标签：LED spot lighting products

Common sense of buying LED spot lighting products

The color temperature of the interior lighting can be divided into three groups: 1. Less than 3300K, which is also defined as Warm White. This soft light can make people a warm and comfort feeling, typically used in living rooms, bedrooms, wards, bars and restaurants. 2. 3300K-5300K, Natural White. This light is quite closed to the sunlight and has the highest CRI, suitable for working places and labs, like offices, classrooms, libraries, consulting rooms, laboratories, processing workshops, etc. 3. Larger than 5300K, Cool White. This color can provide the brightest light compared with the other two colors, mostly used in hot processing workshops and high illuminating places.

 

The color temperature of the interior lighting can be divided into three groups: 1. Less than 3300K, which is also defined as Warm White.

 

Usually LED spot lighting products are used as interior lighting devices. Thus their color temperature choices are concentrated on 2700K, 3000K, 4000K and 5700K. The “GB50034-2004 architectural lighting design standards” explicitly indicated that the CRI of lamps used in long-used working rooms/places should more than 80. In industrial construction sites with a light fixture mounting height more than 6m, CRI can be less than 80.

 

During the purchase of LED spot lighting products, costumers should carefully read the instructions and packing information provided by manufacturers, checking the input voltage and related production parameters. These parameters included luminous flux, color temperature, power consumption, CRI (color rendering index) and beam angle. This first thing need to be noticed is whether the LED spotlight can work under AC directly or need a transformer. Normally, LED spot lighting products have four bases: E27, E14, GU10 and MR16, in which MR16 based lights should work under DC (normally 12V). Secondly, customer need to check the light head and beam angle, comparing with their own requests. In the last step, customers need to choose suitable color temperature, CRI according to the “GB50034-2004 architectural lighting design standards” to achieve a reasonable lighting effect. If buyers had little or no acknowledge in light fixture’s parameters, they can check the equivalent marks on wraps. There will be some general estimation of what Watt traditional lamps can be replaced by this LED lighting products.

 

As for MR16 spotlights, which are usually equipped with an electronic transformer or frequency transformer, customers need to make sure the compatibility of them before purchasing the light. The incompatibility will cause flickers. As for spotlights with SCR dimming function, customers need to consider the compatibility between dimmer and lamps.

The standardized interfaces of LED spot lighting products

LED spot lighting products were mainly produced to replace the traditional halogen spotlights. Restricted by the traditional light shapes, light heads and installation methods, the design works of LED spot lamps are harder. Within the range of existing spotlights size standards, it is difficult to make these lamps in high power consumption and high luminous flux. In the mean time, there are other design difficulties in light distribution, heat dissipation, electrical security, etc. Under such circumstances, the properties of long service life, high lighting efficiency cannot be fully expressed, which exerted a negative effect on the healthy development of LED spot lighting products.

 

LED spot lighting products were mainly produced to replace the traditional halogen spotlights.

 

LED is a new lighting technology. LED spotlights are one of the oldest LED lighting applications. It is necessary to draw up a new set of interface standards for them in accordance with LEDs’ properties. Lay out explicitly terms for product dimensions, modular blocks, electrical and optical parameters and interfaces, realize the modularization and interchangeability of LED spot lighting products and promote the development.

 

Presently, the international ZHAGA Union attracted hundreds of manufactures and industry enterprises from lighting, lighting source and LED module fields. The majority of them are from North America, Asia and Europe. ZHAGA Union was committing themselves to improve the LED lights modules and the compatibility of controls within machinery, tests and parameters. A large number of relevant technical specifications have been published and modified for several times.

 

As LED technology matures, costs reduces, LED lighting products has acquired an initial popularity. A lot of LED lamps have been applied in various occasions. However, the development and popularization of LED spotlights still faced with problems. How to solve the cooling problem of LED spot lamps with high power consumption and high luminous flux? How to realize the modularization and interchangeability? How to fully present the advantages of LEDs: long service life, high lighting efficiency, controllable, etc. In order to solve the cooling problem and the power supplier problem, many producers will design lamp shapes without following the IEC 60630 standard.

 

As the main force of interior lighting applications, LED spot lighting products were responsible for making people’s life brighter and more colorful. Producing lights which are more cost-effective and more reliable still needs endeavors of LED manufacturers.

Drivers and cooling section of LED spot lighting products

At present, most LED spot lighting products used embedded drivers (power suppliers). This type of lights was named as self-ballasted spotlights. The embedded drivers usually adapted switching power suppliers to realize the power on/off. These drivers can be divided into two parts: isolated and non-isolated. The first and second level of isolated power suppliers are blocked by a small electrical interlayer. In the design of LED spotlights, designers only need to consider some effective ways to isolate the first level circuit and the sell from human bodies (full protection is needed) to prevent an electric shock. While the second level circuit worked under safety voltage, only simply protections are needed. Relatively, this type of power suppliers has less risk possibility, but in the case of larger space and lower efficiency. Another type of power suppliers is non-isolated. That means between first level circuit and second level circuit, there is no isolated blocks applied. Thus this type of power suppliers required more strict protection measures. Tiny mistakes may cause serious damages. Non-isolated drivers have their advantages, such like higher efficiency, small size. There are many other LED driver techniques used in LED lighting industry. But they have lower security and reliability compared with isolated/non-isolated drivers. Besides, due to the built-in drivers, the working temperature of electrical components is higher than the normal, which will direct impact the durability and reliability of LED lights, including LED spot lighting products. In order to solve this problem, many companies adopted a way of filling plastic to improve the cooling capacity of power suppliers, and improve the thermal insulation between built-in circuits and cooling shells.

 Drivers and cooling section of LED spot lighting products

Because of the controllability of LED devices, a large number of manufacturers designed and produced dimmable LED spot lighting products. The existing dimming methods can be classified as: SCR dimming, PWM dimming, 0-10V dimming, DALI dimming, DMX51dimming and power line dimming etc. All these methods are capable of changing the brightness of LED lights by controlling the input current or input voltage of drivers.

 

Cooling devices are the biggest challenge for LED producers. The majority of cooling sections (heat sinks, heat fins) were made of aluminum alloy, through organic processing and molding. In the design of high-power LED spotlights, designers usually utilized heat fins.