Sculpted EverLED

Well the story goes like this...

I carelessly left my Everled bulb exposed on the coffee table the other day. Along comes my parrot who takes an interest in the cone-shaped artifact mounted on top of the LED dome. By the time I intervene it has a few notches taken out of it.

I can't fix it but I can't leave it like that either so I decide to remove the entire cone very carefully with a scalpel.

I thought it would turn into a normal high-dome but now I'm not sure. It still seems to emit most of its light to the side so there must be an internal difference as well. I still get a good focused throw from my 2C Mag. But there is now noticeably more spill light which is not a bad thing.

Overall, I'm happy with the result but I wouldn't recommend someone deliberately try it as a project. Maybe this post belongs in "Homemade and Modified Lights" forum.

A side emitter looks to me like a low dome, with an inverted cone.
I'm not surprised that it still performs well.

Hey, give that bird a cigar!

As I understand it, photons are generated in fairly think area. There is no control of direction, they go out radially in three dimensions. Right off, half go the wrong way, and because the surface isn't absolutely flat, a goodly number of those that start out life more or less up don't make it out either (it's a quantum thing, remember). While efforts are made to minimize their effect there also has to be a layer or layers of material grown on top for conduction of the electrons through the device, this reduces and scatters the light that makes it that far.

This means the light output is basically an inverted cone from the die, with ill defined edges. There are also cones (lower in intensity, but useful) out the sides and ends, and designers take advantage of this by mounting the dies of small LEDs in shallow dishes, rather than flat, anvils.

What happens after That to the optic path......

But for sure something's bending it that way, it starts out cone shaped and more or less up. That which does come out the sides is lame by comparison and in four directions, not any sort of continuous ring. Or so I understand.

Doug Owen