Shop lighting, rampant fraud

tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
Need some serious lighting in my garage for a temporary spray booth. Picked up a "3000 Lumen" R bulb. Claimed to be equivalent to a 350.
Well, 300 L is actually about what a 200W incandescent puts out. Claims 30W. Pulled 42. Just looking at the output, I would believe about 2000L max.

Watched some video's on flashlights. Incredible output claims. Most produced about 1.5% when tested! Yea, a 100,000 Lumen light would burn your hand in seconds and start a fire at 2 feet and to produce that much output, would need 500A. Not going to happen from a Li-Ion cell. I have a 16,000 L flashlight and it gets too hot to touch in a couple of minutes. An expensive one and I believe the specs. A lot of LEDs and 5 Li-on cells.

Now in my shop I have some fairly expensive (4 years ago ) 4 foot 50W LED fixtures. They claim 4000L. I can believe close maybe. Not getting more as the buzz too loud. I have several of the infamous HF Bauer 5000L shop lights and for the dirt cheap price, darn good. Claim 60W which the math works out to be within reason.

Now the actual question. Looking for specs I can believe. Are there brands that don't lie?

Has anyone used those daisy petal kind of lights? Surface area for cooling does not look to be anywhere near enough for their power draw. Some current/Lumen specs seem close to reasonable though. 150W or so.
 

Keye

Keye
Corporate Member
I feel your pain. I walk down the light bulb aisle looking for a bulb for a table lamp and can not figure out what to buy.
 

tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
Had good luck with Cree. Local NC company and they actually make the LEDs. Done OK with the Econosmart for "60W" bulbs around the house. The 3000W was an Econosmart though. Dimmable will be more expensive than non, and of course, we have choices of color from 2700 to 6000. The higher temp tend to be more efficient and cheaper. Roughly. I prefer about 3500 degrees inside the house. More to the 5000 or 6000 "daylight" for the shop.
 

ssmith

New User
Scott
This site claims about 200 lm/watt is the current limit for production LEDs: LED efficiency

The engineering specs on commercially available LEDs backs that number up. On Newark Electronic's site, a quick check showed they range from about 80 lm/watt to around 180 lm/watt for a Cree LED (see attached).

Those values are highly reliable given the source, so anything claimed above 180 lm/watt is probably nonsense. Unfortunately, aside from looking at those numbers, the only other option would be to buy one and measure output with a lightmeter or hope you know someone who has.

FWIW, I've had Antlux strip lights for around a year and am satisfied they produce reasonably close to their 12600 lumen rating. The fact they're 8' long also minimizes shadows - unless you plan to use a lot of the daisy petal lights spread around you're ceiling, that could be a problem.
 

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tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
Yea, I thought about that "point source". 8 footers may well be a good idea.
Immediate project is some cabinet painting, but I want the light for cleaning and detailing my cars too. I have a small light on a remote for when I drive up, but when I want to do a project, I want freaking daylight! Seems every year, I need more and more light.

Of course, Lm/W is the raw LED, not a working system. Looks like about 120 is reasonable quality and about 100 common. I also saw some testing for current on various A base bulbs. Many were way higher than the spec.
 

Rwe2156

DrBob
Senior User
I don't know about the reliability of specs, I would have to assume they aren't lying. I wouldn't be too concerned about it, any LED is going to be an upgrade from flourescents.

Are the lights not satisfactory? What K rating?
 

tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
Where I need the light, my garage, it has four recessed cans with 75W R-30 floods. Yea, not satisfactory.

Doing more research. A LOT of flat out lies out there. I would think Cooper would be honest, but on display they had a 15,000 next to a 5000 and in truth, the 5000 Lm looked about the same. Their math works though. 109W for 137 Lm/W. Any color above 4K is fine. Might get one to try. Joy, back into the garage attic to re-wire.
 

waitup

Matt
Corporate Member
Might get one to try. Joy, back into the garage attic to re-wire.

Shew, don't envy that task this time of year. I went with 8' integrated LED off the shelf from Lowe's. Not dimmable, but they do pretty well. I have about half the lumens some of the guides I read called for, but I can see well everywhere but the corners.
 

tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
Standard of 50/ft means a bit over 30K. I guess I just start putting them in until I have enough to see. Probably four. My woodshop area is about "standard" and I still need task lighting at every station.

The good news is the inrush current is not high like fluorescents, so one can put enough light on one switch with them all coming on. I remember old classrooms that had half a dozen switches and you had to turn them on in sequence.
 

Cbozz

Chris
User
Don't know if these would work for you but I have a box of WAC pro 3 4500k tape I was sent by mistake (ordered 3000k) a couple years ago. 5w and 475lm/ft, I have 40'. WAC is pretty high end stuff so I'd hope its legit -retail on the box is $1600. haven't had any luck finding a use for them so I'd sell it 20c/dollar. Would need a wac power supply to drive them.

 

Grimmy2016

Administrator
Scott

golfdad

Co-director of Outreach
Dirk
Corporate Member
Scott I get my daylight bulbs (5000KW) from Green Light Depot. less than $10 per bulb and extremely bright
 

tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
I put up one of the Cooper. Seems OK. I need at least 3 more. Don't hear any buzz like the ones in my shop. (Shop lights also wiped out my FM radio. I had to move to big LP up in the attic to get away from them)
 

tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
50,000 Lm not enough. Just sprayed my vanities and could not really see what I was doing. For painting, I think I need at least twice that.
 

bainin

New User
bainin
Here is the recommended light levels for various tasks-sounds like you are in the highest Lux category. An example of the Flux calculation to Illuminance is below the table. This shouldn't be complete guesswork.

b
 

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tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
Standards are great as there are so many to choose from.
What matters is the lux on the surface, not the Lm/sq ft. I am just reporting, for my old eyes ( not accounted for in the "standards"), 100 Lm/sq ft is not enough buy quite a bit. Standards do not account for the mist in the air and reduction from a full face mask.

Ceiling and walls white, but cement floor. As we know by experience, cement magically reaches into the air and pulls light beams into oblivion.
 

bainin

New User
bainin
Flux/sq ft and Flux/ sq. M --- Both terms are flux per unit area- which are both fine when discussing Illuminance.

Yes, Lux is defined as the SI unit of illuminance which has units of Flux/sq. M but that is a -derived- value for the SI system. The -derived- values of illuminance for the English system are Flux/ sq ft.

They are interchangeable so long as you make the appropriate english/metric conversions. In this case the factor is the sq ft to Sq M adjustment , a factor of 10.76.

Standards-such as the one listed do account for mist in the air, face mask etc - but it is incumbent on the user to establish the Cu (coefficient of utilization) and the Llf (Light loss factor) and the user must make the calculation shown in the example below the table.
 

tvrgeek

Scott
Corporate Member
All I am doing is providing feedback for others of my experience I need at least twice as much light as I put in. Enough is when I can see the result of the spray pattern ( dark green). Also was my discovery that what is on the box is not always what is in the box.

The above suggested table does not account for age. How much light I needed 50 years ago is different from now. Anyway, going to put in two more fixtures in the half of the garage where I am working and see how it goes next spray out.
 

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