Why can't companies just use bright white luxeons?

Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxeons?

Please forgive my potential ignorance, but why can't companies (i.e. SureFire) test their luxeons and reject all the LED's that are not acceptable(white, bright, etc.) Or at the very least, have choices as to what tinting, if any, each one might have so someone can buy a Luxeon light with a certain tint if they want. I hear a lot of talk on the forum about the "lottery" lights. That might be fine for lesser quality lights with luxeons, but why can't SureFire or similar high end companies be more selective with their LED's? Seems like a lot of money to pay for not knowing what your light output quality will be... I know this method might make the lights more expensive and I know that different binned Luxeons have different pricing, but I still have trouble accepting spending A LOT of money on a light when I don't know what it's light output quality will be. Please help me to understand.. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxeons?

I sort of agree. I'm still annoyed that my Surefire L1s have terrible tints. However, every 5-watt Surefire I have has good to top notch tint.

I think the L1s suffered from "low dome" leds.....LDs have traditionally poor tint when compared to high domes.

I'm guessing that sending back leds that have bad tints might break the contract Surefire has with Lumidens, or at the very least result in increased cost.

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

You don't really know what you are going to get until the LED is buttoned up in the light. At that point, you don't just send a LED back to Lumileds (forget about on what grounds the return is made) you are looking at a completed assembly. The majority of users find that any of these LED's are a real step up from what they had been using. Certainly there will be some rejections in QC for a myriad of possible reasons including "bunk" LED's. Tint is a "non qualifier" I would expect. No where in the SF literature does the issue of tint variance come up.

What is unacceptable to you in tint might be the ideal tint for someone else. Where do you draw the line? If 50% of the lights get rejected due to tint issues, are you willing to pay twice as much for the light that is already priced at a non trivial level?

The simple answer to your question is that companies can use just bright white luxeons as soon as they can get just bright white luxeons. The irony is that for many, what the companies are getting now is bright white luxeons!

The really good news is that no one is being forced to play the luxeon lottery! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif Nobody has to buy a light now; they can wait until the art has improved to the point that today's luxeons are old hat and old technology!

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

I think they should have some disclosure about the tint on each light they sell. I am quite upset when I received my L4 with that terrible green tint. It is really out of my expectation with such an expensive flashlight. I couldn't even sell it when I mentioned the green tint. The manufacturers should have better QC about this.

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

I guess people like to play lottery /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
if u lose there will be more fun to mod your light

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

AW: Again, there's no way to check that out, save to compare with a 'reference' light and then remove the LED and try again... which would increase costs for them (they have to buy twice as many LEDs) and for you (they'd have to test them, then bill you for the 'unused' LEDs and extra labor). In other words, that $180 flashlight would be more like $400... which prices them right out of reach of even the police forces they sell to, and would make the governments think of looking elsewhere.

From what I recall, the guarantee they have merely ensures that if any part OTHER than the LED/lamp has issues, they'll fix it. They don't guarantee the tint of an incandescent (which can become that awful orange-yellow, due to the technology), much less the LED.

Being honest, even the bin codes can be relatively useless, as some of our light-builders here can attest to (McGizmo once built a light for someone using a 'bad' bin which outshone his more expensive T-binned lights, IIRC). Unless you're willing to shell out $400 for a premium light... well, LEDs are a sideline, as far as Surefire's concerned, from what I can tell - they don't outperform incandescents save in terms of usable lifetime, and those incandescents require replacements, which means they can consistently make money selling those off.

I'm surprised they're still developing lights with LEDs in them.

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

Compare your worst-tinted luxeon to a cheap 5mm white LED and see if you have anything to complain about.

I suspect more than 90% of the complaints about Luxeon tint are well into the "diminishing returns" phase of quality improvement from the manufacturer's perspective.

What can Lumileds do? Increasing production voulme is about the only thing they can do since tint isn't a variable that they have much control over. So, do they cheapen their product by flooding a market already a bit crowded in order to please a minority?

I'd wait for tunable RGB-die white LEDs to come out, personally.

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

Oh, I dunno.... seems like it would be pretty trivial to grade the heads in production. Shunt the tinted ones to government or OEM or whatever they don't really care so long as it's bright, and sell the really primo ones to those a-retentive flashlight hobbyists at some premium price. They'll obviously pay anything.

Oh, wait....

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

There is no reason that the lux would need to be installed in a head to apply power to it. It can even be totally mechanized with various meters and filters. The power only needs to be applied for a second.

