Project Tighty Whitey - Year 3 & 4 (Public Thread)

Erik Sine · September 16, 2011

PROJECT TIGHTY WHITEY - YEARS 3 & 4

July 2009 - UPDATED Current

Questions or concerns? A Vendor wanting to participate? Contact Info admin@thesignsyndicate.com

Direct Link to Project Tighty Whitey
http://www.thesignsyndicate.com/forums/index.php?/tutorials/article/33-project-tighty-whitey-year-3-4/

Well as stated before in a previous thread.....It's OPEN HOUSE!!! In short the test results are available to everyone in the sign industry. All you have to do is register for free if you have not already done so.

The reason for this, I want a bigger participation. I think this industry needs it VERY bad because of all the industry myths and misinformation about light sources. Education seems to be lacking in this department and a lot of shops depend on the word of the manufacturer rep or a sign supplier rep.

The only thing we ask is, if you like what you see and if it helps you make better buying decisions for your sign applications that you build then you can support us and the tests we do by either upgrading your free membership to a Board Patron which has it's additional benefits or by purchasing electrical sign supplies that we sell here on The Sign Syndicate as you'll see in the test result sheets!

I'm starting a new thread for years 3 & 4 of this test, the public thread for years 1 & 2 can be found here LINK

This comparison & evaluation results of each individual Light source will give you an idea of what will work for your different applications as a Electric Sign Builder, you will see that not one product will work in all applications. This comparison can and will save you money in choosing the right product for your specific applications needs that way you don't have to guess or take someone's word for it, or even worse, having to settle on being sold a product from a supplier because they have a limited selection or options of products to choose from.

* Below under the products being used for this comparison you will see a asterisk *, this means that manufacturer is a non-willing participant to this non biased comparison. I have initiated and asked all major manufacturer's to participate in these comparisons, some have chosen to ignore or simply decline. I'm a firm believer that manufacturer's should be proud, and completely stand behind what they sell to you! No manufacturer should have a problem participating in this comparison. The Sign Syndicate is not owned, operated or influenced by any Vendor. I would ask all sign shops who are visited by these reps to simply ask them or invite them to be apart of this non-biased comparison, take a look and see what their reaction is, that just may well tell you who you are dealing with.

This is the Second comparison project to be placed into the Tutorial section of this board. The Tutorial section of this board is reserved for those members who choose to support this board by upgrading their free membership, to that of a "Board Patron". Also, this section is for Members who are sign component manufacturer's, suppliers, distributors, or associations and choose to become a "Board Vendor". The future of the Tutorial section will hold more projects along with Articles written by various individuals.

This Tutorial Section is our way of saying, "Thank You for supporting the website, and here's something back."

For updates, further content information and results will now be put into the Tutorial Section for this project seen here, in the Fabrication category "Project Tighty Whitey"

This is a Benchmark test of various white LED light sources, this is the sort of test the trade magazines & associations won't publish or report!

The Standard for this project will be 6500 Kelvin

What are we testing? Well similar to the The Great White hope,

Initial Brightness
Power Consumption
Light Depreciation

Regal Piedmont Plastics has been kind enough to contribute the acrylics for this project. Here is the acrylic line up we will be using for this project:

Optix LD 7238
Optix LD 2447
Cyro Complete LED Line
Plexiglas Frost White?

DIMENSIONS

3" & 5" Depth returns. 1.625" x 23.5". LED's .80 watts per module and smaller

POWER SOURCE

All light sources are on a shared circuit split between a couple Axiom LED Power Supplies except for a few vendors that use voltage other than 12 volts

Sample Monthly Evaluation Sheet

sample%20ptw.jpg

Early Project Teaser Pic

PTW%20Teas%200211.jpg

Light Source Products: (.80 watts per module and below)

YYZ - Easy Stroke & Mini Stroke
CAO - Luxembright Mini & Luxembright Economy
Axiom
Ventex - Venbrite
JT LED -.3 watt & .4watt (*Non Willing Participant)
US LED - The Point (*Non Willing Participant)
US LED - The Point 3 *Non Willing Participant)
Transco Color Flex, Aqua
Sloan V-Series (*Non Willing Participant)
Sloan V180-Series (*Non Willing Participant)
Sloan Value Plus (*Non Willing Participant)
Sloan ChanneLED5 (*Non Willing Participant)
Allanson - Storm Tight
etecdisplay - Ice & Everbright
EGL Veritas
Permlight - Twister Star (*Non Willing Participant)
AgiLight - ThinRayz (*Non Willing Participant)
Eurocom - Letro-LED
AA LED - Blazer HD
AVA Technology - 12-B3
GE Tetra Max (*Non Willing Participant)
GE Tetra Max HO 2013 (*Non Willing Participant)
GE Tetra Mini Max (*Non Willing Participant)
GE NB1000 (*Non Willing Participant)
LumiText (Lumistring)
JS LED - (*Non Willing Participant)
Principal LED - Optima(*Non Willing Participant)
SS Light

If anyone can think of other manufacturer's please let me know.

There is no predetermined number of slots yet for this project, I was anticipating anywhere from 15-25. Any manufacturer or supplier who would like to participate in this project please contact me. admin@thesignsyndicate.com I'll be doing my best to contact as many manufacturer's as I can.

