The Great White Hope II (Year 1)

[Erik Sine]

Originally Posted Mar 15 2014 05:43 PM

The Great White Hope II - (Year 1 & 2)

February 2014 - Present

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!


One thing that we don't sell here on The Sign Syndicate for the exact reasons of these tests is sell Neon Glass or LED Modules because I know most would think us bias if we did. So because of this, we'll only sell electrical sign supplies that compliment these light sources such as LED power supplies, and neon wiring & Transformers etc.

You'll also notice a lot of Light Source MFG's signed up here on the Sign Syndicate and submitted their lamps for the testing. Some did not, and you'll see "Non-Willing Participant" next to their name in the Tutorial product listings. Most did not want to because they did not want to be compared to their competition or called out on their claims when they show up to your shop and tell you you should buy theirs because they are superior to their competition. Well, all we can do here is include some of those MFG's anyway and throw them up on the board and see where they might fall. We hope some of them at some point join us and take part because they want to. They ALL have an open invitation to do so. We thinks it's a good idea and there is a lot to learn and most of the time it just begs more questions than results can answer. If you are a Light source manufacturer interested in having your lamps included then please upgrade your free membership to a Board Vendor (which includes a free advertising package for the duration of your membership) and submit your lamps


I first to want to start off by thanking everyone who has been involved with this project from the start and continue to make it better, I want to specially thank Telford Dorr for this immeasurable measurements, Marko of YYZ LED Systems for helping to move this project in a better direction and the Vendors who have participated with their products for this comparison.


Though 6500 SW is the standard here for comparison you'll see a variation of whites, not all are of course in the same ballpark, but you will see where pending the application you might choose one over the other.


You might see some edits done on this tutorial over the course an that is because information may/will change.


Every month power readings and light output readings will be added to this tutorial. Other tests may also be done not yet defined at this point. A picture will also be taken with the same settings and placement.


THE TEST:

First, The Great White Hope II is for high powered LEDs 1watt + and above, all others below are for Project Tighty Whitey. This is also for Neon & Tri-Phosphor Neon Lamps.

Like our other tests, we are taking period reads and measuring the light output of every single light source in our test right on the sign face which is made up of a 8" x 8" marked square on the same spot every time and we average the highs and lows.

For the initial power consumption measuring for the LEDs we are using a GW Instek programmable power supply. This PS measure and tells us what each string pulls as if the power supply they were on is running at 100% efficiency. Why we do it this way is because the power supply YOU use for your applications will vary and we want to level the plain field.

On the Neon side of things we are just going to use the age old France Footage/Watt Chart, this is also to assume the neon is running on a typical magnetic power supply. We are also not including the 1 extra foot of power consumption per pair of electrodes per lamp because this would greatly skew the numbers of small 2' light sources.

The main thing about this benchmark test is that we are looking at lumen maintenance and how much each product will hold up over time and monitor the light degradation. One thing I wish we could measure and monitor is the color shift over time of each product. Maybe we will get access to a spectrometer in the future because there is a huge shift of some products over time and we will notice in our yearly shots that we take for comparison.



SIGN CHANNEL STRUCTURE

Well, instead of the large sectioned out cabinet we had for the first Great White Hope this time we did assimilated to our other tests and fabricated individual channels for each light source.


LIGHT SOURCE PRODUCT LIST (Top to Bottom)

• Axiom LED AXLE9XB
• 13mm EGL DL 61 ((Tri-Phosphor 60ma) *-Non-Willing Participant
• 15mm Voltarc 6500 SW *-Non-Willing Participant
• 13mm Voltarc 6500 SW *-Non-Willing Participant
• 15mm FMS TC 6500 (Tri-Phosphor)
• 15mm Glostertube 6500 6500 166 (Tri-Phosphor)
• 13mm EGL DL61 (Tri-Phosphor)
• 13mm Voltarc Tri-Lite *-Non-Willing Participant
• 12mm FMS TC6500 (Tri-Phosphor)
• Permlight El Plato HO *-Non-Willing Participant
• GOQ LED *-Non-Willing Participant
• GE Tetra Power Max *-Non-Willing Participant
• International Light Technologies Summit
• Sloan GW4 *-Non-Willing Participant
• Permlight Twister *-Non-Willing Participant
• Hyco CooChip

