PHOTOMETRIC TEST LAB
Don't be left in the dark...
QUALITY ASSURANCE THROUGH TESTING
Carclo - Shining Light On The World since 1936
Carclo's in-house Photometric Test Laboratory is a world-class facility within the Carclo Global Centre for Excellence in LED Optics, located in Slough, United Kingdom. The Laboratory works closely with the entire Carclo LED Optics team in creating, analyzing, and publishing data for all Carclo LED Optics. The Laboratory supports all Carclo product development efforts, and also provides rapid responses for customer technical enquiries. During product development, critical attention is focused on achieving fully optimized optical efficiency and beam quality characteristics. The laboratory has measurement capabilities in photometry, colorimetry and spectroscopy. The following photometric quantities can be measured:
Figure 1: LED & 20mm optic spectrum
An integrating sphere is used to measure the lumen output of any LED or any LED-plus-optic combination. For efficiency measurements, only light output from the optic front face is collected and any side-scattered radiation is excluded. A spectro-radiometer is linked to the integrating sphere allowing us to determine the spectral distribution of most visible light sources (typ. 390nm to 750nm), the average CCT & CRI and colour differences.
An Imaging Photometer is used to characterise the spatial (i.e. illuminance) and angular (i.e. intensity) characteristics of most optics with viewing angles up to approx. 80O. From this we produce spot image and cross-section profiles to help with visualisation and assessment of optic performance.
Figure 2: 26.5mm optic spot image
and intensity cross-section
For wider field of views where it is necessary to capture the light distribution up to a full hemisphere we use a state-of-the-art Imaging Sphere. This provides rapid, high resolution measurement of far field luminous (or radiant) intensity, CIE chromaticity coordinates, and correlated colour temperature (CCT), all as a function of angle. So, this is a powerful tool for looking at the differences in these characteristics across the optic beam.
For customers who wish to simulate how our optics perform using standard photometric software, such as Dialux™ or Relux™, the Laboratory also makes available photometric data such as 'IES' or 'lumedat' files for all Carclo optics. These are available through Carclo’s new OpticSelect tool, as all files available for each LED-optic combination are listed in the details tab.
