Think about it Jack. Make a flashlight from scratch. I have. You have a reflector to work with the emitter. You have a tubular shaped cell to power it. The parameters cause the design to be locked in, only so much you can do even if you’ve never seen a flashlight before in your life! The human hand only has just so much variance, any tool designed to fit the hand, well, it’s gotta be similar or it won’t be comfortable, won’t work, won’t sell.
Somehow, there have been a lot of variations on the same basic theme for quite a while now. BUT, Kronological brought the right people together to make key contributions and up the ante on the game. Sure, the X6 is a known body and it works. Why not use the style? He helped Eagle Eye sell a couple of thousand of em. Improve on it, thread the reflector, tweak every parameter, essentially creating a new light from the old shell. New driver style, lighted tail cap, AR coated lens of better quality. What’s wrong with calling the group by a brand name?
Isn’t that how it works the world over? All cars have 4 wheels and a steering wheel, the brakes are essentially the same across the globe, can’t re-design the wheel now can we?
So the branding represents a group of people that are held to a higher standard. Reaching for the best, creating it where it didn’t exist before. That’s worthy of some specialization, don’t you think?
Wait a minute! I’m sounding like I’m on a payroll somewhere! Dangit! Where’s my check? lol Oh, right, got me a few pretty cool little flashlights don’t I?
Seriously though, the idea of branding it is to let people know that this group of people is behind it. Striving for perfection, breaking the boundaries. You see the name KRONOS, you know it’s cutting edge.
Branding is pseudo-science and commercial art. For many products, the brand has become everything (ahem, Surefire, Apple, … cough cough) to their customers. In many cases, the product once fought an uphill battle promoting the brand, to become the best of its kind, the top of its class, but once that happens, often enough, subsequently, the decadence of success allows the opposite may start to happen where the brand props up the product beyond its worthiness. I hope the quote from McGizmo concerning his own branding was not missed and is not lost.
not 0%, but not a lot either. I gained ~30 lumens with a spring bypass in the tail of the X5.
But, I gained the knowledge that those 2 springs aren’t going to go rainbow colored and flat anytime soon as well.
Fresh charged Efest Purple IMR14500, using the top rail from a panel of SinkPAD stars to cross the tube to the cell I see 1442.1 lumens.
So there’s a loss of ~55 lumens with the tail cap on the light. This is rhetorical as it’s almost impossible to get exact same numbers with multiple tests.
Going out on a limb, I’m betting he meant to say there were 72 boxed sets of Aluminum lights, 11 boxed sets of SS/Cu that hadn’t been ordered yet from the reserved list. Not everyone on the reserved SS/Cu list got the wooden boxes.
72 would have been about right for the Aluminum sets, that’s the only way I can make sense of it.
Got my 2 sets today and I have been playing around with the new configuration options and basking in the beauty of these lights. I have probably said it already but thanks for putting this group buy together. The design, the innovation, the value and the shear beauty. Not one complaint about the lights.
The included boxes are beautiful, but mine were not packaged as well as Dale's. It was in a white box, then wrapped in white, sheet foam around 4 sides leaving the left and right sides open. This left the corners exposed and vulnerable during shipment. The two boxes were then wrapped in one DHL plastic envelope then sealed in another plastic envelope. 2 corners on one box and one corner on the other box were banged up. Damage is very visible but the box is still solid. It is an $11 box which still functions in housing my beautiful lights so not an issue for me.
Thanks again. Kronos consumer for life, anxiously waiting for the next best thing.
Dale i agree with you in many parts here one thing if it would be the other way around and a chinese company had taken a design lets say from maglite and make exact what you said ne driver emitter lighted switch and so on
what would have maglite said with good right too ??? FAUL
apple would have sued them to death and steve job would have claimed he is the owner of the patent for flashlights since fire was invented (he was the one he protected round corners on the iphone. the next planned patent would have been the warm water)
this was not redesign of the wheel this was putting a new logo on a chevrolet and give it an open source engine and new tail lights and give it another tiny light which the car didnt have before.
illuminated switches exist long ago also in flash lights see the round osram light this has the light under the switch since years.
you see the name kronos more then the BLF which was behinfd it without group no groubuy and not kronos light
you see the brand kronos and might think oh i saw that before with a different brand but you wont have ever a cutting edge feel with a borrowed design you wont be unique you wont be outstanding. no question abotu the light its a good light but it is what it is an existing body with a new driver and new led with tail light like the A6 a great light the group was the paying beta tester and the astrolux is the finished product for almost the same price as the GB was.
in my opinion this lights a6 and this 2 are stand and fall with the driver design and software. but that just my opinion.
as the emitter every one with very basic skills and tools can change but to design the board like wight and write the code like toykeeper is a very different skill.
dale one thing personal are you the one who made this titanium light with the twist switch ?? you said once something of a vegas driver so i thiought its might be you. sorry if i am wrong
I had a bad code also. I chatted with their live help that's available on their website and described the problem. They then told me to send an email describing the problem. I did that and included a copy of the chat transcript.. The next day I got a reply asking for a screenshot of the error message I was getting, so sent that right away. The next day got another email from them asking for a screenshot of the problem again.
So I complied with that, BUT, I was getting frustrated, so I also typed out a request that said: THE CODE WAS ISSUED JUST TO ME. IT HAS NOT BEEN USED BY ME OR ANYONE ELSE. CAN YOU PLEASE EITHER FIX THE CODE, OR ISSUE A REPLACEMENT CODE SO I CAN BUY YOUR PRODUCT?
6 1/2 hours later they sent me a replacement code that worked fine.
