy a light if only it was durable enough, or is the best they can hope for to poach a few customers from other manufacturers or get a few existing customers to switch models by producing something more durable (and expensive) than the great bulk of customers seem to require.
In the headset, it'd be many trips - the switch has wiping contacts and is largely self-cleaning, the headset can be completely dismantled down to the last contact, contacts are screwed together rather than just glancing strips of brass. The race-pack connectors on my battery packs get damp on many trips, but don't seem to have a corrosion problem despite my never getting round to greasing them (until just now). Opening the box after a trip for the hour or so it takes to charge (and effectively dry) a battery pack seems to be enough to dry things out.
If even people as dissatisfied as you keep buying lights, and treat them as partly disposable, why should mass-market manufacturers change what they make?
Are there any *extra* customers out there walking around in the dark but who might buy a light if only it was durable enough, or is the best they can hope for to poach a few customers from other manufacturers or get a few existing customers to switch models by producing something more durable (and expensive) than the great bulk of customers seem to require.
Your LED may have soldiered on on THAT trip; but how many more trips of exposure to water until the connectors corrode?
In the headset, it'd be many trips - the switch has wiping contacts and is largely self-cleaning, the headset can be completely dismantled down to the last contact, contacts are screwed together rather than just glancing strips of brass. The race-pack connectors on my battery packs get damp on many trips, but don't seem to have a corrosion problem despite my never getting round to greasing them (until just now). Opening the box after a trip for the hour or so it takes to charge (and effectively dry) a battery pack seems to be enough to dry things out.