Luxim Plasma

KurtF

KurtF

Well-known member
Has anyone found an outlet to purchase the Luxim Plasma head and driver? You typically see the radial finned head with it's tiny glass pill attached to the microwave driver box via a short piece of wave guide.

A Google search mostly lists posts that claim you can find ways to purchase, but no actual links to the unit itself.

Any solid links?

Thanks.
 
Here's what I know about it. I bought a "developers kit" 2 years ago from them. The one I got included an "STA-40" lamp and power supply for it. At that time it was $795. I think its gone up since then. I had quite a bit of difficulty getting in contact with anyone there. I finally ended up talking to someone by the name of Dawn Sansen who's email address was dsansen@luxim.com. There was also a Geoff Brown as well (gbrown@luxim.com) to talk to about technical questions or issues. Besides the difficulty in dealing with them (took them a while to figure out how to run my credit card and they sent the package to the wrong address), I think it was a waste of time and way over-hyped. We won't be making a product with this technology until a few things are addressed.
 
Richard, thanks for the quick response, I appreciate your point of view on this topic. Too bad about the logistic and technical snafus. I guess I won't be pursuing any DIY projects with Plasma in the near future.

As always, if you decide to create a product using this technology somewhere down the road I'm sure it will be an excellent value.
 
Some enterprising people use them to grow Pot. Quite expensive, which is why it hasn't really taken off. There are 2 types too, Sulfur Plasma and Sodium Plasma.

There are 2 main competitors, when it comes to "grow" lights. Gavita (Holland), and a company called Chameleon.

Gavita has 300W, 600W, and 1000W lights. It is about $800 for the 1000W system. I believe this is a sulfur based system, and not using the Lumix "bulb", but it is the same concept.

Chameleon uses Lumix, and offers only a 300W system, and it is like $1400.
 
That's a damn expensive grow light.

Shipping to wrong address or credit card snafus are easily forgotten issues particularly for a sample to evaluate something. The things that really limit this technology were the following (from my notes):

1). Color temperature. Its advertised at 5300K, but the sample was 4800K. I used a color meter to measure as I wasn't near an integrating sphere to measure it's spectrum. Normally a color meter wouldn't be any good for anything that isn't full spectrum like sunlight or real tungsten lighting, but since this plasma technology is advertised as full spectrum, it should be evaluated as such. Therefore a color meter should work if that's all true. I asked them if that was just the sample and can they do better (with LEDs we can specify the color temp, CRI and even the tolerance) during production and they said the tolerance during production is +/- 500K. Really not good for our uses unless you want a warmer "sunlight" effect. I'd accept 5300K, but 4800K is too far from the standard of 5600K. They really need to get this to the maturity of LEDs where you can specify what you want, including tolerance (if you're willing to pay for it).

2). Output. This STA-40 puts out 12,000 lumens. That places it equivalent to about a 600w tungsten bulb. Or more apropos to Cool Lights offerings, about as much as our 150w CDM bulbs. Those bulbs are $29 each. They put out about 600w worth of light for only drawing 150w. The tungsten 600w bulb obviously draws 600w to put out that much light. The Luxim STA-40 draws 300w to put out that much light. 50% less efficient than CDM 150 bulbs. Once the CDM 150 bulb is in a system like our 150w CDM fresnel and package price is $499, but we're already at $795 for just the Luxim STA-40 "puck" and ballast. Probably costs more than that now and once you integrate it into a lighting fixture and do all the other extra work, we're talking closer to $1500 to $2000. If this thing were equivalent of about a 575w, it could be justified in that price range but about the output of a 600w fresnel and it's just not a winner. 575w bulbs put out about 49,000 lumens. Once integrated into a system with mirror, lens, etc. they can put out serious Lux/F.C. Even with good mirror and lens, you're not going to get to equivalent 575 no matter what you do. Hopefully they'll have a 49,000 lumen solutions in the future.

3). Electromagnetic Radiation. We know how to deal with UV and have done that. That's not a big issue. I really have a problem though with something emitting EM. Yes its fixable with a faraday cage, but its a lot of trouble and as covered in the previous two issues, what do you really have after all this trouble.

