What materials are used to make LED strip lighting?

 

What materials are used to make LED strip lighting

With the LED lighting market capacity continues to increase, as the decorative lighting "main" LED strip is widely used in home lighting, decorative lighting, and advertising lighting and other fields, and urban night scenes, landscape lighting, and other places are everywhere you can see the LED strip "shadow".

The LED strip is a kind of decorative lighting product assembled on the ribbon FPC (flexible circuit board) or PCB hardboard, named because the product shape is like a strip.

Different classification Different functions

In terms of material, the LED strip is divided into an LED solid strip and an LED soft strip. LED solid strip is assembled with PCB solid board as an assembled circuit board, assembled with SMD LED, some manufacturers also use direct LED for assembly. It is understood that the LED solid light bar with SMD LEDs has 18, 24, 30, 36, 40, and other specifications; with direct LEDs have 18, 24, 36, 48, and other different specifications, there are front and side. Due to the LED solid strip heat dissipation fast, longer service life, easy to fix, processing and installation are more convenient and thus are widely used in places requiring higher-end product quality.

And LED soft strip uses FPC to do assembly circuit board, assembled with SMD LEDs so that the thickness of the product is only the thickness of a coin. the common specifications of the LED soft strip are 30 cm long 18 LEDs, 24 LEDs and 50 cm long 15 LEDs, 24 LEDs, 30 LEDs, etc. Because the FPC material is soft, it can be arbitrarily bent, folded, and wound, which is suitable for irregular places and narrow space use, also because it can be arbitrarily bent and wound, it is suitable for commercial lighting, home decoration, outdoor, entertainment venues, advertising decoration in any combination of various patterns. With the maturity of technology and the decline in the cost of raw materials, LED ribbon is being accepted by ordinary consumers in the market with its low price and the variability of the shape.

From the application of LED strip, LED soft strip and LED solid strip product attributes determine the application of the two products in different places, its market popularity also differs, but the current scope of application, LED soft strip will be relatively extensive, while the price of the LED soft strip is also more easily accepted by consumers.

In terms of voltage, LED strips can be divided into high-voltage LED strips and low-voltage LED strips. High-voltage LED strip, the main material from the PCB board, and transparent plastic injection into the tape process. The formed ribbon has two alloy wires on both sides. The light source is in the middle of the strip. The texture of the good high-voltage LED strip has a high degree of gel-plastic brightness. High-quality high-voltage strip appearance neat and clean, transparent without impurities, while the appearance of poor quality with gray-yellow. The main feature of a high-voltage LED strip is that its length can be in 50 meters or 100 meters full brightness, the disadvantage is that the high voltage safety performance is poor. Low-voltage LED strip appearance and high-voltage LED strip is completely different, it does not have a double alloy line, due to low voltage, its line directly attached to the PCB circuit board. The main feature of the low-voltage LED strip is safe and reliable. The biggest disadvantage is that the current longest can only do about 10 meters.

Currently on the market more conventional LED strip is 3528 and 5050, 2835 strip. 3528 refers to the size of the LED light source, 3.2mm long and 2.8mm wide, 5050 refers to the LED light source length and width are 5.0mm. the difference between the two, on the one hand, the size is different, on the other hand, 5050 lamp beads inside 3 LED chips, and 3528 in only 1 LED chip, so the same number of beads, 5050 LED strip brightness is 3528 LED strip 3 times, the power is also three times, the price is also more expensive than the 3528 LED strip.

The appearance of beauty is not as strong as the inner

Although the LED strip is a very strong decorative role, the appearance of beautiful than the inner tough, for the LED strip, its product parameters are also a major factor that consumers focus on when choosing to buy. In order to have an in-depth understanding of the product parameters of the LED strip and the current market situation, the whole platform of the lighting Ouman Lighting, Foshan Lighting, Opple Lighting, Tongfang Lighting, and more than 20 well-known LED strip manufacturers have conducted research, and from the material, size, power, voltage, light source, lamp beads, color temperature, luminous efficacy, finger and other aspects of the display and comparison, with a view to the terminal business and consumers in the choice of LED strip light to provide some help.

