How long before LED flashlights will be completely superior to the SureFire M6?

Pardon me for I am no expert on the topic... Do you get the impression that LED development is slowing?

I've read that the new K2 LEDs are capable of being brighter and more heat tolerant than Luxeon 3 LEDs. However, I also read that they require more energy to put out the same light as a conventionally driven Luxeon 3. So brighter but less efficient at lower output levels.

I also recall someone saying previously that the Luxeon 5 is basically four Luxeon 3 LEDs put together and that heat is starting to be the limiting factor for high light output. Many of the better LED lights today require built-in thermal protection to avoid permanent heat damage.

Then not that long ago there was the lumileds 100W led which (IMHO), judging from the pictures only, didn't look to any more impressive than a 100W incandescent in output. Not sure about runtime though so I'm not very confident in my findings.

After hearing about all this, are you getting roughly the same basic impression that I'm getting?
-That newer LEDs being released are not really a higher level of technology but just different variations of the same level of technology? In other words, that newer LEDs are unlikely to provide higher output at lower energy levels, in a smaller size and with a longer service life? That there has to be a trade-off in one area to improve performance in another? If yes, then what performance ceiling do you think they'll reach?

However, if you don't get this same feeling as me (if you think LEDs are still advancing as fast as ever), then how long do you think it'll be before an LED light will reach SureFire M6 levels of performance?

That means:
1. 500 lumens minimum output
2. 40 minutes of runtime on a small lithium-ion battery pack
3. LED emitter area same size as MN21 bulb or smaller (for easy beam focusing) unlike fluoroscent light sources.
4. Therefore able to offer the same throw or more, using a similarly sized reflector or smaller.
5. Cost less than US$400 to US$1000 RRP per flashlight (is not rediculously difficult to produce a decent quantity at consistant quality)

Again, lighting technology is not a forte of mine so I'd just like to hear what the general impression is. Would love it if the more technical people could chime in.

Re: How quicly are LEDs advancing? (Please read post before voting)

Oh dear... 128 views and only 12 votes. What am I doing wrong? Did I type too much in my post? Should I simplify myself?

:candle: :thinking: :help: :mecry: :shrug: :sick2: :sigh: :green: :shakehead

Re: How quicly are LEDs advancing? (Please read post before voting)

Well, for one, some of us have no M6 so we can't compare. The title of this thread doesn't mention the M6 so I read it. If the title said what the poll question said, I wouldn't have read it.

Re: How quicly are LEDs advancing? (Please read post before voting)



I forgot... I'm sorry... With all the action happening with the new M6 rechargeable pack and other threads related to the M6, I guess I wrongly assumed that quite a number of forums members have owned or have seen an M6 in action.

Oh well... So I guess this poll won't have a survey pool of a hundred members or more. Really sorry... I don't mean to be elitist or anything to that effect.

However, I can't think of any alternative flashlight currently in production which would be a good standard for LED technology to be judged by.

Re: How quicly are LEDs advancing? (Please read post before voting)

some led making company is claiming they have design the best led at 113lumen/watt. if i can remember, it should be nichia! something about making the led die surface uhh,texturised to prevent internal reflection for more light to come out and not reflected away.

Hmm... I'm not sure but that might be a figure achieved under ideal conditions where the LED has to be kept unreaslistically cool. I've heard of such LEDs before. Got a link to the info or when it was released?

A Surefire M6 puts out something like 500 lumens? From reading your post, you are implying ONE LED to put out 500 lumens so that slows things down a bit. Back in 2003, a LuxeonV X bin put out over 200 lumens setting a standard that no company has exceeded yet. If you told CPF that three years later the X bin is still the brightest LED out there... we would of laughed at you!

Now look at computer CPUs, they have also stalled over the last 2 years. The Intel Pentium4 was running 3.8GHz back in 2004... and still is! There is a limit to how hot electronics can run and still get acceptable performance per watt. The P4 was such a bad processor when heat was calculated in that it is the CPU that changed Intel's direction. Multiple cores are moving in so performance can move up without eating over 120 watts of power and cooking the electronics.

Back to LEDs The K2 Luxeon is very pivotal at this point. Is Lumileds creating a "Pentium4" type LED? Maximum performance and power consumption be damned? Surely they can't be that stupid but the "WOW" factor must be factored in. My hope is Lumileds goes for lumens per watt and does so with multiple emitters on one die (LuxeonV type) the larger surface area will allow the ability to shed heat better so it will survive.

