Lossless beam-width adjustment with low-cost mechanics

The advent of solid-state lighting has introduced a unique opportunity to achieve revolutionary new functionality in luminaires. These new functions include lossless beam width adjustment, beam shaping, and adjusting beam steering independent of fixture pointing. These new functionalities require more sophisticated mechanical control of elements inside the fixture, which is currently too expensive and complex to be broadly adopted by the industry and delivered to the market. What is needed is lab-grad kinematics for the cost of a toy. This problem will be addressed by implementing compliant kinematic mechanisms in luminaires. Compliant mechanisms can achieve new levels of mechanical control using elastic joints that flex instead of pivoting or sliding. Such mechanisms can dramatically reduce the part count and assembly required to add new functionality to luminaires but can be cumbersome and difficult to design. This program will bring together experts in compliant mechanism design, advanced luminaire optical architectures, and cutting-edge additive manufacturing to unlock the true potential of solid-state lighting. During Phase I the project team will work to use the latest techniques in compliant mechanism design to create a library of kinematic systems that are tuned to the needs of highly functional luminaires. These designs will be used in a manufacturing case study to determine the appropriate materials and processes to be used in production, comparing traditional manufacturing with the latest techniques in additive manufacturing. Two of the mechanism designs will be designed into proof-of-concept product platforms, fabricated into functional prototypes, and characterized to validate the cost and performance advantages of the compliant mechanisms. These highly functional luminaires will provide superior lighting quality and performance at competitive prices and will save energy by targeting light where it is needed, reducing, or eliminating glare, over-lighting, and under-lighting. This will improve equity in access to safe, comfortable, and attractive lighting, while also creating US based manufacturing jobs in additive manufacturing and advance luminaire construction. These new products save energy, reduce waste, and improve occupant wellbeing.