Thermal management and PLA luminaires

One concern we hear from some parts of the lighting industry when we talk about the sustainable bio plastic we use, is regarding its heat resistance. Many luminaire product designers think you always have to use polycarbonate or other petrochemical plastics in luminaires. This is not true. Granted PLA does have a lower melting point and heat resistance than polycarbonate, and some luminaire types do need polycarbonate for its other attributes.

However, lower heat resistance temperatures are not a problem if the luminaire has been designed for manufacturing in PLA. In fact, it drives efficacy through excellent thermal management. We post process any PLA part within 30mm of the LED to improve its heat resistance temperature to ≥ 95°. We keep the junction temperature of our COB LEDs below 70°. Keeping our LED’s cool means all of our luminaires are above 100 luminaire lumens per circuit watt and up to 143 LLM/cW. We don’t sacrifice light quality for this efficacy ether, all our luminaires have colour rendering of Ra90. The excellent thermal management also means all our luminaires have a lumen maintenance of - L90 - B10 - 50,000hrs @ Ta 25°.