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Ultra Super Bright Channel Letters

Erik Sine

By Erik Sine
in General Message Board

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Erik Sine Master Engineer

Erik Sine

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Posted

OWNING THE NIGHT WITH THE AXIOM SYSTEM

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First I think it should be known that the Axiom LED's are more geared for the advanced level sign fabricators & planners

There are some bright LED systems out there. Some Claim to be Champs, some claim to be Street Fighters. For those of you who are regulars of The Sign Syndicate, you know Axiom LED is a familiar name. You know of Axiom from discussions here, as well as the testing results that we have performed since 2008 in The Great White Hope.

Axiom LED is a wrecker, a Street...Bar Room Brawler.

As some of you know, not too many LEDs impress me.

If you're a Neon guy, trust me....Axiom LEDs are your WORST nightmare come to life when it comes to standard channel letter illumination. I say this because the Axiom AXLE9XB's are a small compact version of a 13mm Tri-Phosphor Lamp operating on a 60ma transformer.

So, which leads me to the content of this thread.

A referral came up and I had two choices, Neon (White 12mm/13mm Tri-Phosphor Lamps) or LED (Axiom AXLE9XB). I thought long and hard, and this became a good opportunity since I don't do many projects these days...to show off what the Axiom LED system does, and is capable of doing.

Laying out the LED, single strip of Axiom's AXLE9XB Modules in a 4.5" width letter stroke.

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What makes Axiom's AXLE9XB LEDs unique is, they operate at 12 volts as a .5 watt LED which are under driven. Or you can run them at optimum and where they want to be at 14.7 volts and unleash the Beast of Nichia within and transform them into a 1.6 watt LED. Nichia has the BEST phosphors!

Here, I left one portion at 12 volts as a 1/2 LED to the right. This is where your normal JT, JS LEDs are normally in brightness. To the left we manually drove up the Axiom AXLE-PS6012 power supplies to 14.7 volts. I just did this for illustration.

The Axiom LEDs are just two modules per foot, or $4.00 a foot for a super ultra high powered, high brightness LED that you won't find in equal, let alone be in the same ballpark when it comes to cost. It would be having to take other LED modules out of manufacturer spec of 2 or 3 per foot to 7 or 8 per foot to try and find the same light output, which would drive your cost from $3.15 per foot to $8.40 per foot using a .5 watt or .72 watt module of competing manufacturers. But, you can do it all for the cost of $4.00 a foot with Axiom LEDs AXLE9XB Modules

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Early production shot.

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The channel letter faces are all fabricated with Plasco Trim Cap of course!!!

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Install Day!!

Here's a shot of the military grade 60 watt Axiom AXLE-PS6012 LED power supplies. The operating LED light as well as diagnostic light, right next to it is the set screw fro adjusting them from 10.5 volts to 15 volts. As you can see, these are very small metal power supplies that fit perfectly into sign bodies

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Check it out, it's noon and the LEDs are so bright you can see them fighting the day light!

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Okay the final shot

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I was getting anywhere from 385 to 415 foot candles on the sign face surface with out light meter that we use for the Sign Syndicate Light Testing Projects.

The pictures at night do it no justice, all I can say is your mouth would drop if you were to see in person. If you work with Neon or familiar with it, just imagine a 13mm Tri-Phosphor Lamp operating at 60ma illuminating white faces. That's what Axiom does, and they do it well!

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Like I said, there are pretenders, there are wannabe's, and then there is the few 5% who are the real deal in the electric sign industry. Axiom's are bright, a nice consistent color rendering, and MOST importantly, are proven to last years well beyond all others.

In closing......The no fancy packaging Axiom LED System in order to keep costs low, is for the experienced electric sign project manager and fabricator ONLY that understands the importance of planning, value, lighting, and desire of integrating an element into their projects that lasts over time and whom doesn't get sucked into the everyday hype of marketing terms and claims made by other manufacturers who have a inferior product who try and make up for it by stressing the importance of cute packaging in the form of lens's & module casings That's what you get with Axiom AXLE9XB LEDs, a quality, high powered godly product with diodes from the world renowned Nichia of Japan, a bare bones package that is proven not only against light degradation (lumen maintenance) but against the elements (IP67) all made and produced right here in the good ol USA

The Simple Project Recipe:

Plexiglas MC #7328 White

Axiom AXLE-PS6012 LED Power Supplies

Axiom AXLE9XB 6500 LEDs

Plasco Trim Cap

3M Yellow Translucent Series

Westrim Toggle Disconnect Switch

No Sweat, No Tears, Some Blood.

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. - Winston Churchill

  • 1 month later...
  • Board Patron
LiteGirl Journeyman

LiteGirl

Posted
  • Board Patron
Posted

Nice job Eric! I got to see this job at night when I was in the area, I am truly amazed and truly a very bright bright letter set that knocks the doors off the others!!

Thank you for sharing, it's good to know what else is out there when the customer wants to stand out.

Erik Sine Master Engineer

Erik Sine

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Sadly not anymore, Axiom used to make a real nice red with chips from Toyoda Gosei I believe. We used to have them in The Red Light District test and they were nice and bright and lasted quite well for the limited time we had them. At the time Manuel just wanted to concentrate on a high powered white LED so he dropped the red.

I'm getting kinda of ahead of making a formal announcement by mentioning this next thing but....

If you want I do have a real nice red, it's constant current, made in Korea and it's been in our testing (Red Light District) for some time and has one of the lowest degradation rates in the hours of operation it's been in there. It's only $2.67 a foot and it has another special convenient feature that I can't mention because it would give it away but it's a product line that will be offered here on the SS.

If interested I can send you a PM on details if you'd like.

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. - Winston Churchill

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      Rant - Vendor paperwork is getting crazy

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