A little industrial chique tribute to 2015 Year of Light.
Actually, this started as a rough lab test experiment applying thermal transfer pipes (copper pipes filled with water) to move heat from an LED platform to a simple back plane surface. The experiment included bending the pipes, soldering them using silver bearing solder, and operating the system at various angles to see the effect these had on performance. Somewhere along the line, an idea formed of making this into a wall piece, creating an industrial-chic, which led to adding a cut down reflector, and using the SLA printer to create an industrial tech representation of a flame rising from the reflector. The square cut in the diffuser aligns with the connected graphic on the back plane, and the stenciled number 15 simply represents the year.
The graphic alignment with the diffuser negative space connects the back-plane to the foremost diffuser component.
The driver is housed in the FDM printed housing below the light source on the back plane, with a dimmer. Total power to the source is 19W, while the LED is 95CRI 3000K. Note that the overly red hue to the background, and slight magenta appearance of the white graphics are all issues with the camera dealing with the red-enhanced LED source, which creates high CRI, with a 90 R9 value, but in reality is a distortion of spectral power that the human eye does not readily see – but mid-range camera image sensor algorithms cannot accommodate.
The diffuser is intended to interpret a flame, or gas light sock.
The thermal pipes move 19W of energy from the LED platform to the back-plane – which is where the whole project started. Cutting the back half of the reflector out provides light to the wall and plate surface.
A conversation piece inspired by high speed photography
My involvement in lighting was born from a graphic arts and photography background, so imagery remains a core interest of mine. Design 9 was inspired by a particular image of a rifle scope being shot through by another rifle, creating an eruption of glass that caught the light. We’ll get to the reason this was being photographed, and why in a moment. First, what intrigued me was how high speed photography today catches moments in time that are beyond human comprehension. We are blind to most wavelengths of energy, we know that. But, what we seldom recognize is that the slowness of our visual processor is such that we comprehend only a fraction of what is actually happening around us. Time lapse and high speed images catch a fraction more of this missing perception. Time laps images capturing the blooming of flowers, showing that these organisms live in a slow motion universe outside our comprehension. High speed photography shows us the micro-moments that occur while our feeble brains process sampling of bits.
I found this little light on ebay at a lunch money price, so couldn’t resist. It started life as a Hamilton Industries (Chicago) lamp model 60, made in Japan in the early 1960’s. It used a 12V magnetic transformer and a resister to provide a dual level light control of its 20W signal lamp. The amount of light it put out was barely visible in the presence of any ambient light. Meanwhile, I had a cute little key-chain wireless remote controller for less than $14 from LED Supply that delivers PWM dimming and on-off control of 12VDC LED loads. I stripped the guts out of their kit and put them inside the base of the fixture. The little lighting head was about the right size for a 12V MR16 lamp, so rather than re-invent that wheel, I just retrofitted the head to take a bi-pin socket and planned to use a retrofit MR16 lamp to deliver the light I wanted. That ended up more of an issue than I expected. First, after testing of all the LED MR’s I had around, only one brand would operate and dim effectively when run on DC power. The rest were poor dimming on AC power, but on DC they were miserable. On the LED Supply remote dimming module, they were useless. The lamp I ended up with was a Philips Enduraled product, and it will dim down to around 10%.
The remote control acts as a panel control when nested in the base, and as a remote control with cute antenna when separated.
The remote control is a bit of fun, as it has an antenna that works well with the antenna arm on the fixture, so they seemed a great match. I printed a holder for the face of the power supply (now control) enclosure at the base of the fixture to hold the remote, which makes it a simple panel controller when the remote feature is not needed. When the light is used to wash a wall or light art or some other function besides a desk lamp, the remote can be removed and control the fixture from across the room. The power supply is a simple 12VDC wall wart, while the base houses only the remote control electronics now.
The base now incorporates the remote in a recessed compartment.
The base looked in need of a bit of dressing up, so I printed a retro-turbo trim ring to surround the remote control mount on the SLA printer and painted it with VHT fake chrome to give it a sand-cast aluminum look. I also printed the same part on the FDM printer for comparison. I’m throwing in two images of the raw prints to show the difference in surface quality one gets between these machines. Obviously, for parts that include details that will be hard to sand and fill, the SLA process is superior. For parts that need to be strong and can be easily finished, the FDM is the go-to tool.
