A cry out to all designers and specifiers “Make sure your light boxes or pendant lighting systems does not use LED Tape”!

JPR Lighting was not appointed for this project due to cost at design stage prior to tender (Win some loose some). 10 months later and out of the blue we took a call from the contractor @mazeengineering (who we have worked with many times in the past) for urgent help to meet the projects PC date to replace 2 fabric sheets. For many reasons I will go into, the specified "Lighting" company refused to return, so we agreed to help. When we arrived on site the construction of the boxes was made very well, and at this point I was concerned why our costings were so far out, but when we removed the fabric, I had to stand back and stare at what I could not believe I was looking at: 9.6wpm LED tape spaced at 80mm centres! That equalled 10KW of power!! = 10 x 1kw heaters inside a sealed light box (Where is that heat going?), how can the end user maintain such a system? When will the adhesive on the tape fail during their cooking process and fall onto the fabric? When I mentioend this to the contractor they had already raised the concern due to the amount of power supplies required for the installation and the amount of AMPs on the system. We s a lot more expensive as we only design and use size pacific Aluminium thermal conducted PCBs in all our light boxes / lighting systems (Never tape!). Our system tendered at design stage = 3.2kw driving constant current 3528 diodes achieving light levels and 92.5circuit watts. Tape has its uses such as Cove Lighting / Shadowgaop Lighting and Joinery not light boxes.

THE IS NOT THE DESIGNERS FAULT AND I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH! Designers are reliant on us the manufacturers data / advice / guidance to name a few. This is the specified company’s fault as they obviously do not understand our lighting industry or standards to meet, and no doubt had a very good salesperson (I could say a lot more here but I wont). This LED tape is $4.5 per meter = ￡3,823 for all LED tape on this project circa 1062m. From a ￡60k project their GP was approx. ￡45k in my simple calculation on fabrication and drivers costs. WOW!

I have been in this lighting industry since Silvertown lighting and Moorlite days back in the 80s and trained by some of the best the industry has seen. Stay with the mainstream manufacturers who know what they are doing and can prove it to you before / during and after the project.

If my JPR team can help any designer with advice to maintain longevity of the product and your design for your end user client, just speak to us, even if it is non project related. We are not the cheapest, we do not claim to be. Everything we do is cost + on materials and labour, but we are one of the best on bespoke manufacturing of large area lighting systems. Comments welcome by all!