You truly have to witness the light quality to appreciate it. I dont know that I could put into words in how blow away I am every time I turn it on. The drivers are large chunky metal boxes designed for sustained commercial applications in wet locations. Ive researched this line of meanwell drivers and couldnt find a mod thread where anyone ever attempted to remove the internal pot and wire an external one in its place. I removed the metal covers and the entire driver cavity is encapsulated in a heavy potting compound similar to dried latex silicon. I could probably take an exacto blade to it and carve a nice neat channel to expose the pot and then go from there. Access would be on the top of the PCB so I couldnt desolder it from the under side. Id have to attempt a removal from the top side, which might or might not be an easy proposition. If I destroyed the pot during the removal process, I wouldnt be able to measure it with a dmm to find its rating. Its just one of those things where I have come to appreciate the comforts of high levels of quality light without shadows, and while bathing everything in brilliant light. I can just see everything a whole lot better and with greater clairty. So Im not sure that Id turn the light down even if I had that as a remote feature. Also, the driver can deliver more power than is recommended (which is 100W max sustained at the emitter) so a pot mod would have to have a corresponding set limit… not sure how to pull that one off without resistors inline. Maybe there is a pot with adjustable limits.
These type of drivers cant be dimmed by a dimmer switch. Wouldnt that be nice if they could?
My only thought for dimming is taking portrait pictures, people can be sensitive to bright light and squint and then get attitudal which doesn’t make for the best portraits. I could always diffuse it, bounce it, whatever.
That sounds like such an excellent set-up, with it being sealed it’d work great for outdoor shoots without worry. Did you say how many lumens you think it’s making? 7000-9000?
I have been thinking of using a commercial 2’x4’ fluorescent bay with daylight white tubes, special tubes designed for the workplace. But I’m just about positive they wouldn’t work well for photography. This set up of yours sounds ideal, and so perfect for product shots as to be droolworthy. :heart_eyes:
Im running at 3.75A which produces 7140 lumens (according to the datasheet), which is 100% rated output. I measured 102 watts being consumed by the driver. Now that the emitter is broken in, Im observing a 100% power factor efficiency while measured through my kill-o-watt meter. Im running mine without any type of reflector on a night stand mounted to a high performance CPU heat sink and fan. Its pointed up at the ceiling and bounces the light through the room. Ive been thinking about concealing the rig in a small wooden box with cooling ports for the fan and adding a ledil flood reflector with lens designed for this emitter. The fan would cool the heat sink first and then the passing air would be channeled over the driver before it exits the box.
The driver is adjustable by pulling out a plug on the front of the driver and inserting a screwdriver to twist a pot. The pot feels high quality and tight, but I wouldnt want to be tweaking it all the time since they probably werent designed to be used as dimmers.
Awesome project, somewere around here (or maybe in storage) I have a vero18 I need to come up with a driver for but I really don’t want to use one of those cheap chineese/eBay ones.
You’re going to have a lot of fun with your emitter after you find a driver and heat sinking solution. My emitters are $75 a piece, so I avoided the cheap drivers because they are often unreliable, dont provide a consistent constant current, especially as they age, warm up or power cycle. They can also provide dirty power, spikes, ripple and be rather inefficient. Although it has other uses, the Meanwell driver I am using was designed specifically as a commercial duty CC LED driver. My kill-o-watt meter is now showing a 100% efficiency conversion on the driver as well. :bigsmile:
Just be aware that there are many fake Meanwell PSU’s on ebay, so chose wisely.
Very interesting! $75 is a lot of money for a 100 watts LED! Is this the price you paid or the retail price?
You should do a comparison with the 100W emitters that can be bought on ebay. I’m sure people would then realize how much better the high CRI LEDs are…
I thought about it but then decided against it after reading dozens of angry customer complaints. Those Chinese ebay emitters are pure junk that burn out quickly, have lousy CRI and arent even worth the envelope they arrive in. Many of them even advertise themselves as Bridgelux… more Chinese lies.
You lucky bastard! You got not only 1 but 11 of those nice emitters!
You can get a version of your PSU with external dimming, the model number has to end in “B” instead of “A”.
And you are right - the internal pot is not meant for dimming usage, I think only a few (<20) adjustments are supported. The datasheet: http://www.meanwell.com/search/CLG-150/CLG-150-spec.pdf
By the way, PFC is not the conversion efficiency (AC->DC), it’s how good the PSU is “in sync” with the mains frequency, thus saving the energy supplier costs:
But the CLG series is nonetheless very efficient, about 90% starting at half the rated load up to full load (see the last data sheet page).
PS: Sorry to resurrect this thread, but it was linked by this one, and I couldn’t resist:
I was definitely at the right place at the right time to snag those emitters, but have only put one of them into service so far. I am familiar with the CLG and HLG series 0-10V/pot dimming functions these type of drivers accomodate and have also experimented with the associated 0-10V RF remote controllers in dimming other expensive luminaries. A 100K external pot can take the place in most instances, and Ive considered modding my “A” series Meanwell with such an external non-linear pot. But now that Ive been running mine at 100 watts, I find that I dont want to turn it down. lol
From Meanwell:
What is PFC?
Ans:
PFC stands for Power Factor Correction. The purpose of PFC is to improve the ratio of apparent power and real power. The power factor is only 0.4~0.6 in non-PFC models. In PFC models, the power factor can reach above 0.95. The calculation formulas are as below:
Apparent Power=Input Voltage x Input Current (VA)
Real Power= Input Voltage x Input Current x Power Factor (W)
From the environment friendly point, the electric power plant needs to generate a power which is higher than apparent power in order to steadily provide electricity to the market. The real usage of electricity should be defined by real power. Assuming the power factor is 0.5, the power plant needs to produce more than 2VA to satisfy 1W real power. On the contrary, if the power factor is 0.95, the power plant only needs to generate more than 1.06VA to provide 1W real power need. It will be more effective.
Sorry for the delay in answering you. The “decor” series datasheet has been down for some reason.
As far as CRI, yes. You’ll need to chose the color temperature (tint) that you prefer along with an appropriate driver and heat sinking solution.
My 100 watt versions were purchased through a large bulk special order and are unavailable otherwise. Let me know if you’re serious and I might consider selling one.
