LED Light Panels

[deema]

I'm looking to upgrade my work shop lighting and wondered what experience anyone had with LED light panels.

The things I'm wondering about are
1. Are they as good as fuorecent lights for producing a flat shadow free light
2. Are they as bright as a fluorescent light (equivalent lumen level)
3. What colour, pure white, circa 6000nm?
4. Make or buy? They seem really simple to construct from incredibly cheap if you do so.

I like the idea that when suspended over machines there is no danger of the bulbs dropping out into the rotating bits, and the ease of keeping the, clean.


Thanks

 

[Silas Gull]

We have been retrofitting these:
http://www.hispec.co.uk/15w-led-univers ... nal_tabbed
Inside round bulkheads previously occupied by 28 watt 2 D fluorescent tubes.

The light is a colder colour, but much brighter, and with zero warm up time, a much more useful and economical light source.

 

[cutting42]

I'm looking to upgrade my work shop lighting and wondered what experience anyone had with LED light panels.

The things I'm wondering about are
1. Are they as good as fuorecent lights for producing a flat shadow free light
2. Are they as bright as a fluorescent light (equivalent lumen level)
3. What colour, pure white, circa 6000nm?
4. Make or buy? They seem really simple to construct from incredibly cheap if you do so.

I like the idea that when suspended over machines there is no danger of the bulbs dropping out into the rotating bits, and the ease of keeping the, clean.


Thanks

LED's can be great. Their key benefits are low power and long life. They consume around 1/10th the power of halogen bulbs and have a quoted life around 50,000 hours. Downsides can be the type of light they emit. The emit a relatively narrow band of wavelengths giving a colour cast to white and warm white bulbs that some find hard to get used to. As with many things, the more you spend the better they get.

They can be made very bright, just add more until they are bright enough. Most white LEDs use a phosphorescence method similar to fluorescence tubes so the light may be similar in generating flat light. I have moved my house over the LED and do not notice the colour cast any more and the power reduction is very welcome.

I have built lighting systems from LED tape and it gets more expensive quite quickly as you deal with control and power supplies. Almost certainly cheaper to use commercial LED panels unless you really know what you are doing.

 

[will1983]

***** Post removed by member *****

 

[deema]

Thanks everyone, well I've taken the plunge and decided to build an experimental unit and try it out. 5m of natural daylight 5630 LED gives me 300 LEDs with 1000 lumens a meter. So, should be circa 5,000 lumens for a panel or roughly equivalent to a 300w halogen flood light. The cost was £7.85 for the LED's a LED driver weighed in at £9.99, the board I will mount it to will be 600 x 600 and is a bit a ply left over. A piece of acrylic is £10 other bits and pieces weight in at £5. The total cost will be c£32. The closest commercial unit with the lumens light output I've found is well over £100.

Total power consumption will be 60w, so the power consumption will be lower per lumen than for a fluorescent tube.

 

[mindthatwhatouch]

Been retrofitting various recently.

https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index ... index.html in false ceilings

The COB fittings seem to give out a nice bright while light.

https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index ... lights_COB

Lots available just depends on what sort of fitting you require.
One thing I noticed was the reduction in noise level from flourescent fittings, who'd have thought it!