Sep 30, 2020

The end of flux variation when dimming

Category: Illumination
The LUXEON 3030 HE Plus Deep Dimming, which offers perfect flux consistency from LED to LED in application, across the entire dimming range from 100% intensity to 1% intensity.
The LUXEON 3030 HE Plus Deep Dimming, which offers perfect flux consistency from LED to LED in application, across the entire dimming range from 100% intensity to 1% intensity.

LEDs provide designers and specifiers with the freedom to adapt a luminaire’s light output to the functional, aesthetic, physiological and psychological needs of the user. This is because the control options possible with LEDs are more numerous and useful than those of other light sources – the color, flux, beam shape and direction of an LED luminaire’s output are all independently controllable.

The most widely used of these control functions is dimming, and so it is perhaps surprising that the design of certain types of dimming in LED luminaires is problematic. This is because of a common but undesirable characteristic of traditional LEDs: in any typical reel of supposedly identical LEDs shipped to a luminaire manufacturer, the flux (brightness) of one, or a string of LEDs, when dimmed will be visibly different from the flux of its neighbor, even though both are connected to the same driver.

This visible flux variation when dimming is unacceptable to most buyers and specifiers of luminaires, so today luminaire manufacturers go to elaborate lengths to eliminate the variation within a luminaire.

It’s all too easy for the lighting industry to become acclimated to this status quo. To accept that it’s the job of the fixture manufacturer to work around the LEDs that the industry supplies. And of course, that would be the case if the LED were a standard commodity item, and if innovation in LEDs were dead.

But it’s not. Innovation in light sources is alive and well, and the latest manifestation of this is a new mid-power LED, the LUXEON 3030 HE Plus Deep Dimming, which offers perfect flux consistency from LED to LED in application, across the entire dimming range from 100% intensity to 1% intensity.

 

Goodbye to the shading effect in linear fixtures

The flux variation of standard LEDs when dimmed is clearly visible in applications which are comprised of many LEDs. An example is a linear lighting fixture, which is typically comprised of multiple mid-power LEDs, often supplied in a standard 3030 footprint. The visible shading effect produced by the mix of brighter and darker LEDs is highly unattractive, and could give the user the impression that the fixture is faulty. From the specifier’s point of view, it is also difficult to guarantee the total light output from the fixture at various dimming levels.