4). Single source. I really don't like the idea of buying most of the active components from one manufacturer for a number of reasons. I do like the idea of getting light source and power source from different places (or developing our own for that matter as we have done in certain cases). I don't want to find out that someone has gone out of business then I and customers are out in the cold for support/replacement parts in the future. The product of ours most like this in output, again the CDM 150, uses a standard CDM 150 type ballast and standard 150w CDM bulb. You can't easily find a daylight version of this bulb, but if we are buying in large quantity, there are a number of places we can go to specify what we want. Same for the ballast. If one flickers, but we like other things about it, we can talk to them and get that problem fixed for production in quantity. What will we do if Luxim goes out?

5). Price breaks. Not good enough for quantity buys. Too close to what you pay for the sample of 1 unit.

I think these reasons are the main ones you don't see more of these fixtures and probably won't. My guess is that many manufacturers have bought the development kit with high hopes of making something interesting and they have also realized the above points and thought it not worth it from a customers point of view, let alone a manufacturers point of view.
 
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Last CineGear I talked to Photon Beard about the unusual (re)design of their LEP.

http://www.photonbeard.com/plasma-lighting.html

Until recently they've been under a NDA so couldn't discuss the issues they've had bringing their LEP to market. Seems there's a problem with the emitter when it's tilted down which will cause the pattern to become amorphous so they've designed their unit with a mirror that redirects the light.
 
Other than their full spectrum output. is there any other main reason one would shell out the $ for this technology ?.

The LEP is about 50% LESS efficient than LED.
The LEP has a lifespan of about 60% LESS than LED.
The LEP driver needs to be fed from wall AC. Unless a low lumen battery operation unit is feasible.
The LEP output of 12K lumens ( about 700 W filament) consuming 280 watts ??????? ( equates to 43 lumens per watt)
The LEP CRI of 90+ can easily be found in LED emitters with much higher lumen per watt efficiency.

Come to think about it, even remote phosphor technology ( using ultra blue leds )i s far more efficient than the LEP.

What is all the buzz about ?
 
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Norman99 said:
Other than their full spectrum output. is there any other main reason one would shell out the $ for this technology ?.

The LEP is about 50% LESS efficient than LED.
The LEP has a lifespan of about 60% LESS than LED.
The LEP driver needs to be fed from wall AC. Unless a low lumen battery operation unit is feasible.
The LEP output of 12K lumens ( about 700 W filament) consuming 280 watts ??????? ( equates to 43 lumens per watt)
The LEP CRI of 90+ can easily be found in LED emitters with much higher lumen per watt efficiency.

Come to think about it, even remote phosphor technology ( using ultra blue leds )i s far more efficient than the LEP.

What is all the buzz about ?
Click to expand...

That's all true except for the 3rd item. It runs off DC 28V so it wouldn't be hard to adapt a battery. So you have the puck or light source, driver, and 28VDC power supply (not included in the kit). That was about the only thing I liked about it. However, since its in the 280w range, that makes it a bit hard to get any decent battery life out of whatever battery you used (which would have to be large capacity).

In looking back through emails and other history I also forgot to mention a couple of other issues that need to be addressed.

1). Dimming. Just doesn't work well in LEP. The light tints noticably blue/green when you dim it. So dimming is out.

2). Time to light from ignition. This is going to sound like a minor thing once you know about it but if you don't know about it, it's an issue. When I first turned the unit on after hooking everything up, nothing happened. No sound, no light, nothing. No where was it covered in the documentation that you need to wait 10 to 15 seconds for the light to ignite. I had a tech support person tell me in an email to wait longer than I was. 10 to 15 seconds, that's an eternity with today's existing technology in terms of expectations. We would need to put some kind of feedback on the fixture in big bold letters saying, wait 10 to 15 seconds for the light to come on after turning on the power switch. If you don't do that, then people will call saying they have a defective light and you'll have to tell them to wait. You can't just bury that in documentation, anything that has to be put into documentation is already a problem because many won't even ready a manual before using the first time. Once you know about it, you just wait and deal with it but we are so spoiled by existing technologies where you have either instant light within milliseconds of hitting the power switch or at least some feedback that a cycle is starting (as with HMI). Perhaps some sort of flashing light on the power source saying "Starting Cycle" would work effectively too in terms of usability and that would have to be created by the fixture designer as it's just not a part of the base technology. So that's something for the fixture usability category.

LEDs wouldn't seem to be in any danger of being unseated by this technology. Nor metal halide/HMI for that matter.
 
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