Interview - Optics Production Technology for Customizing LED Luminaires
Siegfried Luger and Arno Grabher-Meyer from LED professional discuss future trends and challenges of the LED lighting business with Richard van de Vrie, CEO of LUXeXceL, a young company that is growing quickly. Van de Vrie owes much of his 25 years of experience in the lighting business to the family owned lighting company that he worked in.
LED professional: In one of your articles it says that in your opinion, the introduction of LEDs has the lighting industry facing many new challenges. Can you explain why you think that?
Richard van de Vrie: As you know, before founding LUXeXceL I worked in a family owned company that provided OEM solutions to customers. With the introduction of LEDs the “digital era” began. This speed up development cycles so much that we were always busy developing new products. This, in turn, left us practically no time for our sales activities. That is why, for me, the speed of development cycles is a very important issue.
LED professional: Can you go into detail and tell us some of the reasons?
Richard van de Vrie: Of course. The lighting industry is used to relatively slow product development cycles - typically 9-12 months to introduce new products. Sales regularly has sufficient time and opportunities to respond to customer requests, but there are also requests for product variants that manufacturing can’t deliver fast enough. That causes major internal friction.
R&D as well as Production struggle to keep up with the rapid pace of improvements in LED chips, LED modules and light engines which improve every 3, 6 or 12 months. The customers want to use state-of-the-art LED chips, but fixture product development cycles are too slow to keep pace, not to mention the request for product variations.
LED professional: Is this perception valid for all technology fields or do you see differences?
Richard van de Vrie: To a certain degree, this is true for all technologies. However, during my time in the OEM business we identified optics as being one of the most critical components, if not the most critical one.
Optics brings about a significant drain on company profits due to high inventories and frequent write-offs.
The optics is specific to the LED module or light engine that was chosen when the optics was designed. For any one fixture, if you don’t change the optics, the purchasers can only buy from the one LED vendor that the optics was designed for. That leaves little room for price negotiation.
LED professional: In that case, why not change both the light engine and optics at the same time?
Richard van de Vrie: The simple reason is that optics is costly. Injection molding tooling is very costly, and there are a minimum number of order commitments necessary to pay these costs. This requires more certainty in forecasting than is possible. No one can be sure which fixtures will be well received at a trade show. Having to order, for instance, a minimum of 50,000 pieces before customers and distributors have seen a working fixture, severely limits risk-taking in new product introductions.
LED professional: The word product is the key word here. Can you identify the key factors and key components for successful product generation?
Richard van de Vrie: Assuming that the product satisfies the preconditioned requirements for application and quality, there are three main points that I see. The first one is speed: Faster product introductions and faster adaptation to changing customer needs and improved LED chips or modules are crucial.
The second point is reduced inventories with just-in-time production and reduced product development costs. This means that fixture designers can afford to try more product variations.
The third one is developing a higher margin. More specialized and more diverse products - riding the long tail, as described and evaluated in Chris Anderson’s book “The Long Tail” [1].
LED professional: What do you see as the top three future trends for LED lighting in general?
Richard van de Vrie: The first one is the remarkable and continuous trend of the decline of prices for LEDs, semiconductors in general, and electronics components. At the same time there is an increase of attention being paid to optics as the main driver of cost. In addition, optics is significant for product differentiation, which is my second trend: Novel beam patterns, even illumination, shaped to fit the application perfectly, measuring performance not by gross efficiency but by how well the lumens are directed to achieve the desired luminance levels where needed becomes more relevant. This option comes with the new light source, the LED.
The third trend I see is the adoption and exploitation of printoptical manufacturing to enable and accelerate the first two trends I mentioned.
LED professional: On a more technical level: 3D printing is not completely new or unique. On the contrary, it is applied in many areas. One vision is to have many products manufactured using this technology. Some are even talking about do-it- yourself at home. Can you tell us what has to be taken into consideration when printing optics?
Richard van de Vrie: Optics needs to have smooth surfaces. This cannot be achieved with an ordinary 3D printing process where the structure is printed layer by layer. In contrast to that method our process is based on fluent dynamics. That means that we control the size of each droplet individually and the curing process is also adjusted and precisely controlled to guarantee a smooth surface. I just can recommend you to read also the interview with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt about “how additive manufacturing will change manufacturing” on 3D printing at 3DPrinting.com.