Erik Sine · September 16, 2011

Updated for September, this month we added Sloan LED's V180-series

Erik Sine · October 16, 2011

Updated for October!

Will be adding in International Light Technologies LED line for this project next month along with a few other vendors.

Erik Sine · April 22, 2012

At the ISA Expo we saw lots of possible vendors to add to this test, there were some impressive vendors. One that we saw just joined up to enter the fray and we're proud to announce InSem out of Southern California who's bringing in a Korean LED, SS Light. What's unique about the SS LED is that's it's fairly bright and the leads aren't polarized, which means it doesn't matter where the positive and negative lead go so you can't get it wrong. In other words it's "Dummy Proof". So that's a nice feature to have!

SS Light Modules

Eurocom has opted to not resume with the testing or whatever reason and hope we see them again the future but we appreciated having them. So for now they have been removed from all test comparisons

Erik Sine · May 28, 2012

UPDATED FOR MAY

Newly added this month is NC LED's newest modules. I'm not too much into packaging of LEDs but I have to say,these are probably the coolest looking modules I've seen. These are brighter than it's predecessors that we have in our tests.

This month we removed the AgiLight LED modules. With some uncertainty with litigation between AgiLight & GE we'll wait before adding more AgiLight LED modules in our tests.

The Module

NC%20LED1.JPG

Project Tighty Whitey

NEC%20LED2.JPG

Erik Sine · February 11, 2013

UPDATED!!!

New LED Modules that we already have in position and prepared to add are SS Lights, Lumitext, Sloans's V-series 2, NC LED and Agilight

Erik Sine · June 6, 2013

Announced in another thread, Project Tighty Whitey SOON to be made public for the electric sign industry.

For this up coming week we just added a new line of LumiText LED, US LED's new The Point 3 (Non-Willing Participant), GE's new Tetra Max HO line (Non-Willing Participant), and NC LED's Eco line (Supplied by Abitech).

US LED's The Point 3

GE Tetra Max HO line

Snoochie · June 7, 2013

At the ISA Expo we saw lots of possible vendors to add to this test, there were some impressive vendors. One that we saw just joined up to enter the fray and we're proud to announce InSem out of Southern California who's bringing in a Korean LED, SS Light. What's unique about the SS LED is that's it's fairly bright and the leads aren't polarized, which means it doesn't matter where the positive and negative lead go so you can't get it wrong. In other words it's "Dummy Proof". So that's a nice feature to have!

SS Light Modules

Eurocom has opted to not resume with the testing or whatever reason and hope we see them again the future but we appreciated having them. So for now they have been removed from all test comparisons

Erik;

Why doesn't this module have to take heed of Polarity while all others do?

Why doesn't the others copy this model.

Is this better or worse?

Can you or anyone else explain the technicalities behind this scenario.

Best

Erik Sine · June 7, 2013

That's a good question, and I suppose it depends on the mfg and how much they want to spend on each individual module. I wish every LED module was constant current where you have a current regulator on each module instead of just resistors (Constant Voltage LEDs). In reality, it's just a few pennies more per module but I think it makes a world of difference.

But, it's not to say constant voltage LEDs aren't as good. In the past we've seen some Axiom LEDs which perform pretty damn good in our tests. I like the CC LEDs because it will help to assure the brightness and current be the same throughout the string whereas this is not the case for CV LEDs, the voltage can very and so can the brightness. Also, the slightest fraction of a volt can kill a CV LED string as we've seen in our Great White Hope Test...a goof on my part but it was educational to see what a slight fraction of a volt can do.

I'm sure there are pro's and con's to the CC & CV LEDs depending on application and right now with the economy with a race to the bottom where shops look for $1 modules....Their definitely not buying CC LEDs but the much cheaper China imports.

Yeah, I think the non-polarized LED leads that SS Lights is freakin cool and a damn good idea and so far I haven't seen anyone else with them so for now that's THEIR signature. Their also doing pretty damn well right now in the testing. We just put theirs up in the Blue Light Special test and we already have their green for upcoming green test, all non-polarized. We also have their mini....mini LED modules. These things are freakishly small and bright for their size.

We'll throw them into Tighty Whitey probably next month along with Lumitexts mini.

Here's a sneak peak at their mini's. It's the 3rd from the bottom and Limitext which is slightly longer but thinner is at the bottom. You can put these in some VERY small applications

The SS Light Mini is 1.25" long by .25" wide, the Lumitext mini's are only 3/16" tall. You can use them in some cool projects for sure!!!

MBalistreri · June 11, 2013

Hi Erik,

Would it be possible to replace our 2-5050 module in PTW with our new ECO module?

In that case we would have running our 2 new modules (ECO, and HLC), and also 1 of our old modules the 3-5050 in the GWH.

Our both old modules with around 20% degradation around 5000 hrs are now both around 5% degradation around 8000hrs.

We tested the 3-5050 also in the Netherlands up to 10.000hrs, and we observed 6% increase around 9000 hrs, and 5% increase around 10.000hrs.

It will be very interesting to see what will happen after 10.000 hrs.

BR

Marcello

Erik Sine · June 11, 2013

Hi Marcello, of course we'll get them switched out! I'll do that when I return next week. Do you have a new mini LED or is the one I posted your current?