Received this a while ago. Now, more than ever I am excited
Greetings from Austin Texas!
Your order is now on our build schedule and I thought you might like to know a little about the way we build each fixture.
We use a combination of state-of-the-art robotic equipment combined with hand assembly to create each fixture. My associates and I start with one 12” printed circuit board for each 12” of fixture (nano fixtures use 7” boards). We build the LED board from scratch using a robotic assembly machine to place the combination of LED colors you’ve selected onto each circuit board. Once the LEDs are positioned on the circuit board they are slowly run through an oven that gradually heats the boards from 75 to 465 degrees Fahrenheit. This melts the solder evenly and permanently fuses the LEDs to the circuit board.
When they cool we check them by eye for obvious problems and electrically test each LED board to make sure they are performing properly. Once everything looks good, we begin the assembly process. Up to this point, we have spent about an hour working on your fixture.
Once the LED board is assembled, the rest of the building process is done by hand. We start by mounting the LED circuit boards into the aluminum fixture case. We’ll wire the system, check and secure the connections and align our highly reflective optical system. We then install your selected lens onto the fixture and seal it to protect the fixture from water damage. End caps are added and the fixture is then ready to bench test.
First, each fixture (and the power supply that will ship with it) is plugged in and tested for at least 4 hours -- we call this the “burn-in” process. If there is a bad LED it will fail within a few minutes but we also want to make sure we catch any short circuits or poor connections that we missed in our earlier visual inspection. It is also a final test of the power supply. We use hand-held laser scanner that quickly reads temperature with tremendous precision. We run the laser along the fixture looking for warm or cool areas -- a sign that something is not right. If we find an area with a temperature variation greater than +/- 4 degrees F, we assume there is a problem and the fixture is scrapped.
After the Burn-In test is complete, we test the dimming function of the fixture. If you ordered a dimmer, we test using your dimmer, if not we use a test dimmer. We want to make sure the LEDs dim properly: if they don’t dim, there is something wrong with the LEDs or the Power Supply.
While all of these steps take time, we very, very seldom find problems and our goal is to make sure each fixture is 100% trouble free and ready to go to work.
As you can see, we don’t just take a mass-produced fixture off a shelf and send it out -- we truly build each one to order and this takes time. I estimate that your order will ship in the next 2-3 days. You will get an update when it ships or if there is going to be a delay.
Thank you for ordering from us -- I know you won’t be disappointed!
The Operations Team from Build My LED, LLc.