Lighting, Light Fixtures, Ceiling and Exhaust Fans - Ball, er, cylinder joint from Home Depot won’t stay tight

Over a year ago I purchased a clamp light from Home Depot. For an idea of what kind of light I’m talking about, plus pics of two parts I’ll be mentioning in a moment, please click http://www.flickr.com/photos/29847745@N05/. On the box are the words “Ball Joint for Easy Positioning.” I have included pictures of the “ball” part of the joint, and the “socket” part (two pieces that tighten with a wingnut). The socket does, in fact, look like it’s made to receive a ball. As you can see, the “ball” part, however, is not a ball, but a cylinder. It’s a square-peg-round-hole situation, and I have been unable to get the light to stay stable in any position but the obvious, pretty much useless ones (cylinder axis parallel to socket plane—and that’s not really very stable either), since in any other positions the cylinder, unlike with a ball, has almost no grippy contact with the socket. I always ended up with a droopy light. I cut deeper ridges into the socket, unsuccessfully trying to get it to grip tighter and maybe work; It wasn’t in new condition after that, so I couldn’t return it to the store anymore. I used it for a while with an extra clamp over the socket to apply more pressure, then put it away, not bringing it out again until recently.

Before I go on, can anybody think of something obvious that I’m missing here? Is there some way to use this thing that any two year old would instinctively know, but I’m too thick to understand? If not, my best guess as to what happened is that the company put the box together out of two different attachment systems and never actually tried the end result out. But it’s a year later and they’re still selling the things, so I don’t get it. Does everyone who buys one end up hiding it in a workroom corner?

A year ago I wrote Home Depot’s national customer service, figuring I was doing them a favor by pointing this out. Never heard back. I wrote again and never heard back. Then I did the same more recently (including the pictures)—it’s kind of a pet project at this point--and got a call back. It took me the longest time to get the person to understand that I wasn’t complaining about a manufacturing defect in the particular item I bought, that I’d checked the contents of other boxes, and my issue was with the design of the product itself. She wanted me to take it up with Commercial Electric, the manufacturer. Except that she didn’t have the number on hand to give me. And in any case, I figured that Home Depot should check it out themselves, since they are, no doubt, selling the product all over the country. I suggested that she just go and take a box off the pallet, and see whether she could get it to work stably. She expressed doubt that she was technically skilled enough to do so. I said I had faith that it was within her skill set, but that in any case surely Home Depot has *somebody* who has what it takes to give it a shot. But no, she wouldn’t do that, and even offered up the lame excuse that if they couldn’t get it to work they wouldn’t know whether the problem was with an individual item or the design. (I figure the answer to that is that, if you open every box on the pallet and can’t get one light to hold tight, it’s probably the design.) In the end, she said she’d pass it on. I asked if anyone would get back to me once they looked into it. She said no.

I guess that what I’m going to do—aside from not use Home Depot from now on—is try grinding the cylinder down a bit, and also add some of that plumber’s putty that hardens like a rock (I can’t remember what it’s called, but I love the stuff), to get it to approximate a ball in shape. Any better ideas?

How about just putting a couple of internal star lock washers on each side of the cylinder area?

Hey, just looked at my 2 5" spring clamp lights. Same kind of socket connection. Mine lock down fine. Looking at them closely I can see if they were twisted around a lot w/o loosening the wingnut first, they might loosen, but no problems so far on one thats at least 3-4 yrs old. I do remember having problems like you describe on a larger 8" like you have, and that did have a true knurled ball and serrated socket. That one was just worn out though, prob 10 yrs old. Finally donated it to Habitat.

And in the Service person's defense, she's working in a cube farm somewhere. She isn't in any sort of store. She probably would have given you one for free if you had asked.

You did a good thing by trying to bring it to their attention, but the manufacturer probably saves $0.0005 per unit doing it this way, and they're in China anyway.

I've had that exact same problem. I'm glad you're pointing it out to the manufacturer. Definitely is a design flaw. :)