Wicked Lasers Arctic Dissected

plexus said:

Is this being called a POS because of the build quality or the fact that this particular Arctic died? If the former, I am not seeing anything in the pics that is demonstrating crappy design or build quality. If so, can you elaborate as to why this is a POS in general. If its the former, there will always be products that fail. My two arctics are running fine and one is outputting >1W CW (the other is 800-950mW CW). They seems to be well designed and assembled.

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lol

Just search around, you shall see why. The fact that it is practically all held together by thermal paste doesn't do much for it.

Pontiacg5 said:

lol

Just search around, you shall see why. The fact that it is practically all held together by thermal paste doesn't do much for it.

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huh? its held together by thermal paste? from the reviews and the pics people have posted it looks like there is a lot of thermal grease around the heat sink. That makes it a POS is your books? odd.

So, if anyone else has any specific reasons why the Arctic is a POS it would be good to know rather than just saying so and not having anything to back that up. Its a POS because...?

plexus said:

huh? its held together by thermal paste? from the reviews and the pics people have posted it looks like there is a lot of thermal grease around the heat sink. That makes it a POS is your books? odd.

So, if anyone else has any specific reasons why the Arctic is a POS it would be good to know rather than just saying so and not having anything to back that up. Its a POS because...?

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If you actually have read anything on here you would know

plexus said:

huh? its held together by thermal paste? from the reviews and the pics people have posted it looks like there is a lot of thermal grease around the heat sink. That makes it a POS is your books? odd.

So, if anyone else has any specific reasons why the Arctic is a POS it would be good to know rather than just saying so and not having anything to back that up. Its a POS because...?

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Your intelligence shows, and it explains a lot.

I shall waste no more time trying to explain it to you. Steve could lay a massive log in his toilet, mail it to you and you would cherish it.

Edit: oh wait, he already did!

Pontiacg5 said:

Your intelligence shows, and it explains a lot.

I shall waste no more time trying to explain it to you. Steve could lay a massive log in his toilet, mail it to you and you would cherish it.

Edit: oh wait, he already did!

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that's fine. if you have no actual real information to back up these claims, we'll just have to take that into account.

other Arctic owners, if you have specific info/pics demonstrating build quality either good or bad it would be great to see. i may try and disassemble one of my arctics and show how these things are put together.

plexus said:

that's fine. if you have no actual real information to back up these claims, we'll just have to take that into account.

other Arctic owners, if you have specific info/pics demonstrating build quality either good or bad it would be great to see. i may try and disassemble one of my arctics and show how these things are put together.

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I think, of the things only in this thread, it's a combination of one of the boards cracking in half so easily and the driver having jumpers and odd bits of wire strewn about. It looks like they didn't bother to design one that works at this power level so they hacked an older one to do the job. Also, I think I see burn marks on the driver board, but I'm not all too experienced with it.

The rest is probably the PR disaster, the very underpowered safety goggles, the historical low quality and high incidence of defect. There's abnormally large numbers of failed diodes and underrated diodes that it bothers people. The thermal paste is a problem as it appears that it wasn't designed to take the heat right so they slapped on thermal paste. Thermal paste gets less and less useful the thicker it is. There's probably other things, but this is what I've read.

niloc said:

I think, of the things only in this thread, it's a combination of one of the boards cracking in half so easily and the driver having jumpers and odd bits of wire strewn about. It looks like they didn't bother to design one that works at this power level so they hacked an older one to do the job. Also, I think I see burn marks on the driver board, but I'm not all too experienced with it.

The rest is probably the PR disaster, the very underpowered safety goggles, the historical low quality and high incidence of defect. There's abnormally large numbers of failed diodes and underrated diodes that it bothers people. The thermal paste is a problem as it appears that it wasn't designed to take the heat right so they slapped on thermal paste. Thermal paste gets less and less useful the thicker it is. There's probably other things, but this is what I've read.

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As long as the heat from the LD is being dissipated appropriately and none of the components of the driver are being pushed beyond spec, the rest is mechanical design. I am going to try and get my arctic apart and measure the temp at the diode and examine the heatsink. its possible they just put tons of thermal grease in there because they were being lazy. but i'll take a look and take some measurements.

