Luminus SBT-70 Announced

mvyrmnd

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A flashlight specific LED? Very cool.

If they could package it like the SST-90 then it would be stunning for things like P60 modules!
 

Th232

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^That. While there're a lot more applications where space isn't such a concern, shrinking it down to the SST-90 package (SST-70 then?) would make it a lot more useable for flashlight manufacturers.
 

BobBarker

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This would fit well into the reflector for the XML... being that the XML has an approx diagonal dimension of 2.83mm vs the SBT-70's 3mm diameter. I wonder If this has about the same efficacy as the SST-90? This might be something that I'll have to look into for modding my V60C...
 

blasterman

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Phlatlight's are enormously popular in mid to high end entertainment and theatrical lighting packages because you can pack insane lumen levels in a relatively small, monolithic package. At present I'm not sure if anybody is even competiting with Phlatlight in this arena. Array type LEDs don't work well because they don't project a uniform surface density, and their larger size means a corresponding increase in the optical package.

Most of the applications above require a hard 'cut-off' for beam aethestics, and it's simple geometry that you waste a lot more area doing this with a square shaped illumination source -vs- a round one. Smart idea to produce a round emitter.

Let's hope we get a kick in the pants on the efficacy side.
 

yliu

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I remember when I posted a thread about why all high power LEDs are squared, now finally a rounded one!! which means....

...no more squared beams with aspheric lenses:devil: (sometimes I'm quite picky about these kind of stuff)

By the way, I couldn't find any specs on this chip... Is it made to compete with the XML? How is the efficiency and the output?
 
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TEEJ

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I remember when I posted a thread about why all high power LEDs are squared, now finally a rounded one!! which means....

...no more squared beams with aspheric lenses:devil: (sometimes I'm quite picky about these kind of stuff)

By the way, I couldn't find any specs on this chip... Is it made to compete with the XML? How is the efficiency and the output?

"Optical architectures of high power entertainment fixtures are frequently defined by a
circular aperture, so using a traditional square LED was like putting a square peg into a
round hole," said Don McDaniel, Global Marketing Director for Entertainment Lighting
at Luminus. "Our new round LED increases system-level efficiency by as much as 30%,
enabling our customers to use a single LED to replace a 250W HID lamp."



According to Luminus President and CEO Keith T.S. Ward, "We made a decision to
invest significantly in R&D and operational infrastructure to revolutionize LED lighting
– making the round LED concept a reality. The importance of this innovation can't be
overstated, and our customers are extremely excited."

Luminus Media Contact:
Lynette Rowe, Marketing
Communications Manager
978-528-8057
[email protected]

The company's first round LED product will be commercially available in Q3 this year.
Luminus is exhibiting in Hall 4.2, Stand G02 at Light + Building, April 15-20 at Messe
Frankfurt in Frankfurt, Germany, where its ground-breaking round Big Chip LEDs are on
display. In Europe, these will be available through EBV Elektronik. For more
information on how Luminus is enabling the conversion of today's conventional lighting
fixtures to LED, visit www.luminus.com.


Luminus has more than 144
patents/patents pending worldwide, and its revolutionary Big Chip LED™ technology
enables new markets for solid-state lighting. Headquarters and wafer fab manufacturing
facilities are located near Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.


(Above quotes are from Luminus site)
 
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jashhash

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In my opinion a big chip is always a bad idea. A chip that produces as much light as a 250W MH lamp (20,000 Lumens) would tend to overheat like crazy. It's much better to use many small wattage LED's and space them out to spread the heat out over a large surface. Also round chips might not be a good idea since a large chunk of the silicon substrate would be lost when cutting the die. Even if you could cool this chip effectively you couldn't charge more than $80 to stay competitive with the street lighting market. Since I'm in the business of LED street lighting I can honestly say that I am his customer and that I'm not excited. That being said, I do think this LED would be ideally suited for an intense flashlight mod where price is no object and you wouldn't operate the die at max brightness for more than a couple minutes.
 

kaichu dento

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In my opinion a big chip is always a bad idea. A chip that produces as much light as a 250W MH lamp (20,000 Lumens) would tend to overheat like crazy. It's much better to use many small wattage LED's and space them out to spread the heat out over a large surface. Also round chips might not be a good idea since a large chunk of the silicon substrate would be lost when cutting the die. Even if you could cool this chip effectively you couldn't charge more than $80 to stay competitive with the street lighting market. Since I'm in the business of LED street lighting I can honestly say that I am his customer and that I'm not excited. That being said, I do think this LED would be ideally suited for an intense flashlight mod where price is no object and you wouldn't operate the die at max brightness for more than a couple minutes.
This sounds like a great argument for showerhead lights! Why get an XR-E light when you can have dozens of 5mm cold blue emitters!
 

csshih

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This sounds like a great argument for showerhead lights! Why get an XR-E light when you can have dozens of 5mm cold blue emitters!

IMO the main argument against T1-3/4 "5mm" emitters is that they are epoxy packages without heatsinking.
Now, properly cooled arrays of SMT Power LEDs on the other hand... :)

Craig
 

bshanahan14rulz

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Now, now, all LEDs were made for a purpose, or several. I'm sure we can agree that a streetlamp application of this LED would be silly, as would using 5mm LEDs as a projection lamp.

I AM curious about what they do with the corners. Perhaps they go into lower priced "5mm" LEDs ;-)

Jashash is onto something when it comes to sheer power, but I think these LEDs are meant to be less about sheer power and more about optical control.

Cutting corners is an inefficiency. Either the manufacturer takes the hit by ending up with weird shaped scraps, or the end design (and therefore, the end user) does, by wasting lumens on lighting up the backside of an aperture. Good on them, plus, it's exciting and new.
 

Erik1213

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For those of you that don't want to zoom in a hundred times on a PDF for a high quality emitter picture:

9J8LM.jpg
 

blasterman

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In my opinion a big chip is always a bad idea.

See my comments above.

The main market for the Luminous chips is not streetlights nor general lighting applications, and flashlights are just a periphery application. It's mostly theatrical / effect lighting / technical lighting, or other specialized lighting applications where you want a single monolithic chip where you plan on dumping insane amounts of amperage through it and likely have active cooling. A small chip, preferably a round one allows you to use a very compact optical package and it will be very efficient. Luminous products are about the last ones I'd choose for streetlights or general lighting because their efficiency is typically not very good.

Martin lighting uses them in their high moving spots, along with Chauvet. The Chinese try to clone these lights, and instead use their 1watt based arrays, and the results are laughingly bad. The Intimidator 300s I have pictured below use a SST or CBT 90 driven at 60watts, and the results are signioficantly brighter than the 150watt discharge fixture on the right. The entire package including heatsink and optics is about the size of your hand. If you used an array based chip, aka Bridgelux, you could get the same lumens for about 40% less power, but your optics would be 4x the size and you'd be projecting a bunch of LED chips on the wall -vs- a smooth cone of light. The new chip would make this particualt light that much brighter, so it's a perfect application for what Luminous is doing.
6617884533_ac46b3af85_b.jpg
 

bose301s

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Very dumb design, will be expensive and hard to manufacture and will end up with a lot of unusable waste.
 

kaichu dento

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Good thing you know more than the manufacturer - maybe you can get a job with them and set them on the right path.

Naysayers - always in the way of progress.
 

Th232

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Very dumb design, will be expensive and hard to manufacture and will end up with a lot of unusable waste.

Please elaborate?

Given that they've got the CST-90 and CSM-360 in what is essentially the same type of package, I doubt they'd have continued to use it for this new chip if it was that dumb a design.
 

bshanahan14rulz

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