First it was submerged in 5m and then into 10m of seawater by the simple expedient of throwing it overboard. It was still plugged in… and yes, it kept working. Then came the crash test: not content with dropping it from arms length it was released from a loading platform, the light plummeting around 10 metres to the hard surface below, smashing the protective front casing. It still lit up. <\/p>\n
There is of course a serious element to this; Ole Jacob Hanken tells MJ<\/i> that while there\u2019s been a lot of attention on the energy savings element of Light Emitting Diode technology as it reduces the overall power consumption to around 20% of more standard fittings, working vessels tend to be more concerned about robust construction simply because failure is a bigger issue: \u201cFor sure energy saving is a good thing – but most crew care more about durability and that these lights are maintenance free.\u201d <\/p>\n
Further, while a lot of vessel managers are getting keen on eco-savings these tend to collide with the needs of standard types of light fitting. \u201cThere is a tradition of keeping floodlights on 24\/7 despite the \u2018green\u2019 initiatives, as traditional lights usually start to break down with the constant heating and cooling of switching on and off.\u201d Plus he explains that high pressure sodium or metal halide lights have a ballast unit which feeds through a high start-up voltage but the older a light gets, the longer it takes to warm up \u201cwhich means it could take 30 seconds or so to get to maximum light output\u201d, another reason for crew\u2019s tardiness in turning off. All this is answered by the \u2018instant on\u2019 of LED technology.<\/p>\n
However, it is trickier than you might think to get something robust enough for marine use: \u201cThere\u2019s sometimes an assumption that \u2018an LED is an LED\u2019, but there can be huge differences; it\u2019s not just about the LED diode, it\u2019s about the whole system,\u201d he explains. There are obviously the continuous jolts and vibration but just as much hangs on more subtle dynamics: \u201cThermal management and a highly corrosive atmosphere are big challenges,\u201d he explains, as these two things usually clash badly and do a lot to shorten the lifespan of many lights. <\/p>\n
Luminell has addressed this by some clever technology: \u201cLights can suck in vapour when cooling, but what we have done is seal the interior components and allowed a very minimised air volume inside, this is paired with a \u2018breathable\u2019 valve so the LEDs will stay dry,\u201d explains Mr Hanken, and this plus a combination of materials, surface treatments and coatings enable the lights to withstand corrosion for the whole product lifetime.<\/p>\n
Another important issue that has been addressed by Luminell is that faced with a voltage drop, some traditional lights will black out entirely. \u201cWe have built flexibility on the power input into the electronics \u2013 something you can\u2019t do with standard fittings – so these lights can work on different voltages, meaning it will cope with the variances you get onboard. In fact you can plug an RLX light into the US 115V standard, switch it over to the UK\u2019s 240V and it will still just turn on.\u201d <\/p>\n
And last but not least there is LED\u2019s ability to simulate daylight: this means colours and contrasts show up better. As one customer put it: \u201cWe can now see in 3D…\u201d<\/p>\n
By Stevie Knight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is quite a theatrical piece of entertainment: lighting manufacturer Luminell invites a yard worker to try to break one of its RLX floodlights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-2698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accessories-equipment"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2700,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions\/2700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2698"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=2698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}