Syslite Duo with Tripod

[PreferrablyWood]

I think the AC to DC driver for the LEDs would need to be capable of dimming to allow it. I doubt it is as they are always more expensive. Even if you have a driver that's capable of dimming it's still a new black art when used in buildings etc. Not all dimmers work with all manufacturers lights. There are other factors to consider too, so I doubt all in all it can't be done.

I noticed in the manual that they state that the Syslite Duo dims automatically if it gets overloaded or too hot..

 

[hemdale]

Thanks Tom for your helpful insight. Did you notice if the Syslite Duo  was becoming (very) hot after several hours of use ?

 

[andreasg]

Looked at in a store the other day. They even turned of all the lights for me to test it. No longer concerned it would be to bright.

Doing some painting of the ceiling at home nowadays. And wandered how the light in the ceiling would be. Then learned that it is not possible to do any tilting of the Duo towards the ceiling with that tripod. I find that to be a little strange.

 

[Nat X]

LEDs are not dimmed by lowering their current supply the way that incandescents are, they must be oscillated on and off at a speed which is hopefully too fast for your eyes to detect. "Hopefully" being the key word, as you can usually tell they're flickering if you dart your eyes around as you look at them.

 

[hemdale]

Saw the Milwaukee M18 LED tripod. 2000 lumens only. Festool is 7000 lumens. That's impressive !

 

[neeleman]

The DUO is even 8000 lumen!

 

[hemdale]

Yay. Makes me want to pull the  trigger.
@neeleman: would you be able to take a picture in a large room or even better outdoor , at night to see how the light flood looks like ?

 

[KolinP]

LEDs are not dimmed by lowering their current supply the way that incandescents are, they must be oscillated on and off at a speed which is hopefully too fast for your eyes to detect.

You make an interesting point Mat, and it is certainly true that LEDs are often dimmed by oscillating them on and off at different rates. One good example would be modern car rear and brake lights.

But in this context of a "work light", I'll bet that Festool (or anyone else who makes a lamp labelled as a "workplace" lamp) would dim the overall brightness of such a lamp by switching off some of the LEDs or by simply reducing the current supplied to them, and that the LEDs in these lamps will always be powered (or should always be powered) by continuous, non-oscillating DC current.

Otherwise, if the light is used with rotating machinery of any kind, there's a hazard of getting dangerous stroboscopic effects caused by the flickering (usually at 60Hz or 50Hz of course) where - at the risk of stating the obvious - some rotating surfaces can appear to be not moving if their surface speed "strobes" with the rate of flickering.  I'll take an educated guess and say that the same hazard will exist, although maybe to a smaller degree, even if the LED light is oscillating at much higher frequencies.

Do a Google search for "lighting hazards with rotating machinery" and you'll get lots of health & safety related hits.

I have no direct knowledge of this in recent years however (hence my "educated guess") and I don't actually know whether Festool have taken this into account in their design - but I'll bet you a Christmas Hamper to your favourite (UK) charity that these smart German designers will have made sure the LEDs in this SysLite Duo are powered with straight, flat DC current [big grin]

(Perhaps a Festool FOG member could check if this is true  [smile])

My earliest experience of working on lathes and other rotating machinery was in large "machine shops" with high ceilings, as a teenager way back in 1967.  The arrays of lighting units in these machine shops were all double-unit lights, with one part mercury vapour ('flickering' at 50Hz in UK) and the second part of each unit being a huge incandescent bulb sitting alongside the mercury vapour part. The hot and power-hungry incandescent bulbs were there for "health & safety" reasons, to balance or override the 50Hz flickering - or at least to make the strobing effect no longer a problem with our lathes etc..  The way that LEDs emit their light is akin to the mercury vapour lamps because they don't 'smooth' their output. When they're 'on' they're instantly 'on' and when they're 'off' they're instantly 'off'.

I bet a lot of you will already know about all this "double light-unit" stuff, so I apologise for a long rambling post!  But hopefully it's helpful or at least interesting to readers who've never met the concept before.

Cheers,
Colin P.

December 12th at 08:20 UTC: Edited to remove a reference I had made to an unrelated subject.
Colin P.

 

[tiralie]

Anyone know if this is coming to NA anytime soon?
Tim