I recently swapped an XPL-hi into one of my lights and found it a little green which led me to learning a little bit about different bins. I have a 5C1 binned XPL-hi from Convoy and see that kaidomain has the same. I can’t seem to find many listings for different bins and some listings don’t include bin info at all. Is finding a certain bin for sale basically luck and waiting for a desirable one to show up/ be produced, or do different retailers often have different bins to choose from and I’m just looking in the wrong places?
Different retailers do offer different bins. A and D bins have lower DUV, which should mean less green.
FYI the AR coated windows with the green AR coating from Convoy will help to reduce the DUV because they reflect some of the green portion of the light.
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With the XPL-HIs I’ve found the tint to depend not very much on the binning–I’ve had a 4C that was noticeably rosier than 5D.
What really makes a difference is AR coating (purple coating deletes purple from the beam and makes it green), and choice of secondary optic. Shallow reflectors tend to produce green beams, while TIRs tend to produce neutral or magenta beams. The TIR makes a huge difference in tint over the reflector, much more than the difference from binning.
I’m pretty sure some bins are special order only or vaporware, there have been instances where I was looking very hard for a specific bin and absolutely nobody appeared to stock it…
You’re correct that some retailers don’t specify the bin, I think Convoy and Kaidomain go for a rough area on the graph then stock/sell whatever is available, not sure the batch size they purchased in, but bins can and do change (sometimes without warning!).
I’ll have to add some green AR lens’ to my next Convoy order.
That’s pretty interesting about TIRs producing a more rosy beam vs shallow reflectors producing a more green beam. I wonder the mechanism for that is.
Any retailers I should be checking for different bins? I’ve only bought parts from Convoy and kaidomain so far and have had good experiences with both.
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is that graph a standard one that manufacturers use to decide which bin a given emitter goes into or are there different ones for each manufacturer?
I say this as a tint snob who has spent a fair amount of money buying various emitters in search of non-green tints… try out some minus green filter sheets. They are cheap, easy to install, and can make a big difference with little downside. Diffusion film can also help “blend” the tint in the beam if it suffers from tint shift.
TIRs (versus reflectors) can also help with tint. Many LEDs emit worse tint (e.g. Cree rainbow) from the edges of the emitters. This light is redirected by reflectors into the beam, but it is generally lost by TIRs.
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This is a great explanation. To elaborate on it, almost all LEDs emit yellowish light to the side and pinkish light directly to the front. Reflectors only pick up light emitted sideways, hence the yellow hotspot/corona. A well-designed TIR (sadly not all of them) will collect all of the LED’s emission and mix the tint, resulting in an average tint that is more pink than the tint from a reflector hotspot.
The Convoy 20mm 3535 beaded TIRs (15 degree I think, the narrowest angle) are good, the smooth 3535 TIRs have tint shift. The 5050 smooth narrow TIR, however, is excellent.
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Each manufacturer has their own. Nichia for example has MacAdam ellipses instead of quadrants, Cree also uses the ellipses for their “EasyWhite” bin.
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Thank you. 