I'd like to find a way to get at the driver board without having to disassemble it the way you did. it might not be possible. And as for the jumper on the driver board, that is not an issue - as long as the driver is being operated within operating tolerances. afterall, to set C output on other drivers (eg. drlava's flex and boost) jumpers need to be set.

plexus said:

that's fine. if you have no actual real information to back up these claims, we'll just have to take that into account.

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Looking around the forum I've counted 5 that died, and thats just from people here. How many in the open market died too? The thing is a POS. Just because yours runs good (for now) doesn't mean they dont suck.

TheGr8Revealing said:

My plan now is to machine a custom aixiz module heat sink adapter with correct nominal threads that I can simply screw it into the host. With how far the threads descend into the body of the host, it will leave a significant amount of room for the corrective optics I have plans for.

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Any chance that you may provide these for other Arctic owners?

I got mine today and my main gripe is the power output and the initial beam diameter. It hasn't died yet, but I did just straight up use an AW2600 instead of the battery that came with it. I figure that the beam diameter is probably just the size of the diode die. Are you planning to decrease the beam diameter with these "corrective optics"?

I got the Arctic today and it was worse than expected. Its about 6 or 7 pressed together parts.

I'm thinking ill just redo everything. There is no reason everything has to be a press fit. I'm also going to replace the battery lights with a push clicky switch. I'm also going to make a press in diode mount with room for corrective optics.

Ill make this thing the way it should have been made. Whoever designed this host is seriously retarded. Its like a kid just went to the Lego box and slapped something together without planning any functionality at all.

Ill be posting some renderings of my take of the arctic soon.

I did just, however, refocus the arctic lens for cutting and set a piece of paper on fire. Yay.

The glasses suck too. My unfashionable cheapo red goggles almost completely block out this and 532nm.

Re: use of firearm rail mounts

Sorry don't mean to hijack the thread but AJ_Dual stated "UTG is generally "cheap of cheap" in firearms circles". I don't know what firearms "experts" you are listening to but lest you mislead people on this forum I think you or anyone interested should go to the Leapers, Inc website and check them out.

Their UTG manufacturing plant is state of the art and turns out extremely high quality firearm parts and accessories and is held in very high regard by both military and law enforcement. Their Airsoft guns are some of the best on the market because they are of such high quality, and the only items they make for use in paintball are gear bags and duty vests.

Again sorry to go off topic but the posters comment was way off.

Re: use of firearm rail mounts

jsyco said:

Again sorry to go off topic but the posters comment was way off.

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That's what PMs are for. :beer:

A pm doesnt correct misinformation the same way posting in the thread does, though. Its sort of like apologizing in the men's room after insulting someone on a live tv broadcast.

Leapers UTG optics are decent, but not awesome. They are good value for the price, not top of the line, but not junk either. Their scope mount hardware is very good, and reasonably priced.

Dude, we are talking about lasers not guns. But thanks for you correction.

Tech_Junkie said:

Looking around the forum I've counted 5 that died, and thats just from people here. How many in the open market died too? The thing is a POS. Just because yours runs good (for now) doesn't mean they dont suck.

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Amazing!

By your own count you find 5 examples, and after reading those I notice that some, if not all, are not conclusive. The ones I read all had suggestions made by experienced members that hadn't been tried yet, or before the complaining OP's bungled attempts made sure things did break.

THAT is a brief yet objective take on the reports of failed Arctics so far.

I never cease to be amazed at how some people talk with such conviction and confidence on little more than... Nothing really.

So far, the only consistent and reliable point raised so far with reference to Arctics has been the batteries; some people have had dodgy ones, or a faulty charger in one case. Either way, nothing to do with the laser and its apparent quality of build.

Furthermore, EVERYTHING is only relevant when considered against price, and anyone who's had issues so far only paid $200 for it. With the $100 difference between that and the non-introductory price you could afford to send it back twice, which would be unlikely as in both cases, WL lose out.