I can't see why Lumileds can run a K2 at 4.2 volts and 1.5 amps and get 20,000 hours of life out of a single emitter LED running over 6 watts and can't do the LuxeonV correctly. Give me a K2 version of the LuxeonV running at 6 volts and 1 amp for the same heat output (or less) than the K2! Figure a high binned (V bin) K2 at 500mA will be around 90 lumens on average. That would equal 360 lumens while running 6 watts if the vF is S (YWOS ??) Remember the emitters are series-parallel so running the K2-V at one amp would be 500mA for each emitter.

SSC and Nichia have announced some LEDs that hit around 100 lumens per watt but when will they be available? I won't hold my breath.

There are other implications, other than sheer lumens output, when we want to "totally" replace the incandescend M6.

The first is the focusability of the point source of light, which requires a small volume of semiconductor to emit more photons. New technologies will eventually allow this.

The second is the spectral unevenness of white LEDs (phospor capped InGaN), that produces the well known effects of "light washing" in presence of other sources of light, and the lack of distant 3D recognition.
To solve the spectral unevenness problem, a further work on phosphors composition, or development of axial RGB LEDs, will be required.

I voted the 6 year option, but personally I feel it may take more.

Anthony

probably never...

I would probably also say never. LEDs have their uses, but large, high throw applications are better suited to the incandescent or HID. If anything, the M6 will be replaced by some form of instant on HID.

I believe that LEDs will hit a wall. I mean, at the moment they are only getting larger outputs by adding more dies into a package. LEDs still have problems with throw. Also, as I have noted many times before, the colour rendition of a white LED outdoors is no where near as good as that of an incandescent or HID light.

My bet is that LEDs (for serious illumination) will be supersceded by another technology before they reach the lighting levels of an M6.

Just my 2cents.

May be some of you can recall of a similar question in the sixthy, when only vacuum tubes and germanium transistors where in the arena.
The question was "Can the transistor replace the tube?".
Eventually, it did. Even when in the late '70 we had tubes, called "nuvistor", that were the size of a transistor.
Today, we use vacuum tubes for Megawatt RF transmitters and old fashioned radars, not else.
The way it is NOW, LED CANNOT replace incandescent for throw and color rendition, but things may change. Blue LEDs dates back to 1992, when a system to produce P-doped gallium was invented. There is a lot of room for improvement, in the fields of solid-state physics and materiel technology, to develop a white LED with continous spectral coverage and high efficiency. Never say never.

At the other end, incandescent technology can only improve "so much", in the sense that only if somebody discovers a material that melts above 4500 °K can produce a real improvement... and this is very unlikely.
It is more likely to see improvements in the LED and HID technology.

Aside this theoretical discussion, I am also convinced that the next release of the SF M6 will be HID based, and it could well be a descendent of the mini-Beast that we admired from the Shot-Show.
HID technology has never been fully exploited for miniaturization, and SF is likely to be the forerunner.

Anthony

Ray_of_Light said:

There are other implications, other than sheer lumens output, when we want to "totally" replace the incandescend M6.

The first is the focusability of the point source of light, which requires a small volume of semiconductor to emit more photons. New technologies will eventually allow this.

The second is the spectral unevenness of white LEDs (phospor capped InGaN), that produces the well known effects of "light washing" in presence of other sources of light, and the lack of distant 3D recognition.
To solve the spectral unevenness problem, a further work on phosphors composition, or development of axial RGB LEDs, will be required.

I voted the 6 year option, but personally I feel it may take more.

Anthony

Click to expand...

Yep... Actually the focusability of LEDs and a small emitter size was an important factor I was hoping people would consider when doing their voting.

I haven't voted yet though... I too think LEDs will hit a performance ceiling but I'm not sure where. If the law of diminishing-returns doesn't put a stop to LED development, then physics will. LEDs still seem rather "delicate" at the moment.

Flea Bag said:

Yep... Actually the focusability of LEDs and a small emitter size was an important factor I was hoping people would consider when doing their voting.

I haven't voted yet though... I too think LEDs will hit a performance ceiling but I'm not sure where. If the law of diminishing-returns doesn't put a stop to LED development, then physics will. LEDs still seem rather "delicate" at the moment.

Click to expand...

You have to consider that most of the LED technology is aimed at commercial, residential and automotive lighting and not flashlights. We get thrown the bones. The LuxV with the Mag reflector gives decent throw and great beam characteristics so don't count out larger emitters. Osram has their 420 lumen 6 emitter on one die LEDs out and although they are power hogs, it shows were LED lighting is heading. Hmmmm, six emitters could be replaced by two emitters of RGB to get the efficiency up there (way up there!) I can see Osram starting to sample RGB 6 core dies in a few years once they get all the wrinkles figured out with their latest LED.

With Osram, Lumileds, Nichia, Cree, SSC and others working on the big prize... I can see in 3 to 5 years Surefire will have some very interesting LED lights. For me, my Mag will be stuffed with the latest ??? LED and battery technology so I still won't need one.