LED professional: How important is the resin used for the outcome?
Richard van de Vrie: Very. The properties of the material are crucial for the result. Furthermore the transparent material used has to be durable. It has to fulfill all the requirements of optical materials that are used in conventional optics manufacturing like UV resistance, temperature stability and chemical stability.
And don’t forget that the process has to be economical. That means it has to be fast. Therefore we use fast industrial printers that allow mass production and not just rapid prototyping.
The process we use is identical for rapid prototyping and for volume production. We use the same materials, the same equipment, the same process and get the same result. This means that when a prototype is satisfactory it literally only takes a few minutes for transition into volume production.
LED professional: So what you’re saying is that it doesn’t matter for LUXeXceL whether a single prototype is needed or thousands of lenses! That brings up the question of speed. How fast is your process?
Richard van de Vrie: That strongly depends. Lens type, accuracy, thickness and costs have a big influence. Right now we are customizing different standard industry printers for these tasks. If we take one of our standard products as an example, I can tell you that with our current printer we can manufacture 600,000 to 700,000 pieces per year. Now we have 3 printers. If we require more printers to satisfy the demands, we can quickly and easily add new printers.
LED professional: On an even deeper technical level, over the past few years the maximum possible product height has been increasing continuously. What are the current restrictions for optics design? What does an optics designer have to know and understand?
Richard van de Vrie: While we are able to manufacture single optics and pre-assembled one-piece arrays of up to several square meters in area, today industrial production limits the thickness to 2mm on each side. We are already exceeding this limit in R&D projects and our target is to increase thicknesses to several centimeters. This would also be for industrial purposes where taller TIR optics are desirable. We are rapidly getting closer to that goal and hope that we’ll be able to offer it commercially sometime in 2013.
LED professional: Another parameter is thermal resilience. Can you tell us a little about that?
Richard van de Vrie: Currently our material is on par with PMMA, which is sufficient for many applications.
LED professional: Can you give us an idea about other improvements you have in mind?
Richard van de Vrie: There are a number of improvements that we are working on. Materials for example: We have improved and are steadily improving materials to achieve better clarity, better suitability for outdoor applications, higher temperature resistance or for combining multiple materials with, for instance, different refraction indices.
We have already significantly increased precision and are expecting to improve it even further this year. We want to go beyond lighting requirements and meet the requirements for general optics applications.
In this context I want to mention two other important points. One is color – we can do full color printed elements today but we are also continuing to improve capacity for designers to include color in their designs. We have recently introduced custom-mixed, “tinted” polymer inks that allow us to produce optics in any hue needed. And this is just the beginning!
Another thing we are working on is the design tools. Over time we will bring a broad range of flexible parametric reference designs online. These can be readily adapted to meet a customer’s requirements at a much lower cost and much sooner than can be achieved by a manual custom design.
LED professional: It seems that you are eliminating restrictions very quickly, but will there still be limitations in the future? If so, what will they be?
Richard van de Vrie: There are no limits in sight. Every time we think we are at a limit we find a new way to push further. Therefore I am convinced that the main limit is imagination. We hope to see our new process being used to encourage creative thinking in order to design extraordinary new products, and not just as a new way to produce the same old designs.
LED professional: Your technology sounds very interesting, indeed. Are you worried about other companies challenging your approach or offering similar products and services? How are you protecting your business? What is your patent strategy?
Richard van de Vrie: We have a very good patent circle but right now we are developing at such a fast pace that we are confident of staying ahead of other companies - even if someone tries to copy us. The fact is; we are currently the only company capable of this technology.
LED professional: What else is necessary if a customer wants to start using 3D printing technology?
