Single point LED....

[IntegrityShirts]

Yea the LED units will come down an absolute ton in a few years when every manufacturer is producing them.

Queue Ryonet...What will his be called?? The Cosmic Ray Avenger LED BLASTER!!!

[IntegrityShirts]

Can't be truly drop in as let's are DC powered. Single point led in the 300w range will probably need a 72v DC power supply. Still if it shoots quick, geat potential here.

Most have drivers that accept standard AC, sometimes between 87 and 240 volts.

Yeah but I think they were hoping they could pop out their MH bulb, and literally drop in an LED, hit the switch and all would work.

Drivers/power supplies for the higher voltage LED's are a little pricier than 12V, but to the point. It's not just an LED drop in, but a "box" with other components inside that convert AC to DC to power the LED.

Very interested to see what Danny's results are...

[mimosatexas]

I don't doubt M&R and a few others will still sell the units at a premium, but I also have no doubt that companies like Ryonet will lower the cost substantially on "comparable" units.  Obviously they won't be backed by the M&R support and will likely be made with shittier components, but the cost will be much less than what we see now and other companies will follow.

I just want to know if this unit will be faster than a 1k MH.  If it is at all faster and holds the same detail it would be worth it to not have to wait for bulb warmup or worry about heat.  The added electrical savings and consistent exposure over the life of the bulb would just be added benefits.

[Gilligan]

Someone already did... and we almost rode their a$$ right out of town.

The Vastex unit was originally the Baby Joe for $2,200 and no one would buy it.  He got nothing but harassing on how it couldn't be all that good and that he was full of sh!t.  He had to send a unit to Pierre to test on his dime to even get the public here to accept that he had created what he created.

So if someone comes out with a cheaper version, it will be just like that all over again.

If I came out with a product and sold it for $1k who would be the first to step up and buy it (untested by an independent?)  Clearly we already kind of see how that is working out right now with this $1,200 single point unit.  "I'll wait to see what Danny finds out first!" is the thinking by everyone here.  If Danny wouldn't be signed up already I doubt many of you would be diving on that grenade.

[Gilligan]

I'll admit, I was right there beating him up over it as well.

http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php/topic,5639.0.html

[3Deep]

I've said this from the time I saw an LED unit why not build a drop in for an existing unit, here is a good selling point if the led drop does work and does the same thing as an MH, what you get is not heat build up, no waiting for the light to heat up, longer bulb life, and a little cheaper on the wallet in the long haul, no weak light/changing bulbs.  I would go for that, because once I'm dial in I'm good for years maybe.

darryl

[mk162]

here's the thing...LED's are only about 11% efficient.  OLED's are better, but not really in much mass production outside of TVs and smartphones.  Theoretically they can achieve up to 40% efficiency.

I would imagine that as these progress and the better LEDs become mid-range the prices will drop, by how much I don't know.

it's funny how much we tout LED's as being so efficient.  They are only efficient in comparison to filament bulbs and other style lighting.

[Gilligan]

As long as you have a clue of what you are doing, you could just drop it in.  Take the lines that feed the ballast and feed the driver.

[DannyGruninger]

So apparently the LED that Saati sent me is different then the led that Alex was talking about here....... So the disclaimer here is I'm pretty confident the led they sent me is not designed to fully expose a screen, rather it's to post expose. I did retrofit the light into my 3140 and did some testing with it and results are junk. The light does not have near enough power to expose my dual cure emulsion. I think the reason the led works so well on our i image ste is due to the fact of how many leds there are and how close they are to the screen....... Unless the light saati is talking about is way more powerful then the one they sent me I would say the single point led is a waste of time but just my opinion there....... Like I said the light your talking about looks to be different then the one they sent me so it's not fair for me to say if it will/won't work but as of right now I would be sticking to a ste or a starlight...... I dont think you can beat the starlight imo

Saati is suppose to be in my shop tomorrow so I'll talk more about it then and let you guys know but as of right now I'm pretty sure the led they sent me is not designed to actually expose.

[DannyGruninger]

So made about a dozen screens with the led light sitting in my 3140 unit...... My high mesh stuff I'm getting really nice screens with it around 1.5 minutes.....Which is pretty slow but like I said the light saati sent me is different then the 3000..... As far as undercutting and detail on the screen I'm not seeing anything that looks bad... The screens look really nice, it's just a bit slow. But so far if this light was more powerful it would probably work as a drop in unit....

[IntegrityShirts]

What emulsion Danny? And is there any power rating/consumption info on the unit you have? 90 seconds isn't too bad for some emulsions

[Frog]

The unit linked by TCT (not Danny's apparently) is reported to be the equivalent of a 5k MH.(they actually say "traditional" lamp)
It was on display at SGIA, and got a brief mention in the Ink Kitchen blog.

