Unilux has won the C2 Converting Innovation Award 2013 for the development of its LED2000-Series LED stroboscopic inspection lights. The award was presented at ICE USA 2013, April 9-11, in Orlando, FL, USA. The new series of LED strobe lights combines the power of traditional xenon-powered strobe lights with the operating benefits of LED lighting and has more adjustment capabilities to for more effective inspection at full production speeds.

“Developing our new LED strobe lights was a team effort in every sense,” says Mike Simonis, president, Unilux. “Our customers and sales staff provided great feedback at every step of our design process to tell our engineering and software team what they needed to create an indispensable inspection tool. Winning the C2 Converting Innovation Award demonstrates how good things can happen when companies and their customers keep their lines of communication open.”

Unilux completely re-engineered the concept of LED-based stroboscopic surface inspection lights with the creation of the LED2000-Series. According to the company, the new lights are five times brighter than Unilux’s first generation of LED strobes, giving the same lighting performance as the company’s proven xenon-based lights. They operate on only 25% to 35% of the power consumption of Unilux’s ubiquitous Lith-O-Light strobes. The new LED 2000 Series strobes are about one-third the size of their traditional equivalents and lighter while replicating their power and increasing the flash-rate range.

“The ability to control the lights’ output is one of the major innovations in strobe light technology,” Simonis says. “Light output is controlled by varying both the light intensity and the duration or ‘on’ time of the light. The perceived light intensity seen by the user is actually a relationship between the intensity of light and the light duration. A longer pulse rate, 100 microseconds, for example, provides more light, but the sharpness of an image frozen by the action of the strobe degrades with longer durations. A longer duration can work well for repeat patterns with larger images. But when inspecting something with a short repeat pattern and fine detail, a shorter duration is required for improved clarity.”

Unilux’s new LEDs enable inspectors to dial down the light duration below ten microseconds and mount it close enough to the web so that they can see the fine details. Because the light duration of the xenon strobes cannot be controlled, the company says they don’t have the same flexibility provided by their LED counterparts.

“In addition to offering significant power-bill savings, the new strobe lights can last up to eight years and do not suddenly burn out, eliminating the need to change lamps and all the associated maintenance costs of changing lamps,” the company says. “The lights emit no ozone during operation, reducing the risk of lung and respiratory-system damage and reducing the risk of eye irritation. Their lower power consumption reduces each light’s carbon footprint.”