LED Luminaire

The client is a manufacturer of energy saving products. As well as smart controllers and energy monitors they produce a range of energy efficient lighting.

LED technology has the benefit of a longer service life and lower energy. The service life is a key consideration when trying to illuminate large areas from hard to access mounting positions such as under high ceilings and this brings certain challenges when the general requirement is to fit and forget. High brightness LEDs create a lot of heat and this has to be removed from the LEDs otherwise they can degrade and their service life is dramatically reduced. Ventilation to remove excess heat by venting the internal to external air can be a problem because this allows dust and insect to ingress and accumulate which reduces light output and prevents efficient heat exchange. These challenges are further complicated by the elevated temperature of the surroundings, for example the roof-space in a factory can become very hot in summer, especially in equatorial countries.

The design brief was to develop a very low maintenance luminaire incorporating a new generation of the latest high output LED strips. The key requirement was to ensure that the enclosures offered a high level of ingress protection against insects, dust and water (leaky roof/sprinklers/cleaning) so that they could be universally specified for installation. Various lengths and widths were required and this would require a versatile enclosure design. The client did not want to use forced air cooling or filtering as this can become clogged.

Hillside Design proposed a general arrangement concept and developed this by using thermal analysis in CAD and working prototypes to refine the design for a range of different operating conditions. The solution adopted was a ‘double barrelled’ heatsink and chassis arrangement where the heat is lost directly from the drive gear compartment and the LEDs compartment to the environment. 

Hillside Design prepared full manufacturing specifications for parts and assemblies and supported the client in sourcing and approving suppliers. This support included commissioning the tooling and monitoring it through to final sample sign off by using the tried and tested approach of golden samples alongside a comprehensive QC procedure.