Improving lighting

[garys]

I decided to improve the lighting in my wood shop. I had two 2-tube 32 watt flourescent lights in the ceiling. According to specs, they put out 11,000 lumens together. I'm replacing them with (2) 4' LED fixtures that are rated at 10,000 lumens each so I end up with 20,000 lumens instead of the 11,000 I had.

Old guys with old eyes appreciate lots of light, and Menards has a great deal in the lights right now.

[dusty]

I decided to improve the lighting in my wood shop. I had two 2-tube 32 watt flourescent lights in the ceiling. According to specs, they put out 11,000 lumens together. I'm replacing them with (2) 4' LED fixtures that are rated at 10,000 lumens each so I end up with 20,000 lumens instead of the 11,000 I had.

Old guys with old eyes appreciate lots of light, and Menards has a great deal in the lights right now.

You can say that again!

20211211_093718.jpg (26.52 KiB) Viewed 3812 times

[chapmanruss]

Good lighting is important in the shop. I have a total of 12 4' fluorescent 2 bulb utility type light fixtures in my garage/shop area, which is 30' wide by 36' deep. As they need replacements, I plan on using 4' LED Fixtures which as garys points out produces more lumens. At some point soon I may just "bite the bullet" and go ahead and replace all 12 at once.

[Ed in Tampa]

Why not just replace the tubes instead of the whole fixture?
I did mine with tubes that bypass the ballast, they were packaged in a box of ten tubes and came with new tombstones. The change over was easy, disconnect power, cut out the ballast, physically remove ballast (in most cases one screw), slide out old tombstones, connect the two tombstones to power, install new tubes and you are finished.

The increased lumens plus “instant on” is great! I think the ten tube box at Lowes was $68 or $78 at the time.

[garys]

I looked into replacing just the tubes, but the ones I found didn't offer the light level I'm looking for. The LED tubes available to fit flourescent fixtures seem to be limited to around 5000 lumens for a pair of them which is about the same as the flourescent tubes. Replacing the entire light allows me to jump to 10,000 lumens.

A few years ago when I looked at 4' LED lights for my workbench, the only commonly available ones were 5000 lumen, about the same amount of light as my flourescent 4' ones. Anything bigger than 5000 lumen was too pricey to even consider. I did get one of the 5000 ones for over my workbench, and at close quarters like that, it is enough.
I wanted more for the ceiling where they are farther away. With a few years to work on them, the manufacturers are commonly offering 10,000 and even 12,000 lumen lights in the same package, and selling them for less than I paid for the 5,000 a few years ago.

[JPG]

Keep in mind the color temperature. 5200K is GREAT(better than 2700K).

[garys]

I totally agree about color temperature. For years already, I bought flourescent bulbs in 5000K-6000K color because they put out more useful light. As I switched to LEDs, I did the same thing. The soft whites deliver poor light due to their color temperature. The daylight ones at 5000-6000K do much better.

I know some people don't like the white light of the bulbs with high color temperatures, but I do.

[JPG]

Low K temperature is for gastronomical ambiance.












So thee cannot see what thou are consuming.

[bainin]

I've spent 20 years making the LED world what it is. We were able to create reasonable light qualities with much higher efficiencies than previous technologies (flourescent, incandescent etc) . Its not perfect-but if the goal is efficiency, it is pretty good.

I've worked for Lumileds, Philips, Cree, Soraa and others...and my job was to find/develop the materials to create the White light spectra that meet
the general requirements of "white light". Materials science of luminescent materials.

In a general sense, the warmer the light (meaning more red or lower CCT) the lower the Lumen output. Or if the same lumen output, the lower the overall system efficiency.

As we age, our blue discrimination becomes worse due to the change in absorption in our lenses (in our eyes) thus older folks tend to desire a much more Blue version of white light than do the younger crowd. As well, nordic folk tend to like very blue white Geographic location matters-ie what you are used to standing outside.

If you choose high CCT (daylight and beyond 5000K+)- there are two things to also be looking for

1) Low flicker on the lights - the drivers for low power LEDs are AC-DC converters and some of them do a good job of smoothing the output, some dont. This can be very noticeable in a shop. This trend follows price. lower priced LED fixtures cut corners on the drivers and typically result in high flicker.

2) high CRI - color rendering - a well designed LED source will have a CRI of 90 + . CRI is one representation of how well the colors of an object are recreated under a particular light.

Now, I making white light starting with blue lasers which have a surface brightness greater than our sun.

https://www.kyocera-sldlaser.com/

I'm thinking about putting some of these as task light in my shop

b

[davebodner]

As we age, our blue discrimination becomes worse due to the change in absorption in our lenses (in our eyes) thus older folks tend to desire a much more Blue version of white light than do the younger crowd. As well, nordic folk tend to like very blue white Geographic location matters-ie what you are used to standing outside.

b

Your entire post was fascinating.

I've recognized the objective superiority of higher temperature LED lighting, both in efficiency and in color-rendering. Nonetheless, I prefer "warmer" lighting, even for the shop. Perhaps that'll change as I get older.