Xcandescent
Newly Enlightened
- Joined
- May 23, 2002
- Messages
- 60
So the term "collimator" comes up frequently with regards to the Luxeon Star -- obviously, because they sell units with them.
So ... um ... what exactly are they?
Do a search on "collimator" in your average search engine, and you'll likely come up with lots of links to telescope calibration and spectrographic measurement. As you might imagine, this is not helpful when trying to deduce why one would apply such a thing to an LED.
As far as I can tell from reading a few threads, they're just pieces of hard, transparent material that somehow spread the light output from an LED without noticeably reducing its brightness. (Right? Wrong? Help!)
If that's true, then I would certainly be interested in locating collimators for the 5mm Nichia white LEDs, as they might be very helpful in my current project. If not, well I'd still like to know how LED collimators work anyway, what materials are used, what goes into their design, etc.
-XCN-
So ... um ... what exactly are they?
Do a search on "collimator" in your average search engine, and you'll likely come up with lots of links to telescope calibration and spectrographic measurement. As you might imagine, this is not helpful when trying to deduce why one would apply such a thing to an LED.
As far as I can tell from reading a few threads, they're just pieces of hard, transparent material that somehow spread the light output from an LED without noticeably reducing its brightness. (Right? Wrong? Help!)
If that's true, then I would certainly be interested in locating collimators for the 5mm Nichia white LEDs, as they might be very helpful in my current project. If not, well I'd still like to know how LED collimators work anyway, what materials are used, what goes into their design, etc.
-XCN-