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Help with LED specs and bulk orders

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RandyT:


MCD values are nearly useless for comparing LEDs for pushbutton lighting applications.

Luminous Flux..........Luminous Flux..........Luminous Flux..........Luminous Flux..........

You want wide angles.  The narrow angle LED's concentrate the light more, and therefore have high MCD ratings.  So the LED with these high ratings won't be "too bright" it will be "too focussed" and too bright in a small spot.  Not what you want.

RandyT



Franco B:

Are you saying your diffuser inserts are no good then?  :D

They work very well for me  :)

It would have cost me $60 in blue button blaster LEDs for my cocktail.

I got 200 blue LEDs of ebay for $30 and it was $6 for 20 of your diffusers. I will also still have ~80 LEDs leftover.


RandyT:


--- Quote from: Franco B on January 06, 2009, 03:33:16 pm ---Are you saying your diffuser inserts are no good then?  :D

--- End quote ---

:) Heh.  Not at all.  However, the less work the diffuser needs to do, the better job it can do.  Even with a wide angle LED, one would probably still want some kind of diffuser to keep the glare down.

I'm simply saying that people tend to look at only an MCD rating as the indicator of LED performance, when it's really just a small part of the equation, dependent upon the application of course.

Most folks don't realize, for instance, that a 3000mcd, 40degrees view angle LED has virtually identical light output as a 12000mcd, 20 degree viewing angle LED.  So it's important to select the right combination of angle and light output for a given job, and not rely on the mcd ratings as the only basis for selection.

RandyT

cyapps:

Thanks so much Randy that makes perfect sense about the angles. I really don't like to look at specs, especially if I don't have real world experience to compare or fully understand this stuff. These weren't going to be used for buttons (maybe a couple), I just only have the Button Blasters to compare to and I liked how they looked so I figured if I could get close to their "specs" in  bulk then I would be set but I have no clue of the specs of the Button Blasters so I just figured maybe someone more experienced with leds would have some input.

The same seller has flat wide angle leds "(100) 5mm FLAT TOP Wide Angle Blue LED 6000 mcd USA!" for even cheaper and they might actually be closer to what I want anyways. These aren't really for any specific project so I will most likely just order some and see where it takes me. :)

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