Components: LED Light Engines With Fiber Panels Boost Brightness Levels

By combining one or more high-power, high-current-driven LEDs with the company's woven or UniGlo fiber-optic panels, a new modular light engine dramatically increases brightness levels over a wide and flat area. The LEDs are the company's Luxeon III Star and Luxeon V units. A special collimating lens captures the LED light's output and then focuses it on the fiber-optic panel, making brightness levels 20 to 50 times greater than normally possible. An aluminum housing acts as a heatsink. A light engine with a single Luxeon III Star LED illuminating a 3- by 5-in. panel costs from $10 to $50 in OEM lots.