When adopting new technology, you usually have the option to fit the new tech into old systems and get decent gains in performance. But it’s usually far better to create new systems that have been designed from the start to take full advantage of the new technology.
This is true for the products we design and build for our customers. It’s equally true for the work spaces in our own electronics contract manufacturing facility.
Here’s an example of how something that sounds like a simple technology update – replacing fluorescent light fixtures with LEDs – turned out to be so much more.
Video Transcript
We’ve been manufacturing electronic products here since 1989. And with constant equipment upgrades and work floor re-configurations we have acquired many different types of workbenches with a wide range of overhead fluorescent light fixtures.
When upgrading to LEDs, we evaluated three different options.
- Option 1 was to simply replace the fluorescent tubes with LED tubes. This would have been the fastest, easiest… and lowest-benefit route. The fixtures would still have ballasts, with the same old problems of wasted energy, buzzing, and short life span. We could rewire the fixture to bypass the ballasts, but we’d still be settling for new technology in old packaging.
- Option 2 was to replace the fluorescent fixtures with LED fixture that look similar – such as these industrial-style commercial LED shop lights. That would be new technology in old-style packages… that still block overhead lights and cast shadows on work spaces when off, that shine light in all directions (including into the workers’ eyes), and collect dust, and would require us to come up with several different types of mounting systems to fit the various workbench styles.
- So we chose Option 3: a custom solution of our own design. We saw a great opportunity to improve not just the lighting, but the entire work space.
Our manufacturing engineers designed a new workbench frame, using commercially available extruded aluminum T-channel structures. The frame holds an LED light strip we designed and manufacture in-house. It also holds the polycarbonate safety shield that is needed between facing workstations.
Our electrical engineers designed the LED light strip and a constant-current LED driver. They chose high-end LEDs with integral lenses so that all the light is directed down onto the work area without the need for reflectors. They chose LEDs with a warm color temperature for light that is pleasing to humans. These two features add a bit to the cost and reduce a bit from the efficiency compared to cheaper LEDs in commercial lighting strips, but are well worth it for the increase in worker comfort. And they are still miles better than fluorescents.
- The new workbenches deliver twice the light to the work area, using one sixth of the energy of the old fixtures – 15 Watts instead of 90.
- They also allow a clear, uncluttered view across the work area, so line managers can more easily monitor workflows and spot problems early.
- The LEDs last 15 to 20 years, vs. 2 or 3 years for fluorescents. This cuts maintenance labor and reduces waste.
- And what’s more: the total cost of the new LED lighting and workbench frames is less than the cost of retrofitting industrial LED fixtures to the existing bench frames.
We took the same approach to this project that we use on our customer projects: rather than just executing a narrowly defined task, we look at the bigger picture and find innovative ways to deliver far better system-wide results at lower cost.
Learn more
Contact us to learn more about our workbench lighting systems, or how we can put our electronic product design and manufacturing experience to work for you.