is cree the only guy in town?

wa5ngp · Nov 7, 2012

newbie here. sifting thru all the data. It seems like Cree is the only guy in town making high power individual LEDs suitable for throwers. Everything seems to be an XML something. All others are just bunches of 3W leds mounted on a PCBoard.

Tell me I'm wrong someone with a pointer to list of competitors.

don

cyclesport · Nov 7, 2012

wa5ngp said:
newbie here. sifting thru all the data. It seems like Cree is the only guy in town making high power individual LEDs suitable for throwers. Everything seems to be an XML something. All others are just bunches of 3W leds mounted on a PCBoard.

Tell me I'm wrong someone with a pointer to list of competitors.

don

Couple of good places to start...

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...sed-LED-Emitter-Index&highlight=led+evolution

http://www.gearcarrot.com/guides/lights/?p=toc

Gunner12 · Nov 7, 2012

Cree's LEDs are one of the most common ones. but far from the only one. Other LEDs used in lights are the Osram Golden Dragon, Luxeon Rebel, Seoul P4, and Nichia 219 series.

Cree does seem to have the best lumen/watt though for their top end stuff.

AnAppleSnail · Nov 7, 2012

Who's making that round-die LED?

Anyway, LED manufacture is HARD. HHAAAAAARRRRRDDDDDDD. From the moment you've produced silicon wafers for the diode, the quality of that product determines your efficiency. Your efficiency determines rated current, heat load, and these directly relate to achievable surface brightness. After doing a "good enough" (With the upper limit being almost twice as efficient as 'standard,') Cree creates its brightness bins of blue dies. Many of these are used in white LEDs, the super-performers are studied to find out why they're so good. The white LEDs have exactly-right phosphors put on.

The phosphor blend is HARD. A wrong mix gives weird light output. An almost-right mix can act strange at high or low currents (Tint shift). Anything mixed wrong leads to thermally-unstable phosphor. Cree adds some magic mix of phosphors that they've chosen for output and acceptable color rendering.

The optics are HARD. And so on. Total internal refraction in the LED diode (Between the air, the little glass dome, the optical silicone, the phosphor layer, and the blue diode) account for at least 20% of the output of the diode*.

*This WAG brought to you by the XT-E enhancements

moozooh · Nov 7, 2012

Most of the high-power Luminus LEDs and Philips Lumileds Rebel Plus could make for very decent throwers, although they need different focusing setups. I'd actually love to see a hard-driven Rebel Plus behind an aspheric lens.

bose301s · Nov 7, 2012

AnAppleSnail said:
Who's making that round-die LED?

Anyway, LED manufacture is HARD. HHAAAAAARRRRRDDDDDDD. From the moment you've produced silicon wafers for the diode, the quality of that product determines your efficiency. Your efficiency determines rated current, heat load, and these directly relate to achievable surface brightness. After doing a "good enough" (With the upper limit being almost twice as efficient as 'standard,') Cree creates its brightness bins of blue dies. Many of these are used in white LEDs, the super-performers are studied to find out why they're so good. The white LEDs have exactly-right phosphors put on.

The phosphor blend is HARD. A wrong mix gives weird light output. An almost-right mix can act strange at high or low currents (Tint shift). Anything mixed wrong leads to thermally-unstable phosphor. Cree adds some magic mix of phosphors that they've chosen for output and acceptable color rendering.

The optics are HARD. And so on. Total internal refraction in the LED diode (Between the air, the little glass dome, the optical silicone, the phosphor layer, and the blue diode) account for at least 20% of the output of the diode*.

*This WAG brought to you by the XT-E enhancements

For white lighting LEDs and the Blue LEDs that are the underlying technology very very few use Silicon as a substrate, most use Sapphire, Cree uses SiC and Soraa uses Non-polar GaN. There ore some that do use Silicon but they aren't very competitive on the lm/watt standpoint.

wa5ngp · Nov 7, 2012

thanks for all the pointers. good reading. However, for the moment it does seem like Cree has a lock on it. They must be making lots of parts and spilling off their off bin stuff to the Chinese marketers, ebay, deal extreme etc. I would guess that the Chinese stuff is real Cree as trying to imitate/copy the design would be real hard. Too much magic sauce in it. Interesting technology, just enough customer demand for a a few players to make money.

I wonder if they have guys with pointy hats tweaking and stirring the vats?

bose301s · Nov 7, 2012

wa5ngp said:
thanks for all the pointers. good reading. However, for the moment it does seem like Cree has a lock on it. They must be making lots of parts and spilling off their off bin stuff to the Chinese marketers, ebay, deal extreme etc. I would guess that the Chinese stuff is real Cree as trying to imitate/copy the design would be real hard. Too much magic sauce in it. Interesting technology, just enough customer demand for a a few players to make money.

I wonder if they have guys with pointy hats tweaking and stirring the vats?

Nope, we just wear clean suits, lol.

RoGuE_StreaK · Nov 7, 2012

wa5ngp said:
I wonder if they have guys with pointy hats

Sorry, just had an image of Gandalf doing product testing; YOU SHALL NOT PASS! :laughing:

Gunner12 · Nov 8, 2012

Well, the LEDs are only a few bucks a piece. For example, the most expensive Cree LED (R2 bin XR-E surprisingly, 5000K tint) that is used in lights is ~$9 a piece for single units on mouser, and that price drops down to $6.50 a piece for larger orders (500 pieces). The cheapest Cree high power LED (XP-E Q4) is $1.70 per for individual quantities, and $1.25 for orders of 500.

If a big factory buys a few thousand, the individual prices would be even lower. Overall, the LED is probably a smaller part of the overall price then you think.

As a side note, I'd like to see some of the Cree ML-B used in lower power lights. The three that I have seems nice (4000K tint). Not the brightest (1/4 watt LED), but I like it.

wa5ngp · Nov 8, 2012

that's a good point gunner. I remember looking on digi key and thinking, gee if I only had 1000 friends that want this part too. So I guess those asian ebay flashlight sellers are just buying bulk and then using their small machine shops to do the rest.

I retired from the semi business and on the 300mm line there were no people at all, no bunny suits, nothing. Just robots running around. It made for a boring factory tour for the customers. More people involved in the packaging in the far east but by then all the complex stuff was over.

don

is cree the only guy in town?

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