LED strip parameters

The material is good or bad to determine the quality of superiority. From the point of view of the product material, at present, the main materials of LED strip lights are PVC, PVC + copper wire, silicone sleeve tube, calendered copper, aluminum, and copper wire. Products using different materials, their service life is also different. Take PVC as an example, PVC is a kind of plastic decorative material, its main raw material is polyvinyl chloride resin, its characteristics are clear quality, heat insulation, flame retardant, acid and alkali resistance, corrosion resistance, at the same time, its good dielectricity, durable, anti-aging, easy fusion and bonding as well as smooth surface, bright color, extremely decorative, decorative applications are wider. It is reported that the advantage of silicone tubes is their high flexibility, good elasticity, ozone resistance, voltage resistance, kink resistance without deformation, long service life, good flame retardancy. The material is good or bad to determine the merits of the product.

Luminous efficiency, the role of the finger more and more important. The total luminous flux emitted by the light source (lumens, brightness) and the ratio of the electrical power consumed by the light source (watts), known as the luminous efficacy of the light source. The higher the luminous efficiency value of the product, the stronger the ability of the lighting equipment to convert electrical energy into light energy, that is, in the case of providing the same brightness, the stronger the energy efficiency of the lighting equipment; under the same power, the stronger the lighting equipment, the greater its brightness. 

LED strip in the choice of materials and production process control is relatively neglected, therefore, resulting in LED strip brightness is not enough, the apparent finger is low, coupled with many low-voltage LED strip overall into a vicious price competition cycle, the destruction of the LED strip market segment of the overall quality image.

Potting glue selected right on the "earned"

Along with the popularity of LED ribbon and the increase in market capacity, choose a suitable LED ribbon potting adhesive has become one of the most headaches for many LED ribbon manufacturers. It is reported that there are epoxy resin potting glue, polyurethane potting glue, and silicone potting glue three kinds of potting glue on the market.

LED strip potting adhesive material

Among them, although the epoxy resin potting adhesive has a good light transmission rate and relatively good stacking effect, can make the cured LED soft strip appearance bright, rounded curvature. However, it can only be used in -50C to 550C, at high temperatures, it is easy to appear toughness deterioration, many times more than 600C, soft light bar adhesive softening, resulting in the gel easy to fracture; at the same time, in the temperature below -50C, the gel becomes hard and brittle, light bar slightly shaken will appear gel peeling and brittle fracture phenomenon; lamp beads long-term light up to 400-700 hours, the lamp beads The epoxy resin colloid above becomes yellowish-brown, resulting in a decrease in light brightness and color temperature change.

The light transmission rate of polyurethane potting adhesive is between 85-92%, and the cured light bar has good flexibility, and the cured adhesive can be used between -250C and 950C for a long time; however, because the hardness of polyurethane adhesive cannot be very low, the product can only be used for drip adhesive type or semi-sleeve type soft light bar. As the temperature decreases, the flexibility of the strip appears larger changes; potting, the FPC surface and environmental humidity requirements are high, if the humidity is too large, the product surface is prone to white mist and adhesion is not enough; long-term use in the outdoors, the gel usually 2-3 years to appear yellowing phenomenon.

Silicone potting adhesive is currently the most popular potting adhesive on the market, the hardness of the gel can be adjusted after curing, can be made into jelly-type gel can also be made into shoreA30 degrees harder glue, so silicone potting adhesive can be used for both drip-type light bar, can also be used for half a set of the tube-type light bar, can also be used for a full set of the tube-type light bar, after curing the gel can be used between -450C to 2000C, and with the change in temperature, the product's adhesive strength will change. And with the change of temperature, the mechanical and physical properties and optical properties of the product will not appear obvious changes, very suitable for Russia, Northern Europe, North America, and other cold areas. In addition, silicone potting adhesive light bar resistance to ozone, ultraviolet light, acid and alkali performance, outdoor use can be maintained for a long time without yellowing; but silicone potting adhesive also exists with FPC adhesion than epoxy, stacking high sex slightly lower and other defects.