Light it up: General Industry Coverage

Modern machine tools are impressive beasts, capable of incredible feats. However, one basic aspect of machine operation is consistently overlooked in favor of machine efficiency: the way the operation appears to the naked eye.

“What we are seeing is that many CNC machines are coming in from factories overseas with very poor-quality lighting,” said Richard May Jr., industrial sales manager for task lighting manufacturer O.C. White Co., Thorndike, Mass. “You’d think such a rudimentary aspect wouldn’t be overlooked, but the builders are so concerned with dwell time, cycle time and machining parameters that they’re not really taking the actual operator who will be using the machine into account. Lighting plays a huge role in not only operator safety, but also in productivity.”

O.C. White’s Green-Lite High Intensity LED Linear machine light features a die-cast aluminum body to direct heat away from the electronic components, as well as tempered safety glass and a nickel-plated bezel. Image courtesy O.C. White.

O.C. White’s first fixtures were kerosene-based when it began in 1883. Since then, the company has evolved with the technology, going from oil to electric incandescent lighting to fluorescent and halogen lamps. Although lighting options are better than ever, builders still frequently ship machine tools with outdated lighting technology.

“Each new development presents a large technological jump, which is frequently overlooked by the consumer, who likely thinks ‘light is light,'” May said. “But not all lighting is created equal; it’s the practical and specific application of light in order to get a job done that matters. High-quality lighting fixtures not only provide the precision application of light that the customer demands, but also the quality to stand up to the harsh conditions in the modern CNC machine.”

Bright Choice

While incandescent, fluorescent and halogen lamps are familiar technologies, LED lighting is dramatically changing the industrial lighting marketplace, according to Louis Calvo, director of sales and marketing for Waldmann Lighting, Wheeling, Ill. He said Waldmann converts fluorescent and halogen machine task lights to LED.

“What we’re doing is switching people from a fluorescent or halogen source, which might last from 1,000 to 5,000 hours of operation, and getting them a source that will give 50,000 hours of operation,” he said. “The only reason to use incandescent, fluorescent or halogen lights is if you’re looking to source the lowest-cost alternative. That’s not to say that those products don’t have a place—there is still a very strong market in residential—but, essentially, the benefits of switching to LED lighting can be summed up as ‘everything but cost.’ That cost can be a barrier to entry for some, but it is coming down as the volume of LEDs being produced increases.”

That up-front cost, according to Ron Roehl, president of robotics and engineering provider CNC Solutions LLC, Johnson Creek, Wis., can be from one-and-a-half to three times the cost of a comparable lamp-driven light source, but companies that get past the sticker shock will see many benefits.

“Let’s look at a machine that’s running around the clock,” he said. “If a lamp burns out, you have to shut the machine down, hire an electrician who has to pull the light out, disassemble the enclosure while, hopefully, not compromising the integrity of the waterproofing, put a new bulb in, then reverse the process. Between the cost of the bulb and the cost of all that downtime, how much money are you really saving? The cost of changing two bulbs is going to add up to the difference in the price of buying the LED in the first place.”

Machine tool lights, such as the Mach LED Plus from Waldmann, must be totally waterproof to protect the electronic components from conditions inside a CNC machine tool. Image courtesy Waldmann Lighting.

Calvo agreed, noting an LED’s significantly longer life. “You actually wind up paying far more for the fluorescent fixture over time, without even taking the electricity consumption or procurement costs into account,” he said.

In addition, LEDs provide a different type of light, noted O.C. White’s May. While traditional, lamp-based light sources are essentially floodlights, in that they provide a 360° field of illumination, LEDs are spotlights. However, all LEDs are not created equal.

“Low-quality LED lighting fixtures sold today still employ LED technology from the 1970s, and the light output and quality show it,” May said. “Time is money in today’s machining industry. High-quality LED lighting will not only shorten your tool setup time, but also minimize scrap, as you can identify problems more quickly while watching the machine run.”

O.C. White only currently manufactures LED lighting, May said, although the company offers some legacy products, such as gooseneck and rigid-arm incandescent lights for long-term customers. He estimated that 95 percent of the company’s sales are LEDs and predicted those LEDs will be hopelessly outdated in fairly short order.

“The efficiency jumps that have been achieved in LEDs are phenomenal,” May said. “If you look back 10 years to what an LED was, you wouldn’t believe the difference today. One of the most cutting-edge products coming are OLEDs, or organic LEDs, and they’re unlike anything on the market today. There are prototype lighting arrays the size and thickness of a sheet of standard printer paper. The idea of what a light fixture needs to look like will be turned on its head with this new technology. It is a great time to be designing quality LED products.”

Electric Slide

Electricity consumption is another major factor when choosing lighting, and a huge benefit of solid-state lighting is efficiency.