LED Information |
I use Luxeon LED's in pretty much all my sabers. For special orders I will use other maufacturers like Cree, Lamina, etc. but for the most part it's Luxeons.
I use the brightest model available for the color desired. Reds are best with LuxIII's, most other colors are best achieved using K2's and for some I use Lux V's.
Now, there are two basic approaches as far as LED's are concerned- Colored and White.
As far as colors go, Luxeons typically come in Red, Red-Orange, Amber, Green, Blue, Royal Blue, and Cyan.
They also come in white, which with the use of color filters can make the saber virtually any color you choose. The thing with using white is, a white LED with a green filter is going to be dimmer than a green LED. You have to make a choice between an unlimited number of colors and brightness.
Here are some pics to illustrate my point.
This pic shows a white Atlas LED from Lamina run with a buckpuck to optimize current. This is pretty much on par with the brighter whites out there right now. It has a blue filter. Not too shabby.
Now, here is that same saber next to a K2 Royal Blue. The Royal Blue blows the White out of the water.
Here's the same Atlas with a green filter...
And now next to a Luxeon V Green... and yes the Atlas is on!
And one last example with a Red-Orange.
Here's the Atlas...
And next to a LuxIII Red-Orange...
As you can see, in this case it's a little closer, but the colored LED still wins out.
I will say this though, when it comes to yellow, the White LED with a filter makes a bright yellow that rivals the LuxV Greens.
One other thing to keep in mind if you are looking for the brightest saber on the block is that our eyes pick up on some spectrums better than others. For example, an LED that puts out 160 Lumens of red light is going to look dimmer than a green that puts out 140 lumens. That's just the way that it works.
The ones that look brightest to my eye are green, yellow, and the royal blue. The royal blue also has the neat side effect of bordering on the same spectrum that blacklights do. Therefore, neon things will react around it.
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