If I can buy a good grade Lux III for $18 at retail, you can be sure that Surefire is getting them for a lot less. That would indicate that they could throw out or resell every other led and only raise the price of the light by $10. If they resell the loss drops as low as a few bucks per reject.

The terrible tint of the LED in my L1 is the reason that I've not bought any more Surefires. Well, I bought an L4 but I was able to handle it before buying. In general, I don't buy any without some indication that it's a good bin.

Daniel

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

Every regular led flashlight I have played with has a range of white to bluish color. Either way its acceptable and useful. I fooled with a whole rack of v2 1 watt lights and man, not two lights were the same color and man, onelight had that aweful cat urine green. I was glad I had them to fool with as I would hate to have a greenish light and would return it and eat the shipping or transportation cost. Thats one reason I went with the v2 6 chip and found new respect for my 5 watt xpg as its a pure white.

Its really all of our fault. If we returned non pure white lights they will keep making them. My personal suggestion for anyone to try them before they buy, much like my mantra is for a wheelchair. Try onebefore you buy it.

I have my led needs met with my nice and pure white xpg for middle ground, v2 6 chip for reading and legend xl for brightness. Considering my experience with the 1 watters, I will not be buying one or recommending them to anyone. You guys have your self to blame for putting up with that quality control.

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

[ QUOTE ]
idleprocess said:
Compare your worst-tinted luxeon to a cheap 5mm white LED and see if you have anything to complain about.

I suspect more than 90% of the complaints about Luxeon tint are well into the "diminishing returns" phase of quality improvement from the manufacturer's perspective.

What can Lumileds do? Increasing production voulme is about the only thing they can do since tint isn't a variable that they have much control over. So, do they cheapen their product by flooding a market already a bit crowded in order to please a minority?

I'd wait for tunable RGB-die white Leds to come out personally.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perfect!!!! Me too...

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

"There is no reason that the lux would need to be installed in a head to apply power to it. It can even be totally mechanized with various meters and filters. The power only needs to be applied for a second."

Kind of like Lumileds does when they bin the LED's?!?! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Probably around the time your L1 was made, I would guess that SF was buying Bin 4 and 5 color tint to stay away from the Pea green, a color that we *know* a big stink has been made about. I find myself wanting to play devil's advocate as I know manufacturers won't be posting on this thread. My bad! Heck I really don't care about this subject and I suspect my apathy pales compared to the manufacturers who may have a small minority of customers complain and even a smaller number who have ever heard of LED binning! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

Let me throw another answer at the Q: "Why can't companies just use bright white luxeons?" Well possibly because by and large, this is a non issue?!?!? That is to say that the companies no doubt have some shot at bin selection based on their consumption rate and no doubt they make requests based on bin. To further filter and segregate their product into what? Seconds ala Arc Flashlight? Come on guys, do you really think this is going to happen with a commercial product? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif What's next? Vf bins? Heck if I can get a LED that is 15% more efficient, shouldn't *that* be what is in these expensive flashlights?? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

Dup post. Sorry.

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

I think Don answered "Why DON'T they" instead of "why CAN'T they". He's quite correct too. If your clients buy your product without requiring that you do extra work, why do it?

It's pretty clear (to me, anyway) that Lumileds samples their batches and marks them according to averages. It does not look like they sample each one, or I would not have found a luxeon with a high Vf (K or L, I forget which) on a star marked as a J.

There's nothing wrong with binning a batch based on samples, but it only works perfectly when all the variables are tightly controlled. That said, the current Lux III bins are pretty darn white.

And I agree with Don; [ QUOTE ]
If I can get a LED that is 15% more efficient, shouldn't *that* be what is in these expensive flashlights?

[/ QUOTE ] Makes perfect sense to me!



Daniel

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

One other note - Don's answered 'why don't they do it'. Let me throw another point back in... which is, namely, cost.

Or, let me put it this way - tint is something that a machine CAN sort for... somewhat. They do this to some extent when they do their binning of these hundred-star strips that they sell their Luxeons by. But, to be honest, do you REALLY want to pay a bunch of people to go about marking each and every star for a specific bin, if you knew it would mean that the labor costs would go up substantially with each star as a result? Or would you rather put that money towards developing better processes so that you can get more consistent quality out of each batch, or maybe look at developing a new LED which has better performance? Do you really want to have people hand-sort each LED, both at Lumiled's plants or at Surefire?

Yes, they could conceivably resell them.. but then your $18 good quality LuxIII would probably cost closer to $50 dollars than $18 if they had to pay a guy to check out each and every one of them, then reject certain LEDs and toss them, or to resort them as a 'lower grade' LED. Imagine if Surefire went through that route, and ended up having to reject say five LEDs for every one that passed.

