Yes, I ordered one of each set in the beginning when the codes were first sent out; that is to say I made two separate orders, within minutes of each other, on January 23rd.
On the 2nd of February, they BOTH arrived at my regional USPS distribution. The SS/Cu set was delivered to my door on the 3rd, whereas the aluminum set showed up yesterday without any updates in tracking. In fact, the tracking went completely dark by stating that it was no longer a valid tracking number.
Everything was intact with the bag. It wasn’t opened by customs- near as I could tell- and the label was completely legible. Why the bag was MIA for three weeks is a bit of a mystery.
I guess customs could have had it in their queue the whole time and maybe they x-rayed it of something else that doesn’t require it being opted up and visually inspected by a human.
In any event, I wouldn’t get too worked up over it. The vast majority of the time the package shows up eventually.
I think, i unintentionally found a weak spot of the X5!
After some longer runtime on higher levels the front glass has cracked!
I found it is very very thin, about 0,5 mm and now i have a problem finding a matching replace glass with AR coating. The 28 mm AR glasses from hank (intl-outdoor) do not fit (too large diameter), but the uncoated extremely cheap 27 mm glasses from dx.com do fit. Unfortunately these glasses are ~1 mm thick and i cant screw the Bezel completely on.
Is there any way to get an original replace glass from Manker or someone else? Please help! :(( :(( :-((
That’s bad, I just checked my copies and the glass is indeed very thin, I’d even dare say not suitable for flashlight use, let go for a flashlight that is further as well-designed as the X5.
I can not think of an easy way to fit a thicker glass with at the same time fully screwing down the bezel
Edit: there is one way to do it without screwing up the focus, but it is a pain (but I’ve done that before to win space): in my two X5 flashlights there is a mm room to screw in the reflector a bit deeper. If you sand down the Noctigon that amount thinner you have won a mm.
Yeah, I started looking for a replacement lens for my AlKX5 too, when I noticed that the antireflection coat on it is only half there.
I guess someone made some other part a half millimeter too long or too thick, and they swapped in and poorly coated the thin ones.
It’s not the only time I’ve seen this; years back I had Streamlight incandescent lights that would melt the center of their plastic lenses if used for too long.
Streamlight sent free replacements, though.
I don’t dare to disassemble the X5 that far and thereby most probably ruining the LED and the Noctigon. I think, i bite the bullet and stay with the cheap dx-glass for now. The remaining gap just looks like a further cooling fin and the O-ring is completely covered, thus the light is watertight.
Although i share your opinion, that the used glass quality is not suitable for this class of flashlight… :-/
The X5 samples actually used a different lens/o-ring/reflector setup than the production models. It was previously a floating reflector, and instead of an O-ring there was an L-ring which the glass was supposed to drop into. It was a pretty finicky design and somewhat difficult to put back together with anything resembling a seal or even a centered reflector.
I just opened mine to check the glass thickness, and now it’s going to take a while to get it back together properly. Oops.