SIGN COMPONENTS

• 1/8" Cyro #7328 White Acrylic Lens Faces
• CCFL Transformers- Ventex 6030/60CL
• CCFL Transformers- Ventex 6030/30CL
• Axiom 60 Watt Class II LED Power Supplies
• Transco TC200 Porcelain Housings
• FMS Neon Tube Supports
• Plasco Trim Cap

DURATION:

This project is never stopping, it runs for two 10 hour cycles a day 365 days a year


NEON & LED POWER:

Unlike the first Great White Hope where we had dedicated power sources for each lamp are are copying our other light test projects that consist of all light sources on a shared power supply. For the LEDs are are using the surplus military grade Axiom LED Power Supplies left over from the GWH (So to continue their endurance at 40k+ operating hours) because of the manual DC voltage set screw to assure we have exactly 12volts across all LED strings to level the playing field. For all Neon Lamps we are using our surplus SST Ventex Neon Transformers to again, continue to monitor their endurance as well at 40k+ hours of operation. All Neon lamps are on a shared SST.




EARLY TEST PICTURES

Finally lighting up all the neon side of the project



The same for the LED side



The back side of the project







March 15, 2014

Today is the first evaluation since the project has been ongoing. The only thing we have in news is that as usual all the Neon lamps are taking their initial lumen maintenance that comes in the first 1000 or so hours then we'll see them plane off gradually.

Below are the pics of the class of 2014.

I'm just going to show off one pic of the Neon, because no one will be able to distinguish one from the other.

PIC1



Hyco CooChip



Permlight's El Plato HO



GE's Tetra Power Max



GOQ's Quad Chip LED



Sloan's GW4



International Light Technologies Summit



Permlight's Twister



I'm currently looking to add US LED's Quasar 3, Osram, and Agilight and whatever other LED manufacturers decide to join us in this ongoing comparison project.

In a short observation we're already seen a 16% drop in light output from the CooChip and we'll see what happens next period.

Just this month a national sign company gave us a few strings of AgiLight LEDs that they wanted to see in our various tests that they also use for a national sign program. The string that we will be putting up for GWH II will be the Apex series, this will be for April.

Some of the LEDs we have in our tests come from sign companies who are curious about the performance of products they use, and when doing so it helps us all out and we all learn.


MARCH 2014 EVALUATION DOWNLOAD


SEPTEMBER 2014 EVALUATION
10/30/14

It's been some time. In August we added Axiom LEDs AXLE9XB module at 14.7 volts on a dedicated power supply, the LEDs come in at 1.6 watts each.

AXLE9XB



We're a little over a month of reporting these late September results and about two weeks short of doing Novembers. It's been some time so I may add or make changes to the above information.

The download sheet for September can be found here

Link http://www.thesignsy...arison-results/

[Erik Sine]

October 22, 2015

This month we took out International Lights Summit, as discussed on other projects this month the reason is because some products are dated, or the Vendor is no longer associated with the board.

A couple of months ago we added Principal LEDs "Qwik Stik", and this month we added in their Fusion 4 LED.

Fusion 4

This period we also added in our cabinet comparison shot, something I thought we did long ago but did not.

One thing we may change out is the NC LED quad chip HLC4S to the new Samsung 1.6 watt module, but we'll see on that.

October 2015 evaluation download: GreatWhiteHopeII 102215.pdf

[Erik Sine]

January 03, 2016

This month we added in NC's High Powered Constant Current HLC4 1.8 watt Samsung LED.

We also had a failure of our 60ma Neon unit. I'm going to have to find another Neon Processor for this task. I have a feeling I'm either going to have to find a reliable source to redo all or look to have each redone again by each Neon mfg which I would rather not have to do because of shipping and because each lamp would be processed differently. Right now I'm looking at lamps that that are smaller in diameter that are just as bright as larger diameter lamps which should not be. We're not getting the same results as the original Great White Hope which is disappointing.

January 2013 Evaluation Download: GreatWhiteHopeII 010316.pdf