Yes, they may each cost $18, but if they spend $18000 to buy 1000 of them, and only can use 200 of them, then what happens? Lumileds isn't likely to buy those LEDs back after they've been mounted on a light, tested, then taken off. How many people here would pay for 'used' LEDs that didn't pass Surefire's muster? Where do you think they'd recoup the costs? Given that a Surefire light already costs between $160-200 for your 'standard' LED lights, imagine how much higher the costs would get if they had to effectively throw away $80 worth of LEDs for each light they produced?

While it would be NICE if they could make them all roughly the same quality (and the LuxIII high domes these days tend towards a fairly consistent look), I don't expect many people would PAY for that.

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

I'll throw in another reason why Lumileds isn't as preoccupied with tint as many around here are. The reason is simple-their main business that they're aiming for is the general lighting market. In this market you'll typically use many emitters rather than one, even in one fixture. The minor differences in tint within a given bin will average out given a large enough number of emitters. Even a small fixture designed to emit, say, 6000 lumens, will need at least a dozen emitters even with future projections of 500 lumens per emitter. The minor tint variations will not be so noticeable once the light from the emitters is mixed and diffused in a fixture.

For all the talk about tints, it seems the differences now are fairly minor. To put things into perspective here, with the exception of the "rotten cat urine" green tint, just about anything Lumileds puts out these days looks way better than incandescent. Even the brightest, whitest incandescents have a pronounced strong yellow tint to them.

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

The variance in tint among Luxeons even from the Same Reel/Rack is already astounding. Until technology improves we are All Luxeon Lottery players...

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, they may each cost $18, but if they spend $18000 to buy 1000 of them, and only can use 200 of them, then what happens? Lumileds isn't likely to buy those LEDs back after they've been mounted on a light, tested, then taken off. How many people here would pay for 'used' LEDs that didn't pass Surefire's muster? Where do you think they'd recoup the costs? Given that a Surefire light already costs between $160-200 for your 'standard' LED lights, imagine how much higher the costs would get if they had to effectively throw away $80 worth of LEDs for each light they produced?


[/ QUOTE ]

I could be wrong, but
1) Seeing as these come in reels, I can imagine a few ways to automate the testing.
2) There is probably a market that would buy the rejects that Surefire could not use. They'd end up in cheap imports.
3) There seems to be a perception that up to 80 out of 100 are unusable. It's my opinion that the rejects are the exception, not the rule (unless they are buying seconds).
4) Why would rejecting substandard parts be bad? Would you buy a $160 light with scratches and cross threaded parts?

Some premium lights ARE sold based on the components. ARC said they cherry picked. Mr Bulk said he'd use only the best in the VIP. I'd not have paid $160 for a VIP if Charlie said he'd use whatever Luxeons he could find.

Now for the fun part:
Simple marketing could be used to offset the cost. Imagine the marketing opporunities;

For hikers; "Extra light in the yellow spectrum to enhance foliage contrast"

For teenaged girls "Soft violet overtones to bring out your best features"

For CSI wannabees "Shows blood 5% better than a pure white!"

For CPF members; Your choice of YO, XO or V0 bin! (W0 extra)

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Daniel

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

i still don't understand why the process of making luxeons isn't so exact and precise that they can make thousands of the same bin OF CHOICE @ any given time.

it's been explained to me b4 too. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

Re: Why can\'t companies just use bright white luxe

[ QUOTE ]
gadget_lover said:
[ QUOTE ]
Yes, they may each cost $18, but if they spend $18000 to buy 1000 of them, and only can use 200 of them, then what happens? Lumileds isn't likely to buy those LEDs back after they've been mounted on a light, tested, then taken off. How many people here would pay for 'used' LEDs that didn't pass Surefire's muster? Where do you think they'd recoup the costs? Given that a Surefire light already costs between $160-200 for your 'standard' LED lights, imagine how much higher the costs would get if they had to effectively throw away $80 worth of LEDs for each light they produced?


[/ QUOTE ]

I could be wrong, but
1) Seeing as these come in reels, I can imagine a few ways to automate the testing.
2) There is probably a market that would buy the rejects that Surefire could not use. They'd end up in cheap imports.
3) There seems to be a perception that up to 80 out of 100 are unusable. It's my opinion that the rejects are the exception, not the rule (unless they are buying seconds).
4) Why would rejecting substandard parts be bad? Would you buy a $160 light with scratches and cross threaded parts?