The lighting head uses an LED MR16 lamp for its optic and driver components
So, this little weak black egg ebay find has been transformed from a barely functional desk lamp novelty, to a bright, useful, remote controllable, dimmable, black egg turbo trimmed LED light novelty. I’m a fan of the 50’s and 60’s design aesthetic, so this one felt right and was fun to put together.
The turbo fins look very rocket-man when the egg is closed up
The remote facilitates using the light as a wall accent, or ambient uplight, controlled from elsewhere in the room
With the remote out, the light can remain on, lighting the turbo louver as a night light
The ebay purchase
The cord was ugly and the closed appearance rather out of alignment and boring
While FDM 3D printed parts (top_ are strong and easily finished, in fineer detail work, they lack fidelity and smoothness. The SLA (bottom) part is much smoother, requiring less finish work, but are less durable. In this case, the FDM is printed at its finest setting, the SLA at its coursest, so the contrast here is greater when the SLA is pressed to maximize reolution. Both took 2.5 hours to print.
Overall height is 19″. The base is a salvage item from Goodwill.
I am a task lighting fanatic. I use them everywhere, so am always looking for something new to add to my collection. In this installment, I am addressing the need for a light that is compact, delivers intense light (1,200+ Fc) with no glare or brightness, and high color accuracy. The application is pretty straightforward, from soldering station use where a magnifying glass is used, to fine detail work inside or on the outside of models. For good measure, I also wanted it to aim at the wall as a photo fill light, or straight up as am ambient fill light, and have a dimmer to allow me to set whatever level I want for the application in hand at the moment.
The wiring and components are left skeletal.
With all the practical specifications set out, I decided to let this design be expressive of the gadgetry involved. Let it all hang out. I also decided to incorporate the new Bridgelux Vero LED with its integrated Molex connector, and a Nuventix cooler, just to amp up the tech factor. This is where things got interesting. The Bridgelux array operates at 33.7V (500mA). The Nuventix cooler at 12V. I am powering the whole thing with a 24VDC wall wart power supply. That meant I needed to employ a boost driver for the LED and a buck (24VDC to 12VDC) power converter for the Nuventix cooler. I used Recom components to attain this, and used a cut up experimenters printed circuit board to connect these two to the power supply, the cooler, the LED and the dimmer control. That’s a lot of wires to find a path for, so I decided to leave them to roam free, let everyone see the components as well.
The lever on the left of the head is the on-off slide switch.
This is a style of design I personally enjoy, and have been doing since the 1980’s, where we made little 12V lamps with fiber optics, MR16s, halogen burners, or automotive headlamps, often suspended from structures made of building wire. In this case, the stand I found at a Goodwill. It was a table lamp, whose shade was gone, and socket was cracked. I liked the cast iron base and single post stand, so nabbed it for a dollar and tossed it in the pile with my other finds, waiting this moment to be put to service.
The wiring at the driver and power supply are exposed as well as the mess of wires leading into and out.
If you look at the head, the switch is a sliding action, on the left side of the head. Pull it forward to turn it on, push it back to shut it off. A hole in the side of the housing allows you to see the action inside. No, there is no reason for this, other than it seemed more appropriate than an off-shelf toggle or twist switch.
The light on the task surface is at 1,425 Fc, the LED is 3000K, 97CRI.
The head can pivot 180 degrees from down to straight up.
The 3D printed shade was an interesting experiment. Can also print in red or blue plastic.
In playing with the Philips Hue system, we found wireless controls to be an effective means for solving lighting issues we have around the house. One area is the main stair. While the overhead track lighting system does a fair job lighting the art on the walls, it is a bit much when all we want to do is have a little light to navigate by. I also wanted to have the light turn on and off automatically, to provide a level of ease, and to get rid of the issue of forgetting to turn off the stair lighting on the way to bed.
The view from the floor below.
