LEDfair

This year’s annual Lightfair show was held April 12-14 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City. It always begins with the New Product Showcase (NPS), on the first day before the show opens. At this year’s NPS, 220 products competed for awards in 26 categories. LEDs were at least a component in 38 products, and they surfaced in 15 categories, including nine in the LED-lamp category. Each category had a winning product, and three were LED-based, in addition to the LED-lamp winner.

Semi impressive. But the ceremony also included five special awards; four were LED products. Most notably, two products shared the Judges’ Citation Award, which isn’t awarded automatically. But it’s bestowed, when appropriate, to recognize product excellence that merits special attention.” Before the awards were given, the presenter stated that these dual awards might represent a turning point in illumination, because each product represented LEDs being used as replacements for venerable light sources.

Neither product is sign-oriented, so I won’t go into great detail, but, for the record, they are e3LED’s (Signal Hill, CA) ecoTX LED MR16 replacement lamp, and Color Kinetics’ (Boston) iW MR, a white-LED-based lamp designed to retrofit into MR16 fixtures and sockets. ST featured Color Kinetics’ light-control capabilities in a story about the Loews Theatre near Times Square, perhaps a half-dozen blocks from the awards ceremony (see ST, June 2000, page 94).

Similarly, the Technical Innovation Award, which “recognizes the best leap forward in lighting technology,” went to Lamina Ceramics (Westhampton, NJ) for its BL-4000 RGB+, 120-lumen LED light source. If that name sounds recently familiar, you probably read Louis Brill’s report last month on the Strategies in Light conference (see ST, May 2005, page 86), in which he described Lamina’s “breakthrough thermal-management discoveries” that “enabled Lamina to cluster more than a thousand LEDs as a single, operating light source.” Which has powerful ramifications for area lighting, but might be overkill for a channel letter.

Thirdly, the Craig Roeder Award, which recognizes the product that “best exemplifies the dedication, pride, use of color, and sense of fun representative of the late, award-winning lighting designer,” went to Xenon Light Inc. (New York City, although headquartered in Vienna, Austria) for its Squadro series of LED surface-mounted fixtures.

Beyond these headlines, I was amazed at LEDs’ Lightfair ubiquity. Based solely on NPS entries, LEDs reside hidden in what appear to be conventional lightbulbs. They materialize in the fixtures that brighten jewelry in retail stores. LEDs are used for track lighting; they’re used in desk lamps. (In contrast to the last two Lightfairs, I didn’t see a dozen LED stoplights.) The most optimistic LED manufacturers envision a world in which LEDs grab marketshare from every other light source.

As usual, Tecnolux (Brooklyn, NY) was the only neon exhibitor, and David Ablon will be perfectly content if that never changes. Niches are good. However, I ran into a small contingent that represents a prominent neon-materials manufacturer and a corresponding sign-supply distributor. They contend that LEDs are still unproven and no more of a threat to neon than was fiberoptics. Wishful thinking, no doubt.

However, they, as well as some other neon loyalists I spoke with at the ISA show in Las Vegas, two weeks prior to Lightfair, suggested the following theory.

The sign industry is a lab rat. The LED community has chosen the tiny sign industry as a haven where it can experiment and work the kinks out and where, if gaffes occur, no big deal. However, as soon as LEDs substantially evolve, they’ll collectively abandon the sign industry (or at least curtail any subsequent R&D) and pursue products for their true, desired audience, the general lighting community.

Again, it sounds to me like a Republican who will never extol a Democrat (or vice versa). Yet, there’s some logic as well. Products are routinely tested in confined areas before being released to a broader spectrum. However, the confined area typically remains.

Here’s a parallel. This year’s Lighting Survey (see ST, March 2005, page 82) proclaimed fluorescents the dominant sign-industry light source. Yet trying to find a product manufacturer at Lightfair who gives a rat’s ass about fluorescent lamps for the sign industry is like trying to find a Canadian who misses the Montreal Expos. (Notable exception: Susan Isenhour Anderson, the product marketing manager for fluorescents at Osram Sylvania. But I don’t think she misses the Expos.)Osram Sylvania

The market for sign-industry fluorescents is so small, compared to fluorescents for lighting buildings, for example, that it barely rates as an afterthought for the manufacturers.

Intrigue aside, the pervasive LED influence continues. And the sign industry remains at the forefront of LED introductions. Anything that strives to improve the sign industry, however temporal, is good.