Let's face it, there's a lot of LED's out there. In our industry is buzzing about it. I've done a few projects now using LED's both colored and white. Color is a little more forgiving, but white LED's can be a bit of a pain, especially when you are trying to match color temps of other non-led luminaires on the building. I've battled with manufacturers about color shift and white light just looking too green with mixed results. This technology is still really nascent and constantly evolving.
The main takeaway I have here is that LED's right now are a lot like most other fixtures. You are going to get what you pay for. A bargain basement fixture you buy for use on camera probably will strobe, but if you need an inexpensive effect for stage or some other situation for the naked eye, you might be ok.
GE recently sent out a document about what to ask an LED supplier and I think these are all very good questions. Of course they have answers to all of these, and I invite any other manufacturers to answer these and I will gladly post them for everyone to read.
Below are the basic questions.. and then GE's responses.
_________________________
1) Is your company registered as a DOE Quality Advocate? This includes taking the Quality Pledge for Solid State Lighting Products.
2) Whose LED chips do you use? Has the product gone through an IP (Intellectual Property) clearance?
3) What is the LED chip manufacturer’s rating and what is the rating of your product?
4) What precautions do you take to ensure the appropriate LED is selected for your product? Can you share your data showing the LED selection process for your product?
5) Does your product use LEDs that have been tested according to LM80 which demonstrate L70 life after 6000hrs of test? If yes, can you share your LM80 data and life model used to demonstrate the L70 life?
6) Does your product meet the LM79 requirements? If yes, can you provide the LM79 test report from an accredited NVLAP test lab?
7) Do you “design in reliability” or do you “test for reliability” to demonstrate the long-term performance of your product? Can you share your reliability product development process?
8) What type of testing do you perform to validate your product life and safe operation? Can you share the test results?
9) What actions take place in the factory to ensure the product properly works when installed by the customer?
10) How do you ensure the product will continue to meet the specification?
_______________________________
GE's Responses:
1) Is your company registered as a DOE Quality Advocate? This includes taking the Quality Pledge for Solid State Lighting Products
GE is registered as a Quality Advocate. The CEO of our company has taken the quality pledge. You will find the listing of our company at www.lighting-facts.com
2) Whose LED chips do you use? Has the product gone through an IP (Intellectual Property) clearance?
Our products go through an extensive patent clearing process
3) What is the LED chip manufacturers rating and what is the rating of your product?
GE does not base product ratings on LED chip manufacturing ratings, but instead ratings are inclusive of thermal losses, optical losses, and driver losses.
4) What precautions do you take to ensure the appropriate LED is selected for your product? Can you share your data showing the LED selection process for your product?
Prior to selecting a LED for our product, we perform long-term qualification testing at multiple temperatures and operating currents. We trend data for color shift, light output depreciation, and power consumption. Having this data we compare to the LED supplier data. If data is found equivalent, we release the LED for use in the product. Yes, upon request we can share the data.
5) Does your product use LEDs that have been tested according to LM80 which demonstrate L70 life after 6000hrs of test? If yes, can you share your LM80 data and life model used to demonstrate the L70 life?
For our products we try to use LEDs that were tested to the LM80 requirements. Having the LM 80 life data complements our in house testing of the LEDs. The combination of the two tests significantly increases the confidence level in LED life. Yes, upon request we can share the LM80 data. At this time not all LED suppliers provide LEDs that have been LM80 tested.
6) Does your product meet the LM79 requirements? If yes, can you provide the LM79 test report from an accredited NVLAP test lab?
Where possible, we will test our product to LM79 and provide the NVLAP report upon request.
7) Do you ‘design in reliability’ or do you ‘test for reliability’ to demonstrate the long-term performance of your product? Can you share your reliability product development process?
We ‘design in’ reliability for our products. When you ‘design in’ reliability you design the product to take into consideration various stress conditions the product will see over its lifetime. We follow a 10step Design For Reliability (DFR) process to ensure the product is designed and validated to the product specification. It has been shown just testing the product to demonstrate reliability will not adequately precipitate all failure modes that will be observed over the lifetime of the product. Yes, upon request we can share our process to show the steps taken to demonstrate our product life claim and overall product performance.
8) What type of testing do you perform to validate your product life and safe operation? Can you share the test results?
Our product validation protocol includes accelerated life testing at 85C / 85%RH and rack testing up to several thousand hours to show the product meets or exceeds our life claims. In addition, we perform robustness testing to precipitate failures to understand how the lamp fails and to ensure it fails in a safe manner.
9) What actions take place in the factory to ensure the product properly works when installed by the customer?
During the assembly process, inline checks take place to properly ensure the product is assembled in accordance with the assembly instructions. Once fully assembled, the product is operated for at least 24 hrs to screen out any failures. After burn in, the product’s light output and power is measured to ensure it meets the specification. Lastly, the product is packaged and shipped to the customer.
10) How do you ensure the product will continue to meet the specification?
At predefined intervals we send samples of the lamp to our NVLAP for LM79 testing. This is in addition to the 100% light up test and power measurement in the factory.