[ZooCity]

I have to agree with Pierre's comments and really everyone's on perceived value.  Our Starlight arrives pretty soon.  The Anatol unit had a better layout for us, for our shop's needs shooting 2up would in fact have a benefit, and the Anatol, the Vastex model as well as Lightspeed cost significantly less.  I bought peace of mind with the Starlight, not necessarily a huge increase in performance over the other brands although I trust that will be a real benefit as well. 

Models like the Saati unit would not exactly "drop in" to where your MH bulb was in your current lamphead but would replace the entire lamp head and ballast I believe.  There would be no reason to continue using the 5kw ballast of an MH unit for a 300w LED array. 

Yes, inverse square law (I think?) kicks in no matter the light source and for us to continue to shoot as we are, appx 63" from glass would still result in similar expo times with this LED lamp head.   This is why I was asking about reflector options, if they had a "super wide" option to bring the lamp in closer it could mean a reduction in expo times.  This means R&D spent on getting the angles correct and eliminating cross over and scatter though which would mean a higher price.  For a shop that had to shoot larger areas, switching to this Saati unit would still be a probable no brainer as the unit costs around what 3 high quality Olec lamps run.  That's a 1 yr ROI for a shop with moderate screen throughput and much faster for shops with their bulb on all day long.   

So this would be buying your way out of MH bulb replacement v. changing the way you shoot altogether with an array setup.  I think we'll still be much happier with an LED array system since it solves a number of other problems for us aside from exposure time- space, light scatter, power consumption -all those are just as beneficial to us right now as decreasing expo time.

[TCT]

Ok, so I just got off the phone with 2 Saati guys....

Danny, is yours more of a circular unit vs. rectangular? They were thinking you may have the "100" unit, which is more of a circle and they said has been used for post exposing with CTS units.

The "300" unit @ 44" from the glass they said was equivalent to a OLIX(sp?) 3000 watt unit. 

Exposure times vary depending on placement from the glass, mesh, emulsion, yada, yada, yada... But they said a safe or common range they were seeing was 17-27 seconds.

The 300 unit is made up of 3 actual lights focused, the 100 is 1 light and they are working on a 500 unit but are having hurdles keeping it cool enough.

They were actually in the airport on their way to a company that makes exposure units to work out a deal. Sounds like they would IDEALLY down the line like to have a whole unit with vacuum blanket timer and all for under $3K in the future.

They are getting me a handful of contact info for current US users that I can talk to and see what they think....

[ABuffington]

OK, light energy in the correct wavelengths is what exposes emulsion.  How many watts?  At what distance?  300w compared to a 5,000 watt Metal Halide?  Proximity to the screen is what helps the Starlight and other LED's to expose emulsion, and most have limited multi spectral capability that dual cures love.  I'd love to hear tests.  Here is the acid test:  Coat a 110 1:2 with your emulsion.  Expose it for the same time at the same distance as you are using now.  I doubt the emulsion will stay on the screen without a far longer exposure using a 300w LED than the 1k and 5k units.  Even the difference between an Olec 8k and 5k is quite a lot as far as emulsion durability.  Weak light = weak screens.  Maybe Ok for plastisol and small runs, but a long discharge run, or worse a long High Solids Acrylic ink run?  no way.  LED's conjure up all sorts of savings in electricity and lamps, but image quality and reject rates, especially on discharge could be painful. 

We have experimented with a variety of LED's from a major LED manufacturer.  We have tested some so strong they burnt holes in the mesh due to being so close.  The best times we came up with in a scanning LED had times equal to the 5k metal halide in the lab, but did not pass a simple ink test with Matsui 301 whereas a multi spectral MH 5k bulb exposure showed no breakdown of the emulsion.  We have seen good results with the Starlight in our tests and it is due to how close the lights are to the screen.  You will see emulsion manufacturers coming out with LED emulsions.  Trouble is they need to be tuned to the wavelength of the sensitizer.  Diazo likes 360 nanometers, SBQ likes 380, 420.  So if the lamp has only a single spike wavelength in the histogram it may not fully expose a dual cure.  It may appear to be fully exposed, even without slime on the inside, but the cross linking going on in the emulsion will be partial and not as complete as a 5k-8k fresh Metal Halide.  Call the emulsion what you will, diazo is the magic ingredient that helps with water resistance and it likes 360nm so how will a 405nm light expose that completely?

LED is in it's infancy.  It's only going to get better.  Anyone with results on any LED lamps using Discharge would be appreciated.  If the screen can hold up to a long discharge run and hold good tonals then the LED light has benefits.  Printers make money when the presses run, if the light source doesn't shoot durable screens the profits suffer.  Short runs, probably won't matter, for the long runs?  I have seen disasters and major headaches at shops running longer discharge and HSA ink print runs suffering screen failure and with plastisol showing major pinhole issues.

Al