Re: How quicly are LEDs advancing? (Please read post before voting)

Flea Bag said:

Oh dear... 128 views and only 12 votes. What am I doing wrong? Did I type too much in my post? Should I simplify myself?

:candle: :thinking: :help: :mecry: :shrug: :sick2: :sigh: :green: :shakehead

Click to expand...

Yes, you may want to simplify yourself.

There is nothing wrong with being a simpleton. Folks tend not to expect much
from you.

Thanks for the suggestion Babo, but I think dumping the old title of the thread has managed to get a decent number of votes in. I'm quite content with the input received since then.


BentHeadTX, I agree with you about flashlights getting the 'bones' which is why I doubt flashlights will get to the cutting edge before economics steps in. Future high-powered automotive LEDs probably won't have much concern for the small reflectors and the heat management problems existant in small hand-held flashlights like the M6.

Lots of cars have been using incandescent bulbs for years even though HID was always an option. Only recently has the HID trend in cars emerged so I also wonder if the primary motivation for LED development will be based on the requirements of the automotive industry or others.

Which industry offers the most financial incentive for the development of LED illumination technology?

Flea Bag said:

Which industry offers the most financial incentive for the development of LED illumination technology?

Click to expand...

I would think indoor lighting to replace flourescent bulbs would be the largest market by far. If they can keep the 100,000 hour lifetime and get the efficiency up to flourescent levels, it would make it attractive from a low mainenenance standpoint. The additional feature of no flickering makes it attactive also.

Don't we all have a pain in the @$$ bulb that takes a ladder and 3 hands to change? I would pay $100 for a LED RGB replacement to replace my PIA in the house.

I voted 3-5 years.

Before Cree, Nichia, Osram, Seoul Semi, and a number of other new players in the "power LED" market there was just Lumileds - and to a lesser extent, Nichia - sending press releases every few months about more-efficient white LEDs in the lab. 40, 50, 60, 75, 90 lm/W ... in the lab. Just a few years ago, 20 lm/W was pretty good from Luxeons ... now we have 60 lm/W parts on the market from Cree with better efficiency going into production, not just in the labs - and they just tested a model that got 73 lm/W at full drive current, in a fixture.

LumiLEDs may have hit a wall, but LED developments keep on coming from other fronts. White-light LEDs are also changing ... UV+white models are out there, ZnSe (no phosphor) has been released once (it needs some work), there are some new phosphors for the classic blue+yellow, and RGB models keep getting better.

I would say that LEDs are moving from having nearly eliminated the really low-output incans (think keychain lights), are seriously impinging on medium-output turf (think regular Maglites), and are gunning for higher-output ranges (ie the M6 that's the center of this thread). I've read that the "classic" blue+yellow phosphor LED could theoretically hit 200 lm/W with good manufacturing process, super-efficient die with quantum holes to reduce internal light loss, and the best phosphors. UV+white phosphor has even better potential in addition to more uniform spectrum.

Keep in mind that there is no end-all-be-all light source. I epxect LEDs to displace incan market share but I seriously doubt they'll completely replace the incan across the board. High-power incan can still do things that LED cannot; 35 lm/W is more light at 100W than 200 lm/W at 5W and electrically, it's far simpler and more robust.

lets wait until we can have some jedis in light making company. imagine a light saber

I've never bought or used an M6, but from my experiences there isn't really a way to compare LEDs to incans..

ex:
Incans: good for throw, cuts through rain and fog better than LEDs
but: too bright for closeup, a mixture of diffierent wavelengths of light, so for closeup work I preferrd the LED...

LEDs: moderately good thrower, lasts longer [My my case tested with DD lights] than incans, shockproof, shatterproof.:naughty:
but: lights too limited to reach a wide area of applications...[5mm good for close up, anywhere after a good 2-3 arm lengths and the lights useless, Luxeons are good for intermediate distance illumination, but too bright for closeup, even lux Is]


It only depends on what type of application the light is used in to determine whether LEDs are superior to incans or vice versa
:huh:
but for sheer brightness, I don't think LEDs can truly compare to incans in this lifetime...
[Well, not single die anyway]

constructive criticisms needed, ty

THe M6 isn't your standard "500lumen" light. It puts out a great deal more than that. That MN21 is a stout bulb. Driven from two li-ions, it will registers more on a ceiling bounce than a Mag85 running off of 8cells. I'd venture it is closer to 600-700lumens ---out the front---.


That will take a special LED, but it will happen. However, I think that optical technology will allow this to occur faster than the rest here. With the correct optical setup, multidie emitters or even multiple emitters will appear as one, thus making the task an option today. Just look at the new LED lexus headlights. It is coming very soon