Richard van de Vrie: Anyone can start using 3D printed optics immediately because we offer manufacturing as a service. - That is what most customers are used to. They are accustomed to selecting optics and buying it from a manufacturer. Most of our customers just send us their optic design in the form of a standard CAD file and place an order for a small quantity. When they see that our product is satisfactory they place follow-up orders for as many or as few as they need, without being required by us to make a large commitment that ties up their capital and entails piling up inventory and the risk of write offs if sales are not as planned. And as the engine needs to be changed, just change the CAD file. Because we are the research partners of many software companies, our service is supported by different CAD and design software, for instance Autodesk, Solid Works or Photopia.
But LUXeXceL is also happy to provide design services or work with third party optics design firms to create a custom design to meet their requirements.
LED professional: Your business model seems to be based on providing manufacturing services. Have you also thought about selling the printers and related knowledge that allows the customer to manufacture themselves?
Richard van de Vrie: That is not something we are thinking about right now. The strategy we are using now reduces the risk of being copied. But even more importantly; our technology is still evolving. We don’t want anything to cause development to slow down. Instead we are planning to open manufacturing and service centers all over the world, where we also hope to inspire innovation.
LED professional: Where do you see opportunities to inspire innovation with your printoptical 3D technology and help customers set trends? What is your vision of lighting?
Richard van de Vrie: I foresee the same trend that is happening on many markets, today. 3D Printing will not only change the way manufacturing is done but it will also enable lighting companies to customize fixtures per project or application.
LED professional: Could you give us an example of what you mean?
Richard van de Vrie: Yes, of course. One of our first products was lens arrays for our client, F-Sign. We adapted light distribution angles with little effort from 120° to 90°, 60° and finally even 76°, but that is not the whole story. This is not only possible with arrays, but also for freeform optics. In fact, it will soon become possible to customize every single fixture.
Street-lighting is maybe the best example: Today, I see a lot of poor light distribution; gardens are lit up and light shines into bedrooms that are close to the fixtures. Why not design the right optic for every fixture delivering the required light distribution for the place where it will be installed?
Besides that, outdoor fixtures can be improved helping to keep the sky dark by creating 100% customized light distribution. Square pictures in a museum can be lit up with a matching square beam. The ability to create a combination of optic and exact requested color filter will improve the offers for shop and food lighting.
LED professional: What does all that mean to the industry?
Richard van de Vrie: To be concise, the LED lighting industry needs to meet the demands of the market. With LEDs and advanced, digital technologies this can happen on a level never before seen. More and more professional lighting companies share this opinion and have successfully started special project teams like OMS, Trilux and RZB. However, the number of both lighting fixture designers and light architects will have to increase if these demands are to be met.
LED professional: To wrap the interview up, could you give us your personal opinion regarding other lighting technologies and traditional light sources? How do you see other lighting technologies? Do you expect traditional light sources to disappear completely?
Richard van de Vrie: A lot people still need to understand that the lighting industry has also entered the digital age. The new possibilities that the digital process offers need to be accepted, adapted and understood. In my opinion, there is a great future for those technologies that enable design flexibility. Quick product introductions and modifications will help to increase the profits and revenues of lighting manufacturers and will address the increasing requests for customization. Here, I think LEDs have the highest potential.
I also expect that due to the change of market volume and the focus of R&D, high intensity discharge lamps will become more expensive to manufacture while LEDs will become cheaper. The higher lumen performance of LEDs will rapidly make them more popular. I expect fluorescent lamps, especially CFLs to gradually disappear as people become more aware of the fact that mercury causes environmental problems. I imagine that fluorescent lamps will soon be completely banned by governments. For existing light sources as well as new lighting technologies, like OLEDs, customization will be crucial for survival on the market.
LED professional: Mr. Van de Vrie, thank you for sharing your insights with us.
Richard van de Vrie: My pleasure.
About Richard van de Vrie
Richard van de Vrie founded the LUXeXceL Group and holds the position of Chief Executive Officer.
He is a lighting industry veteran with more than 25 years experience through his roles as Chief Executive Officer of Lighting Partner BV and VP of Sylvania Lighting International and Lighting Science Group Corporation.
He has held various positions, including sales management, business development, brand positioning / marketing, building global platforms, launching new collections and global brands. Mr. van de Vrie was also co-founder of Eyeleds, an internationally recognized brand.
Source: LED professional Review (LpR) - Issue 36 including further pictures and graphs.
