5W Luxeon Star(white) life?

Just came across the life of 5W Luxeon Star(white) is around 500 hours. Does Surefire L4,5,6 and Elektro Lumens Blaster V and VI using this LED?

I thought it was 50,000 /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif?

I've found two data sheets, one is call "Luxeons V Portable" and the other call "Luxeon 5
Watt Star" . What is the different ?

On luxeon homepage, 5W (white)only "Luxeons V Portable" is avaiable.

Can somebody help, I am totally confuses.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/help.gif

Here we go again. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Do some searches. It has been discussed practically to death. But to save you some time looking:

Any flashlight advertised as using a 5W white LS would be using one of those. 500hrs is the half-life of the LED, ie it will be half as bright as new when it has been run for 500hrs. Incandescent bulbs are rated for the time they burn out, not half-life.

Considering how much people want the latest, greatest, brightest white LED flashlight and the usage pattern of such bright lights (you'd be pushing to average 5hrs a week and think of the number of cells you would go through for just those 5hrs), and the fact that they find a mere 100hrs of incandescent bulb life as adequate, LED-modders thought that it would be acceptable to use the 500hr LS until such time that better LEDs become available.

All 5W mods I know of are made so that the LED can be swapped out without too much dram when the time comes; the one concession a good modder has to make when building 5W LS flashlights. I haven't opened a SF L4 or similar, but I understand that it is the same there.

5mm LEDs driven at nominal spec are expected to have a 100,000hr half life, though many are overdriven so expect a reduced half-life, maybe 50,000hrs. IIRC, the original half-life of 5W was advertised as 50,000hrs. This was quickly reduced to 5,000hrs then to 1,000hrs and finally to 500hrs when it was found that the heat was cooking it to death and they could not achieve the full rated life.

Roy123: I believe the 2 datasheet merely reflect the two available versions of the 5W LS, one being the bare die-on-slug, the other being the die-on-slug-on-aluminium heatsink. I'll need to check to be sure. Can you post links to the actual pages you are talking about?

[ QUOTE ]
Steelwolf said:
Any flashlight advertised as using a 5W white LS would be using one of those.

[/ QUOTE ]

One of those what? The Portable, or the Standard LS V?

The "portable" is merely a name for the white 5W (both star and emitter).

Only the white 5W has a lifetime rating of 500hrs. All of the green/blue 5Ws are rated for 50,000 hours. Therefore, it is easy to logically conclude that the shortened lifespan is related to the phosphor in the white.

For the Luxeon V Portable Datasheet:-

http://www.lumileds.com/luxeon/products/star_index.html

Search the link: "Luxeon V Portable Datasheet (DS40) "


For the Luxeon 5
Watt Star:-

http://elektrolumens.com/pdf_files/Luxeon_Star_5W_Specs.pdf

I found this data sheets on Elektro Lumens homepage, this data sheets state the life is up to 100K hours and is avaiable in WHITE.

That data sheet is outdated - it is dated 5/02. The latest (available on Lumileds website) is dated 10/02, and removes white from the list of colors with 100K hours lifetime.

Get the 5W star data sheet here (blues/greens):
http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/protected/DS30.PDF

and the 5W emitter data sheet here (blues/greens):
http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/protected/DS34.PDF

and the 5W white data sheet here (star and emitter):
http://www.lumileds.com/pdfs/protected/DS40.PDF

Thank you all of you.

So all 5W white LS flashlight on the market (manufactures and personal mod) only have around 500 hours of life, including Surefire? What will happen if my L4 burn out.

Welcome to CPF roy123!

My understanding is that Luxeons to do "burn out" - that is stop producinng light. If a SureFire Luxeon product stops working "burns out" then I believe it is covered by their "if it breaks, we'll fix it".

However, they exclude things "wearing out" for example - tape pressure pad switches and push button switches.
If after 500 hours of use your SureFire Luxeon is not as bright as it first was, you could talk to SureFire about this but my view is that nothing lasts forever, and 500 hours of use is a very long time - certainly worth the investment.
It is possible that the numbers of people using their SureFire Luxeon products for 500 hours or more within the first 2-5 years of purchase is very small - perhaps 0.01% of products sold. I don't think I've used any SureFire for more than 50-60 hours in one year and that was my EDC (A2).

Al

well when my sure fire L4 wears out I want a 10 watt LED to go back in it /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bowdown.gif

500 hours of use roughly equals 1000 batteries.

Gee, 1000 batteries times $1.25 each from Surefire, that's alot of money! Do you think your going to use it that much?

That is when I stopped worrying.

GregR

The "1000 used batteries" argument cannot be used in all cases. I'm not just shining the L4 at my walls to check the nice beam (well, sometimes I do /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/naughty.gif), but I go for a walk in the forest almost every night and use my L4 with Li-Ion rechargeables as my walking light. Lets say I take these trips 250 times a year so it'll give me about two years before the output has dropped to half the original. And what if I'm unsatisfied with half the output? Then I might be replacing the L4 after only one year. This is just to tell you that the 500 hour life span of the LED is not ridiculously long time for me.

I have actually rigged up a measurement device consisting of a photoresistor in a polystyrene box, to measure the relative loss in output over time. If it is of interest I might in a couple of months have some data to present regarding long time use of the stock KL4 and a KL1 R2K at 500 mA that CM modded for me. As I have the two options for my L4, it will take longer before any degradation is noticed, but I'll try to keep track of each heads use.

Jan

JanCPE-

Interesting, what rechargeable batteries are you using?

I wonder if Surefire would replace the Luxeon under warranty for you?

GregR

GregR,

I'm using a Pila 168s which gives me a runtime of approx. 55 minutes with KL4 and 2 hours with the KL1 mod.

It's an interesting question weather Surefire will replace the KL4 or not. I think I might have a chance if I lay out some documentation on the output degradation for them when the time comes, but who knows.

My measurements may not be generally useful though, because I walk when the light is on, thus air is circulating around the head. The result of this is that the head actually doesn't get hot at all. The KL4 gets lukewarm and the KL1 stays absolutely cool. Also keep in mind, that we have about 5 deg. C in Denmark at moment. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif

Jan

Since I owned the L4, I'm using it when hiking, cycling and war game activities. Roughly my L4 been used around 200 hours.

I am very doubtful Surefire would replace the Luxeon under warranty, remember "Lamp" is not including in the warranty.

Well, nothing last forever and I'm still love my L4 very much.

I think your chances of getting your flashlight

) Lost
) Stolen
) Loaned to a friend
) Misplaced

Long before the LED "wears out"

[ QUOTE ]
roy123 said:
...
I am very doubtful Surefire would replace the Luxeon under warranty, remember "Lamp" is not including in the warranty.
...


[/ QUOTE ]

However it seems like the LED could be considered an integral part of the flashlight head, so I wonder if that would make a difference (the LED is not considered user replaceable).

Erik.

I asked this before and most people think that 500 hours is a long time. I don't really think that's the case. A lot of batteries? if you use rechargeable then its not so bad.

I'm sure surefire will replace it under warranty as LED never "burnout". It shouldn't be consider as a wear item. but I could be wrong.