Applying a wireless light, programmed to turn on-off and dim is a great addition, and an opportunity to create a new fixture while I was at it. The added feature of color changing to suit the lighting mode is a serious bonus and a lot of fun. Since the light from the stair itself is visible through a window facing the street, the effect of color here creates an interesting effect from outside as well. This design explores printing translucent materials for creating the shades, in addition to printing the rest of the fixture from ABS overall. The design itself is a bit freestyle, mixing a little Art Deco with Hi-Tech, influenced a little by American Indian… The light source is the Philips Hue A-style lamp, which has been modified through the addition of a bottom shade closure to hide the light source from below. The challenge with this design was to hide any direct view of the light itself, as at night the brightness was too great. I would like to have eliminated the cord connection, but tearing the stair railing apart to drill a wire channel through it was not on the agenda.
The 3D printing process (FDM) adds texture to the shade material.
Now, we let the light run its program, and don’t have to remember to turn things off when retiring. We can also use the light to create a visual presence when we are out and away by setting different on-off times, color effects, etc… which from the outside, looks like things are moving and changing inside.
Deco-Tech is the best I can come up with to describe the design vocabulary used. It’s really just freestyle.
Interesting note about color in this application. The very low blue light level makes seeing things in the stair when no other light is present very easy, so the level can be set low. Yet, this setting is easily ignored, and does not feel like a light on in the hall. I’m not concerned about the blue color interfering with sleep or melatonin suppression in this application, simply because the total energy we are talking about is so low (<.1 Fc).
Unfortunately, digital cameras have a hard time dealing with saturated colors, so this photo fails top show what this actually looks like (blue lighted portion). You can get the idea though, and having it cycle slowly through different shades is very pleasing.
I was hoping to get a better image of this with the setting at 2200K and some saturated colors. Unfortunately the camera is fighting me, so I’ll just leave these with you to suggest how the fixture looks in other than white settings.
This weeks project is a concept model exploring an organic form of twisted and tapering ellipses. The height is 24″, and it measures roughly 3 1/2″ x 2 3/4″ at its base. The design is intentionally simple, utilizing a single LED strip concealed behind a valence to one edge. Total power at full brightness is 5 watts, and output is roughly 400 lumens total. The interior is covered with White Optic material to create a diffuse soft edged luminance from within. There is a simple stem dimmer control at the base circuited in series to the light strip, and a two position switch to the side providing full-on / off / dim settings. This model is powered by a wall-wart 24VDC power supply.
This was printed on a 3D printer, sanded smooth and painted matte white. In a production version casting the body in ceramic with a matte glaze would render a more finished end product. Low power LEDs don’t require much thermal management, can be circuited with on-board micro IC current control driver, creating a very simple to assemble and economic end product. Even in this plastic concept model form, the costs of the entire assembly were under $200, with the power supply.
The concept of pursuing another round of 52 designs in 52 weeks was the original intent for this series. However, the time involved was not available, nor were we able to rationalize the costs involved. The work of the 52/52 2010 was a significant effort, that never truly delivered an ROI, either directly or indirectly. It was a lot of fun and reflected my exploration of SSL technology on a fast track. I’d hoped to attract others in playing along this time around. This never materialized. Faced with going it solo again, I came to the realization I just couldn’t get it done, so abandoned the project. It is a serious disapointment, but did free me the time to refocus on our business and move us into a larger and more productive state and facility, so not all was lost. The original 52/52 designation for the projects has been re-titled YOL, for the Year of Light. Yes, it is a bit of revisionist history, but its my blog and I have that right.. literally and figuratively.
With that in mind, I am still sharing projects being worked on within Lumenique that are exploratory, experimental, or customer project related (when we are allowed).
In 2010, we explored everything from steam punk to toys and practical tools. 2015 will be more of the same with a 3D twist.
I combine work with solid-state light sources with another emerging and revolutionary technology we started working with in 2010 – 3D printing technologies. I now have (3) such printers on hand, including a commercial FDM printer, a desktop FFM printer, and a desktop SLA printer. With these, we can now make translucent and transparent prints, including simple optics, flexible parts, and smaller, highly detailed components and mold patterns for casting in metal and urethane. I’m anxious to put these to work in creating interesting final forms. I’ll also be firing up the glass kiln a few times, and hammering out a few pieces in the blacksmith shop to keep things interesting.
