CharlesFoster00
Registered
There are many, many challenges to manufacturing LED lighting fixtures, of any type. Any company that wants to be viewed as a reputable dive light manufacturer will have to deal with all of the following issues.
1) Consistency. LED manufacture is a very difficult, inconsistent process. LED's which are manufactured to the 'same' spec are visually inspected, and placed in different 'bins'. This process is called 'binning', and the theory is that at the end of the day, you have LED's in each 'bin' that are roughly similar in color and output. Practical experience has shown major manufacturers that even within a 'bin' there can be considerable variation, requiring a certain number of the emitters to be discarded. For this reason, many fixture manufacturers will buy 'batches' of 'bins' and then discard the LED's that don't meet their specs. As you can imagine, for a company that values it's reputation, this whole process can get expensive.
2) Life. Many times the Life of LED's is described in tens of thousands of hours. 50,000 is a common number for non-scuba lighting fixtures. But let's think about that. First, the claim of 5 year, continuous burn time, is somewhat suspect if the LED has only been manufactured for a few months. I'm not saying that it won't happen, but how did they come to that number? Which brings us to our second, "life" issue. LED's don't really burn out, not like HID lights or Halogen. They just get dimmer over time. Even if the company tells you what the definition of 'life' is (let's say 50% of original output), what will the curve look like that brings you to that point. Will you lose 20% of your total lumens in the first thousand hours? No? How do you know? If you really want to geek out about this stuff, google the IES LM-79, and IES LM-80 protocols.
3) Performance. This issue is tied directly to 'life', and therefore has all of the complications listed above. Generally, the brighter (and higher power usage) LED's have shorter life. The issue is heat. Heat build up is death to an LED. This is good news for scuba, because as we all know, water can help to dissipate some of this heat. But of course, people leave their lights on above water. This has lead to the development of 'limiters' which reduce output as heat builds. So another good question is, does my light have a limiter? Who made the limiter?
4) End of life. Should your LED fail (due to heat, or unacceptable lumen degradation, or *ahem* water), what is the plan. Throw away the light? Is the LED board replaceable? If so, will the manufacturer stock LED's from the original bin as a reserve, for this contingency?
Whew. So if you made it through all of that (and I'm just scratching the surface), the point is this. There are lots of people out there selling LED lights (of all types). If you aren't that worried about consistency, or reliability, then go for it, and spend whatever money you think is worth it. But if you want those things, then you have to realize that they take time. Time to test. Time to engineer. They also take money. To buy whole bins, and be willing to throw away lots of 'subpar' LEDs.
This is why you might not be (and probably should not be) seeing the latest and greatest in LED technology built into dive lights.
1) Consistency. LED manufacture is a very difficult, inconsistent process. LED's which are manufactured to the 'same' spec are visually inspected, and placed in different 'bins'. This process is called 'binning', and the theory is that at the end of the day, you have LED's in each 'bin' that are roughly similar in color and output. Practical experience has shown major manufacturers that even within a 'bin' there can be considerable variation, requiring a certain number of the emitters to be discarded. For this reason, many fixture manufacturers will buy 'batches' of 'bins' and then discard the LED's that don't meet their specs. As you can imagine, for a company that values it's reputation, this whole process can get expensive.
2) Life. Many times the Life of LED's is described in tens of thousands of hours. 50,000 is a common number for non-scuba lighting fixtures. But let's think about that. First, the claim of 5 year, continuous burn time, is somewhat suspect if the LED has only been manufactured for a few months. I'm not saying that it won't happen, but how did they come to that number? Which brings us to our second, "life" issue. LED's don't really burn out, not like HID lights or Halogen. They just get dimmer over time. Even if the company tells you what the definition of 'life' is (let's say 50% of original output), what will the curve look like that brings you to that point. Will you lose 20% of your total lumens in the first thousand hours? No? How do you know? If you really want to geek out about this stuff, google the IES LM-79, and IES LM-80 protocols.
3) Performance. This issue is tied directly to 'life', and therefore has all of the complications listed above. Generally, the brighter (and higher power usage) LED's have shorter life. The issue is heat. Heat build up is death to an LED. This is good news for scuba, because as we all know, water can help to dissipate some of this heat. But of course, people leave their lights on above water. This has lead to the development of 'limiters' which reduce output as heat builds. So another good question is, does my light have a limiter? Who made the limiter?
4) End of life. Should your LED fail (due to heat, or unacceptable lumen degradation, or *ahem* water), what is the plan. Throw away the light? Is the LED board replaceable? If so, will the manufacturer stock LED's from the original bin as a reserve, for this contingency?
Whew. So if you made it through all of that (and I'm just scratching the surface), the point is this. There are lots of people out there selling LED lights (of all types). If you aren't that worried about consistency, or reliability, then go for it, and spend whatever money you think is worth it. But if you want those things, then you have to realize that they take time. Time to test. Time to engineer. They also take money. To buy whole bins, and be willing to throw away lots of 'subpar' LEDs.
This is why you might not be (and probably should not be) seeing the latest and greatest in LED technology built into dive lights.