luxeon lottery

*disclaimer: i might be a bit misinformed*

what do u guys think about the whole luxeon lottery thing? my personal gripe with the matter is the risk u get when paying $300 for a premium flashlight. like some u2 users get 80lumens and the lucky ones 100lumens, and some with sick green tints and others beutiful white light. i love the u2 but am just not willing to take the $300 risk...

i think lights above a certain price range should follow hds' example and guarantee good leds only from certain bins. dont u guys think so?

please "enlighten" (haha) me

Its not so big of a risk with Surefire lights. If you dont like the tint, send it back.

-David

Agreed with cheapo here...if the color pisses you off, just send it back to SureFire and they'll make it right.

I would never buy any flashlight over $100 unless I knew in advance the bin number of the LED. Even then , as I have just found out , there is a colour temp spread within each bin group. A very unsatisfactory situation IMHO.

dandruff, best way to avoid luxeon lottery is by from someone on cpf.

you can ask pointed questions like, what's the tint? is it bright and white. condition etc.

most folks will go to extremes to be accurate in description.

That's not the only option, buying premium lights (not even luxeon) from companies like Peak, Arc, I imagine Lumaray (ie: small specialized companies) will often go out of their way to assure your tint is what you want. HDS EDC's can also be bought with guaranteed tint, and some companies will give you a minimum lux output rating for their various models (Arc for example).

The lottery is annoying, but really there are a lot of companies which will go the extra distance to give you a winner every time. You just have to be patient and wait for your replacement! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

Based on my experience, Pelicans are often found to have very good tint.

-David

Most CPF Dealers and manufacturers would understand our paranoid-iness about tints and brightness so I wouldnt hesitate to order from one of them.

We KNOW what we buy.. when we are getting Arc AAA or a Photon Freedom.... These Lights are NOT expensive...

With Luxeon's ... well.. its all together a different thing.

I would not risk more than 25$ for this lottery S|-|i* . Unless.. I find that there is a better host to keep a good TWOJ or TWOK (now perhaps UWOJ and UWOK) .... I will continue to use QIII as a host with TWOK & R123 /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

When I Buy LED's I WONT Buy From Future Electronics... but I would prefer the CPF's B/S/T Section and look for what I want and which Bin, Tint & Vf. I prefer this than the Luxeon Lottery.

[ QUOTE ]
HDS EDC's can also be bought with guaranteed tint

[/ QUOTE ] but the other's like EDC Basic 42... are Still STRICTLY on a Lottery ... There they don't mention which tint you will get... Most likely it would be a S*** LED and EDC Basic 60 would have T*** LED .. where as the GT will have TWO* LED... I Dont think that U Bin's are used in the HDS Lights.

I would rather prefer to get a Orb RAW ... they had Mentioned bin's in their lights. and they also mentioned that first 100 will be U Bin... and rest will be T Bin... It Helps a LOT when you KNOW what you are buying.. and when you KNOW what you are getting for your $$$

I would NEVER Venture in to anything of the range of $100 - $1000 and You dont know which Tint & Bin you are getting.

Ah well ... IMHO with the current LuxIII generation the tint issue is much less pronounced ... usually they are all more or less good and have a very equal distribution due to the EOS technique.
Technology has come far in the last two years, the lottery got better, and threre's no end in sight.
Life is good.
bernie

What I want to know is, since the U, V, W, and X bins of LuxIII's are sooooo hard to come by, where are they going??? THey are made, as far as I know, but has anyone ever seen another light manufactuer that has as much reputation and buzz that CPF doesn't know? Does the industry insiders take whatever they want first?

THen there is the Surefire issue. Surefire maintains that they use nothing but the best bins. When they say the "best bin", are we talking about T-bins? S bins? they are hardly the best bins. There are alot of people here wouldn't buy SF modules for the fear of getting a cat-urine-green tint like my E1L's KL1 has...

Does anyone know anything on where the U+ bins went? or do they actually exist?

Up to date I think V,W and X are LuxV bins only ...
The U-bin exists in LuxIII format and is sold and used in this forum.
bernie

I seem to remember somone who is a modder mentioned he was in possession of some X-bin Lux-III's. I could be wrong but I remember myself gasping for air when I saw the post...

I'd be quite interested in those ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif ... but I really think there isn't anything better than "U" right now for the LuxIII.

Maybe there's confusion with the binning of the upcoming K2 Luxeon?

bernie

Af afr as I know V, W, and X are only for Lux V's.

Photnfanatic has U bin LED's for sale, but they are UXIL, some turn out greem. eTendue had V and W bin LuxV's for sale, but you're right. It seems like once a year people like Mr. Bulk or eTendue or other CPF dealers get their hands on coveted bins. I don't see why Lumileds doesn't make many good bins instead of making crappy LED's with bad tints. I think the really nice, acceptable tints are WO, YO/YA, and V1 I've had good luck with V1 being nice and white.

As far as surefire's--guys, this company will jump through hoops to fix the light for you. I've had several instances over the years with several lights where I was unhappy, and they immediately made it right, no questions asked. I'm very impressed with their customer service. I wish my bank operated like they do.

well i guess its all good and happy with ppl willing to exchange ur light etc. but my point is that it shouldnt be neccessary at all with a high end light.

anyways anyone here care to explain the difficulty of manufacturing good consist leds? seems weird in this day and age for such things to be 'mystical' and beyond our control...

[ QUOTE ]
270winchester said:
What I want to know is, since the U, V, W, and X bins of LuxIII's are sooooo hard to come by, where are they going??? THey are made, as far as I know, but has anyone ever seen another light manufactuer that has as much reputation and buzz that CPF doesn't know? Does the industry insiders take whatever they want first?

[/ QUOTE ]
Ever seen that Dilbert comic that takes place in Elbonia (the far-off, backward place where Dilbert's company outsources things - badly)?
Borislov How are production errors?
Yakov Down by 20%!
Borislov Excellent! How's production?
Yakov Down by 20%!

Why are they so hard to come buy? Probably because far fewer U bin Luxeon 3's are produced as a result of Lumileds' manufacturing techniques than T & S bins. Same for Luxeon 5 - there are far more V & W bins than X's. If Lumileds wants to produce 2x as many U-bin Luxeon IIIs, they'll have to double all production.

Where are they going? Lumileds' best customers, of course. Better product sells for more. Ideally, a crappy S-bin Luxeon 3 would be ~75% of the cost of a premium U-bin.

Another thing to keep in mind - many manufacturers will advertise product options or variations that aren't available yet. Nichia has some amazing products on paper ... that seemingly have yet to see life outside of the spec sheet. Witness the Proton - a product that won't be made as originally advertised because one of Nichia's upper bins is still vaporware.

Lexicons rock
Pelicans
:
rather