I find myself constantly turing my AR mounted Surefire on and off quickly through the momentary switch...

My concern is how long these bulbs take to burn out? Specially when turned on and off quickly alot.

Thanks

Constantly flashing the lamp  will reduce it's running life.

I don't worry about my harsh use abusing the lamp.  I flash the lights all the time, and have had plenty more lamps fail from impacts (in non-shock-isolated mounts) than actually in use.
I just carry spare lamps and a spare hand-held lights. :)  In my experience, the lamp (~20USD)will outlast it's comparative cost in cells.

Hope that helps.

I am working from memory, but I am pretty sure my Surefire M500 paperwork said 25 hours is the expected life of a lamp.  A lot of momentary on's and off's will shorten the bulb life, but what the hell.  Keep a spare and don't worry about it.  Just don't shine it in your eyes, "playing with it" will make you go blind ya know!

Best to check out Surefires website or ask them directly - the lamps definitely have a relatively short life time, even when not abused or flickered.  That's one of the drawbacks to such an awesome lamp - shorter life, and $$$ to cause you have to buy the entire reflector assy (unless you got one of those cool LED heads)

Well, if the light is important ;), you should have a spare bulb--  at least one at home, if not with the rifle, and a backup hand-held light.

I find the lead times for getting SF parts to be too long, so I have spare lamps and cells.  The SF spares carriers are neat, tough, and relatively cheap.  They'll carry one lamp and six cells.

Dilbert_556 & AK_Mike:
Not so bad, roughly a dollar per hour of lamp life.  I doubt 25USD in cells will last as long as the lamp.

Mine lasted for 1 second on my 623FA model for my mossberg shotgun. Yep, one second! Brand new!! Not sure what happened there. It is my 3rd Surefire and the other 2 were flawless when I bought them. Tech support sending a replacement bulb but I went ahead and purchased another one off their website.