Who really "bins" Luxeons ?

JohnK

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Who really \"bins\" Luxeons ?

This is a little like a diamond salesman saying his diamond is a "D" color, VVS-1 clarity, etc., and is worth $ XXXX dollars per caret/luxeon. If the seller is "grading" the stones (luxeons), who is in charge here ? Hmmmmm....

Comments ?

I know durn well that a lot of people DESIRE a very high binned Lux, and are willing to pay BIG bucks for the item. (me too) Basically, who's minding the store ?

Are there any "independents" grading Luxeons ?
I think a lot of people want to know..............

Or they should be........
 

tvodrd

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Re: Who really

It seems that the "binning" should be completely, electronically automated. Small character ink jet printers have the capability of being automated to other test equipment (for luminosity, color, and Vf.) The fact their binning seems to be so frequently innacurate bothers me. It is unusual for a Japanese company! They generally take quality and continuous improvement to the extreme!

Larry
 

NightStorm

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Between a rock & a hard place.
Re: Who really

[ QUOTE ]
tvodrd said:
It seems that the "binning" should be completely, electronically automated. Small character ink jet printers have the capability of being automated to other test equipment (for luminosity, color, and Vf.) The fact their binning seems to be so frequently innacurate bothers me. It is unusual for a Japanese company! They generally take quality and continuous improvement to the extreme!

Larry

[/ QUOTE ]

Japanese company? Lumileds is a joint venture between Agilent Technologies (a Hewlett-Packard spin off) of Palo Alto, California and Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., a company with its headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. As far as the variance in the color binning is concerned, please remember that the creation of white LEDs is a fairly new technology and it is going to take some time to get the bugs worked out. Maybe if Lumileds tested each and every emitter (I'm sure that they only test a given number out of a batch), this variance would decrease but that wouldn't be cost effective. When you consider that the incandescent bulb has been with us for over a hundred years and manufactures still can't get the filament centered in the envelope, I think that Lumileds is doing a pretty good job so far. Well, that's enough for now. Later.

Dan
 

Doug Owen

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Jan 30, 2003
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Re: Who really

I think I've said this before, so at the risk of repeating myself.......

I work with a very sharp Material Scientist who has a CRADA (joint research project) with Lumileds specifically addressing production concerns and improvements. You need to understand that we are *not* their targeted customer base. They want to build large arrays (for big bucks). This means they *need* very good matching, both in light output and especially color. The human eye is very sensitive to slight mismatches in color. Ever notice how you can instantly spot the off color fluorescent light in a large factory with hundreds? Big issue for them.

No need to 'keep an eye on them' they're quite self policing in this respect. And they have very high standards and are paying serious money to improve them further.

At least that was the story last week when we last discussed the issue. FWIW, the 'smart money' sees the bulk of LED lighting in the future as being OLEDs, not the single crystal ones like Luxeons.

Doug Owen
 
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