SERVICES

Illumination Machines provides optical and thermal engineering design services and licensing from our intellectual property portfolio.

Optical Design Services
Custom optical design allows illumination fixtures and devices to realize their full potential. If you are looking beyond what is available off-the-shelf we can help! Specializing in custom aluminum reflector, refractor, TIR or Total Internal Reflection, and catadioptric micro-lens arrays, we can design optics for any source. Using non-imaging illumination design tools which implement optical raytracing we can optimize the profile of the reflector, lens, or system to produce the ideal ratio of beam and field light. If you do not know precisely what the intensity distribution requirements are we can help visualize the solution and take care of the mathematics for you. Universal in illumination is the need for uniformity, high efficiency, and precise light control. Some applications require illumination to the edge and side to illuminate peripheral views for safety, as well as sufficient punch and center beam candle power to throw the light a long distance. Perhaps you need to illuminate an object many km away and require a 5deg beam. If you have a need for an omnidirectional light distribution, or a type III with 90/10 street/house and state of the art glare control we may already have intellectual property available to provide a solution in a compressed time frame.

Thermal Design Services
Thermal design and analysis allow us to predict modifications to the thermal dissipation system before prototyping or investing in casting, extrusions, forging and bonded-fin arrays. CFD tools allow for the prediction of airflow, temperature gradients, radiative heat transfer and conduction in source components, boards, and systems. We have 10 years experience designing and manufacturing thermal dissipation systems related to the unique challenges presented by LED arrays.

Prototyping services
We can prototype using water-clear SLA, micro-machined and hand polished PMMA, or soft-tool a mold within a few days to 2 weeks. Custom aluminum spun reflectors also available quickly as required.

Aluminum reflector manufacturing
Aluminum reflectors were traditionally used for large sources and downlights in the past. Through contract manufacturing partners we now offer tooling and production for aluminum reflectors as small as 10 x 10mm. Specular ultra-bright, orange-peel, or faceting options available.

Glass lens manufacturing
Glass offers high reliability and temperature stability for UL94 V0 and a superior optical transmission performance not matched by currently available UV-stabilized polycarbonate.

Micro-lens and fresnel lens manufacturing
Lighting applications which require diffusive micro-structure, or low-profile collimation can benefit from micro-lens technology and fresnel structure. Tooling the diamond-turned masters and micro-EDM mold inserts requires 3 - 5weeks lead time on average.

Mechanical Design
System level assembly, fit and function, design services available including geometric design, and tolerancing, to ANSI specifications.

Industrial Design
From concept sketches, to rendered models, to rapid prototyping, a complete design cycle will not ignore the aesthetics, human element, environmental function, and sustainable aspects of a product.

Lit-appearance Rendering
Most rendering software ignores the intricate aspects of near-field source geometry, appearance, and color as seen from an observer looking into the fixture. Through the use of our proprietary spectral-raytracing tool FastLitTM we can take into account the illumination product appearance as observed by the human visual system.

Predictive photometrics
By implementing the entire illumination system from near-field source model, optics, to the housing, trim textures and the associated spectral reflectance and scattering properties (BRDF) or (BSDF) we can generate virtual IES files and photometric analysis of the lighting fixture in its environment from first light at the installation site to likely photometrics at t=50,000hours.

Lighting Engineering
If you have a list of 10 lighting fixtures and/or sources to compare and analyze before making a choice, for a specific location, illumination of a unique architectural element or structure, or specialty application you may need some lighting engineering to check calculations for accuracy when first-order predictive models break down. Global illumination raytracing is a tool which can be implemented to predict photometrics on any surface.

Spectral Raytracing
Most raytracing and photometric analysis software cheat by only using RGB color maps for light sources. Physical reality requires more true spectral distribution representation of light sources and the interceding surfaces which perturb, reflect, refract, absorb, and scatter light. Many energy-star qualified products require color uniformity of du'v' <.004. Predictive spatial CRI, zonal CCT variation, and human color discrimination are a number of areas in which spectral raytracing is useful.

LED package design
Custom Cu/Ceramic chip-on-board design. Light extraction studies from the chip and encapsulant level including associated near-field primary optics.

Near-field source modeling
Illumination Machines can conduct near-field source modeling of any source, metal-halide, short-arc Xenon, fluorescent, LED. Chip level source models are specially required when designing micro-optics for LED.

Phosphor scattering
If an application which requires a custom LED source and phosphor mix to achieve a CCT, luminous efficacy, and CRI, spectral raytracing combined with software tools which take into account the luminescence physics provides a means to design your own source. Special care must be taken to respect all intellectual property held by companies in the generation of white light and to seek licensing as required.

Color uniformity simulation
Designing secondary optics without a good near-field source model which takes into account the chip spectral distribution and phosphors may result in problems in spatial color uniformity in the field. Intellectual property related to high efficiency color-mixing optics is available.

Custom optical design software
When the edge-ray method, flux tubes non-imaging design approach, or the features of a commercial optical design tool don't cut it you may need a custom software tool to achieve a breakthrough.

Computational Geometry software design
Our own faceting tool can take any free-form spline and produce facet structures which homogenize light. If your product design requires a custom software tool to produce parametric geometry we can write the software according to your specs. We have experience in NURBS, Sub-D, Tspline, and other extended free-form topologies.

Generative modeling
Especially useful when a design requires an operation rather than object design focus. Raytracing tools which implement "instancing" acceleration techniques allow for rapid analysis of optical micro-structure arrays comprised of millions of primitives. LED backlights for thin televisions, diffusers, and light pipe textures are just a few of the applications in which generative modeling is finding value in the product design challenges of 2010.