A British revolution in industrial LEDs

There’s a lot of talk about the death of British manufacturing but our journey over the past few years tells a very different story. Sure we find it hard to compete making cheap and simple products but what about specialist high performance products? Are we leaving quality engineering to the Germans? Not a chance. At Constellation Lighting we compete through excellence, innovation and efficiency, some products may well be cheaper to buy but wouldn’t you prefer a product that works better, lasts longer and costs you less in the long run even if it costs a little more? We have always believed in quality, reliability and service over price, this has allowed us to compete and thrive against inferior but cheaper LED products.

The industrial lighting industry is just a small part way through an LED revolution leading to cheaper, safer, higher performance lighting, existing systems are fantastic but there’s so much room for improvement and companies like the U.K’s Constellation Lighting are proving that. Constellation lighting have been at the forefront of the LED lighting revolution since 2004, we’ve built a reputation based on quality both of our products and our service. We’ve seen the LED industry grow and develop over the years and have had plenty of time to spot some issues and identify a few opportunities for improvement.

This is the the story of how years ago our M.D Kevin Fallon had an idea about simplifying LED lighting when a colleague representing a LED manufacturer plugged a driverless AC LED into his office socket and it just worked.

From Idea to Product

One day Kevin decided to act on his idea and began weighing up what sort of product the industry really needs and what sort of design that would mean. From early on Kevin and his team worked on ways to make industrial LEDs quicker and easier to install and make a product that’s as flexible as possible. The concept of a modular system arose and became an essential design requirement for the new product. It was clear from the start that removing the need for external drivers through using AC LEDs was a big advantage in terms of simplicity, reliability and lightness, but we needed to start mapping out what this might look like and how such a light would perform.

There’s a fair bit of maths behind a quality LED product and we knew what sort of technical performance we needed the design to deliver. We were looking for a high light output at very high efficiency, it had to be very light and yet strong, thermodynamic characteristics had to be excellent to achieve this performance and ensure the ultimate reliability of the product.

As we started coming up with potential configurations of our product we ran the numbers and starting finding where our biggest challenges were. We found ideal ways to connect our modules together, the best way to form the aluminium casing and spent a lot of time experimenting with different heatsinks. Through these years of testing, measuring and improving we have developed our patented butterfly connectors, state of the art anodised heatsinks and an optimised lens configuration. These innovations and years of refinement have resulted in a product that meets or exceeds all of our original goals.

The process of developing the final product has been long and difficult, we were clear from the start that we needed the highest standards in every component and getting there has presented countless challenges, in fact we overshot our initial completion date by 6 months as we worked on getting the product right. We did not however face these challenges alone. LINKS-LED has been made possible in collaboration with several U.K manufacturing specialists who started off consulting with us on our plans and now make up our supply chain in the manufacturing process. We’ve forged close links with some highly impressive UK partners and together we’ve made a product we can all be very proud of.

Testing Stages

The Final Product

Today we are proud to see our product out there in the marketplace being adopted by commercial and industrial sites both in the U.K and overseas. You can find out more about our product on its product page but here are the headlines…

LINKS LED High output AC modular LED light – Features

• 7700 lumens from each module at only 61W, a highly efficient system
• Modular can be used in a variety of configurations to solve a wide range of lighting problems
• Lightweight, at 1.9kg per module you can secure them more cost effectively in a wider variety of locations
• Using AC LEDs means we do not need conventional drivers, reducing weight and increasing reliability
• The patented interlocking butterfly connectors make it effortless to scale from one module that might suit a shop store room right upto 9 modules which could serve as a stadium floodlight
• Very low thermal resistance
• IP66 rating for a range of outdoor applications

A British Success Story

So what this amounts to is an internationally competitive product designed and manufactured in the U.K and ready for export, just the sort of thing they say we don’t do anymore. We’re going to be exporting these innovative lights to the U.S and will seek to expand further as the industry becomes aware of our product. The success of our LINKS-LED lighting system will create British jobs across the country and allow us to play our part in demonstrating the U.K’s industrial potential in the global marketplace. We certainly aren’t stopping here, we have several other products in the pipeline including a new super-secure ‘explosion proof’ LED module for use in sensitive industrial environments. At Constellation lighting we’re always thinking about the future of our industry and are looking to product innovation to light our way.

We’re sure we’ll be seeing more and more adoption of the LINKS-LED and look forward to having more images of them installed in all kinds of settings, keep an eye on our blog for more on the progress of the LINKS-LED.