In the next few days, I will be posting my first entry to start the ball rolling with something for my shop, that others in the 3D print business may find useful.
That all said, I hope that 2015 has been a great year for everyone!
This is my last bit of housecleaning from blogs being shut down, for the archives. KLW
This fixture is my very first LED light. It started life to be a halogen fixture in 2004, that sat on a workbench waiting completion. The first head got so hot from the 50W 12V light source, it was dangerous, so it sat as I decided what to do with it.
In 2005, as LEDs became viable for lighting, I pondered using them to replace the halogen source, but they delivered so little light, the end product was useless as a desk lamp, so it sat some more. One idea was to insert a Lamina BL3000 LED into the head, but the driver was huge, the light output too little, and the heat still an issue.
Then, in early 2006, while at Visa Lighting, Don Brandt (an engineer working with me at Visa, formerly from Emteq, now working at Cree I believe) were talking through ways of applying the latest mid-power LEDs using a simple PCB. We decided to give it a shot and built a board populated by a vendor with 8 Nichia LEDs. The inspiration struck to power these LEDs with two Xitanium drivers, which at the time were un-potted prototypes, so cutting them out of their housing to be installed in clear tubes to show their interiors off was easy enough. Two push-button switches activated the drivers for a high-low effect, and a heat sink was made up of a machined aluminum block installed in the head where the original halogen lamp and reflector once lived. More details and images of this can be found on the Lumenique archives for the Ratchet fixture.
The fixture itself is made of welded steel structure with a brass head and fiberglass tension springs. The head can be raised an lowered with a ratcheting action, staying level at any height. In the end, I left this fixture with the owner of the Oldenburg Group (owner of Visa Lighting) as a parting gift as I moved on to focus on Lumenique and SSL exclusively.
The coming of spring demands a great deal of concentration when you live in an area that is frozen half the year. For April and May this has meant new projects progressing, outside interests fighting for attention, and the progression of older projects resulting in resolution of old issues. Unfortunately, due to the fact that there are those who feel it is their right to knock off ideas they find from others without attribution or recognition, I am struggling with how to proceed with this effort going forward. I enjoy exploring new ideas and sharing discoveries. I despise finding the results integrated into others offerings without so much as a nod to its source.
That said, for this installment of the 12 in 12 project, I focused on making progress in development of portable light originally introduced in the 52 in 52 project in 2010, and a spring project that is personal and fun.
The Battery Project
In week 4 of the 52 in 52 project, I presented this combination table torch/flashlight. At the time, I relied on lead acid emergency light batteries in an effort to create a reliable light for emergency use, using readily available components. Unfortunately, since then, I have found the approach flawed. The batteries were not reliable when connected in series to generate 12VDC, the charging components were not able to keep the batteries conditioned, and the discharge characteristic of the batteries produced an unacceptably short on-time when removed from the stand. Further, the batteries were far too heavy to be practical, and were expensive. Continue reading “An Update and a Mod”
I thought a lot about what to focus on in 2012 for this series, and decided that I had plenty to share from regular activities of Lumenique, LLC and Tasca. So, the plan is to select something completed in each of the 12 months of 2012 and feature them here. This will generally be products or projects completed for customers, but may also include a report on research work in process, when it adds value.
January Feature – TASCA Renovar Floor Lamp
This is a refitting of a Dazor table lamp, applying the TASCA lighting head, and adding an extension stand to convert a desk lamp to a floor lamp. The product was commissioned by a customer who provided the table lamp, purchased used. From the GSA and other government markings present on the original, it was obviously from a government facility. The table lamp made by Dazor has been around since the late 1930’s, where the fluorescent lamp version graced the GE display at the Worlds Fair.
For more details on this project, check out the summary and full technical specs at Lumenique 12 in 12 for 2012 – January.
For additional details on how you might procure a similar product from one of your own favorites, visit TASCA.
Also, as an update, the Lumenique Product Center now accepts all major credit cards, making your purchase experience easy and secure.
Stay tuned for additional news and updates on the 12 n 12 for 2012 review, and other interesting SSL information.
