XP-L High Intensity vs XP-L vs XP-L DeDomed

Now that’s a sphere !!! Wonder if I can make one of those with my old Weber grill. LOL

I would say that your results fit into the CREE datasheets ratings, here I mean the percentage difference between the XP-L HD V5 and XP-L HI V2 is 14%
lower lumen output according to the datasheets (3A current), and you test shows 13% lower lumens at 0.5minutes mark. Yes, throw is another thing but I was only pointing out the lumen difference between those 2 bins.

1A is not totally pure white, in the shots you see the close-up hot spot at high current, and you can see the spill is blueish. But anyway I speak from personal experience saying that 2A or even 2B will be the pure white one and the 1A is still the classic slight blueish cool white. If you are after something that gives the impression of pure white I high recommend you try those tints.

I think everything is fairly close. The only variation may be the dedomed. I find that sealing the emitter after dedoming lowers the output some…depending on how many coats of sealer is used. I seem to remember finding that hot dedoming yields a little higher output than solvent. If dedoming is properly done (heat dedome and 2 coats of ‘led seal’), I think the the XPL HI would have had higher output and more throw…but again, it’s close enough for me.
All of this is water under the bridge…I don’t plan on intentionally dedoming an XPL or XML2 again. I may still dedome a few XPG2 emitters…but that will be very few.

Everything in the specs pointed to the results I got, but I always want to see it for myself.

Thanks for the test! No more dedoming for me as well.

Tint > output in most situations.

Threads like this make me happy. Someone is willing to go through all the trouble to test and compare, and then post the results so others don’t have to. Thanks :beer:

Great testing, well thought out and performed, as all of your tests, thanks!

So the HI indeed does not seem to perform any different than a dedomed XP-L, that is good news for dedoming/tintshift-haters, a bit disappointing for those (me) who still hoped for a new level of performance.

I was planning on an output test of the HI (I have two emitters from Mouser, U5 bin), but this will make it much less exciting, I think I will skip that until after my (two weeks) camping trip

I'd love to steal your integrating sphere too (one can not have too many integrating spheres ), it looks very neat. Did you make it yourself? (it looks so slick, it could be a commercial one). Would you elaborate on the features?

I see another (for me) interesting thing in your graph, I wonder how significant it is: the domed XP-L has a dead-contant output after 1 minute, while both dome-less XP-L's show a slow decrease of output throughout the three minutes test-run. Any idea's what reason there could be for that? (I don't btw).

The High Intensity has an almost flat output after two minutes. I wonder how the dome/seal are affecting the output constancy. With the small sampling of this test, there is no way to be sure that it isn’t being affected by something else, but it sure looks like a line could be drawn (no dome => some dome => full dome) with increasing output stability. Could it be that the dome helps relieve a little bit of heat, since just about everything is better at conducting heat than air?

There are 2 possible contributors to the flatness or the stability of the output…one is absolute and the other is a possibility:
Absolute: The power going into the emitter has only 2 ways to exit: light or heat. The domed led is putting out more light and therefore there is less heat. If there is less heat to deal with, the output will become stable earlier in the test.
Possible: The domed emitter has greater surface area and thermal mass. The effect of the dome’s thermal mass (although very small) will be seen in the initial output. The initial output (first few seconds) the drop from the domed emitter is less. With greater surface area, like any heat sink, the dome may be removing more heat and this could explain why the domed emitter is flatter after 2 minutes. The effect of the greater surface area and mass of the dome are just my guesses, both may be too insignificant to make any real difference.

The test sampling size is just too small to draw any real conclusions from these minor variations.

I consider it a complement that anyone would think my integrating sphere is a commercial model, but it’s one of several that I’ve made. It is constructed of 2 22” security domes. The sphere is not quite spherical…it’s 21.25” wide, but only 20.5” tall. The inside is coated with 8 coats of barium sulfate/paint. Old lumens has a thread where he is building a similar one. If I were to build another, there are very few things I would do different, so overall, I’m happy with it’s accuracy and functionality. The biggest problem I have (and anyone who has built any kind of integrating sphere/device) is calibration. I’m using ANSI rated flashlights to do a comparative calibration. While this works okay, it doesn’t come close to a using an ANSI rated light source. I test the output on every flashlight I sell, so the performance of the sphere is very important to me…but not important enough to drop $20K on a commercial sphere and light source.

Thanks for the information, you seem to encounter the same limitations as I ! It sounds like a great device, as good as one can make without spending the multi-kdollar of money :-)

Maybe there is something to that. The domes on the LEDs in newest generation of Cree light bulbs (the ones without a heat sink) have tall square shaped domes.

I wonder what LED this is? The new BR30 flood lights are supposed to use XHP LED.

Awesome stuff! I mean both of your review and the integrating sphere!

I am quite surprised that the tint if the XP-L HI appears to be pure white. I used to shave the dome of an old XM-L (with cool white tint originally) before and the tint started to shift to warmer side even though I only shaved a small portion of it. This is why I am surprised with the cool white tint of this XP-L HI especially its silicon layer appears to be fairly thin. I guess it may have something to do with the die itself.

On the other hand, while some people are happy with the tint of this XP-L HI, I believe there are still certain people who prefer the neutral white tint produced by our ‘conventional’ dedome methods. I know that some of these produce terrible greenish tint, but I’ve also seen some XM-L2 do produce fairly nice neutral white tint too. Maybe CREE will offers different tints for this XP-L HI too in the future, we will wait and see for that.

Beside that, while XP-L HI seems to be quite a good and convenient selection for maximum throw modding project, some XM-L2 reflectors do not fit very well with XP-L/XP-G2 size of emitters. Some examples would be those which require XM-L2 centering piece, like the new version Convoy C8, JAX Z1, HD2010, T08… etc.

these square domes just made me sad as I have accidentally tore the domes of my rgb LEDs in my mouse

why did I even do that…

but these domes seem to scatter light well for a flood compared to sphere which cause some slight pointy artifacts
I had no idea how things work

I think you’re looking at it as if the XPL HI is “de-domed” like we do around here. But, that is not the case. The color binning is done after production. So, the tint will be what they bin it as. It may take a different mix of phosphors to produce the same tint as one with the dome on. But they don’t bin it by the phosphor mix, they bin it by the light output after production.

Yeah I understand that the binning was done based on the light output, that’s why I said it may be due to the die itself - but you phrased it more correctly I think, which is actually the “phosphor mix” in it. :slight_smile:

+1

I don’t think CREE made domed XPL and then dedome them to make XPL HI. That is like you go forward one step and then backward one step.
Making domeless emitters with desired tint is probably even easier than with domed emitters (less factors like focusing of dome…).

Nice tests! It is amazing they can get a 1A out of such a thin dome, and still get the throw. Gotta wonder though if the V2 1A HI is comparable equal to a V6 domed, or better/worse. Always thought this was somewhat possible, just glad CREE did the R&D and accomplished it, though I'm sure it wasn't for our use, more likely for another industry such as auto or spot lighting, etc. Makes sense for those industries because they can reduce the reflector width/depth and still get good distance out of it.

I'd prefer waiting for the V2 5000K (3C or so) to become available - any higher bin than V2 may take a while longer.

Edit: You could de-dome a HI and see what you get Wink

Pop Tart sprinkles?