Some premium lights ARE sold based on the components. ARC said they cherry picked. Mr Bulk said he'd use only the best in the VIP. I'd not have paid $160 for a VIP if Charlie said he'd use whatever Luxeons he could find.

Now for the fun part:
Simple marketing could be used to offset the cost. Imagine the marketing opporunities;

For hikers; "Extra light in the yellow spectrum to enhance foliage contrast"

For teenaged girls "Soft violet overtones to bring out your best features"

For CSI wannabees "Shows blood 5% better than a pure white!"

For CPF members; Your choice of YO, XO or V0 bin! (W0 extra)

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Daniel

[/ QUOTE ]

Answering point by point:

1) Yes, they come in reels. So, you're willing to pay for the salary of whatever person they have to hire to judge the tint of each and every light they produce? What's the purpose, especially since - unlike CPUs - these variations do not ultimately affect the light's performance? Yes, it's aesthetically pleasing to have a more yellow or white light, but does it affect the light's ability to throw out 60+ lumens? No, it doesn't, and that's what they're mostly binning on. I still do not trust any machine currently out there to reliably judge tint, especially since that on the sensors and programming involved.

2) Again, who would they sell them to? The Chinese manufacturers are a possibility, but would they rather buy them 'used' from Surefire, or get new ones straight from Lumileds at a reduced cost? I don't see Surefire deep-discounting for any potential competitors, just as I don't see Mag selling scraps or rejected parts to Dorcy, should they have any. Again, it would cost Surefire money to buy them, test them, reject them, and then ship them to whoever is buying the lights. Either they have to lose money on the deals, or else the price of your light goes up another $50-100 dollars per light to make up for the extra time and expense involved. Or are you telling me that police departments are literally overflowing with cash?

3) If you're being that picky about tints, then (at least to judge from what I've seen, and from people's experiences with Quantum-IIIs and Dorcy Luxeon lights) that's probably a guess that probably has more than a bit of truth to it. Even if you only reject 20% of the LEDs you have, that's still a bit of a loss, and that'll be reflected either in your bottom line... or in the prices you sell to your customers for. I don't know many companies who are willing to sacrifice profits in that way.

4) Because they're not bad in the eyes of the manufacturers or most of their clients. Cops do not reject pistols because they've got a burr in the engraving of the name of the manufacturer, or because the pistol's color on the grips are a bit off - and with LEDs, tint is aesthetics.

And these are mass-manufactured parts - Surefire does not make these for the hobbyist, and they run through these in what is, from what I recall, more of a production line environment. Comparing those to any creations by Mr. Bulk, McGizmo, or Jets22 is like comparing a mass-produced Sears-branded leather shoe with a handmade Italian one; you're paying more for one than the other because of the extra effort involved... and because it's a status symbol, or potlach.

Do you really care about how your wrenches look, or how your pistols look? Or do you care more about if they're strong enough to do the job? Same thing with the Surefires. They have to be made in a way that makes them profitable without being onerously expensive... and given that the Lumileds technology is rather new, compared to some, it means that they're still going to have some issues with tints until those methods are perfected. While they've gotten much better over the last two years, you're still going to see a few issues with something that is fairly close to 'cutting-edge', as far as commercial products go.

They already bin them by tint (roughly) and by Vf (not so roughly). If you're going to be THAT picky about the light, then forget mass-manufactured goods and go custom. You pay for what you get with that, at least, and can control (to some extent) what goes into it. Most people don't care - it's not the tint that counts, but the fact that it can blind a guy or create a wall of light some fifty yards away. They don't care if it's yellow-white or white-blue, just that they can see the guy with a pistol well enough to shoot him.

And again, look at who Lumileds sell their LEDs to - do you THINK that Surefire cares if the light is more blue-white or yellow-white? Look at who Surefire mostly sells to. If these were fancy luxury items like cars or clothes, then that tint would probably count more, or if Surefire was selling to yuppies or fashion-conscious flashlight holders.

Again, this is like apples and oranges, at least as far as marketing goes. Most people I know don't give a damn whether the light's yellow-orange, yellow-white, or white-blue, save when their livelihood depends on it (photographers, lighting technicians). And, last I looked, a greenish-tinted Surefire light has yet to get a policeman or soldier killed in the line of duty.

"Officer slain for having cat-urine-green LED flashlight"

As far as the manufacturing process goes, Blinded, if it's like any other sort of semiconductor manufacturing.. there are things you won't be able to control, and those things are what cause tints and Vfs and fluxes to differ even within the same binned-batch of LEDs on a strip.