CREE Has Been Purchased New LEDs In The Works

The decline in quality must have been recent. I compared CREE to every other brand on the market in 2008 - 2010 and per watt CREE was exceptionally brighter and ran cooler. There were few DC to DC bucker failures. Common sense has to be applied. Many lamps with CREE infrastructure only had adequately cool P/N junction temeratures when air was passed over the heat sink. For prissy me, temps are limited to 50 C. Stores that have my high energy LED lighting (50 watts consumed) have not failed after 10 years of use minimum 5 hours per day.

Over temp on the junction is the primary cause of non defective manufacture failures of the CREE. Stress on the substrate is the other. I had to use USA silver bearing heat grease and with the 300 watts consumed shop lamp the heat sink was hard black anodized with 2 full sealed Pabst 120 volt fans and a Meanwell power supply. The chips are driven at full power and illumination intensity is incredible. Far brighter than (2) 400 watt metal halide lamps with a much wider flood pattern.

And GDEtrailer thank you for font separation between published and personal data. Excellent idea.

Heat sinking is the bugaboo with LED technology. It amplifies unit cost times ten.

HINT Up to the present when you see operation voltages 9-30 volts the lamp infrastructure is CREE. The lower the voltage the easier it will be on the bucker. My high wattage lamps must be fed 36.1 volts optimum. They are protected by a precision fuse in case of a shorted chip. Color temperature is 5.1K

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, Cree is SELLING OR SPINNING OFF their LED business unit to a Third party investment group (a "Carve out").

They will not be investing another "Penny" into the LED lighting business.

In other words Cree is DUMPING the LED Lighting business in order to concentrate on OTHER Semiconductor business more closely related to Electric Vehicles.

HERE is a link to the story..

From link above..

"Lighting

Cree to sell LED business for $300 million
Peter Brown
20 October 2020

Cree Inc. has agreed to sell its light emitting diode (LED) business to Smart Global Holdings Inc., a maker of memory modules, solid state storage products and hybrid solutions.

The deal, valued at $300 million, is designed to continue Cree’s transition to a pure play global semiconductor company and help accelerate shifts from silicon to silicon carbide that the company hopes will fuel high growth markets such as electric vehicles, 5G and industrial applications.

Cree’s LED business is comprised of LED chip and high-performance LED components. Smart will license and incorporate the Cree LED brand name into the Smart portfolio of businesses.

Smart said the acquisition has strategic benefits such as giving it a foothold in the LED lighting industry including general listing, specialty lighting, video screens and outdoor and architectural lighting. Additionally, Smart will get access to Cree’s customer and distribution network with more than 1,000 customers and 2,000 patents.

Smart will add the 2,000 employees from Cree’s LED workforce that includes 200 engineers, R&D, sales and marketing and management team. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals with a target closing of the first quarter of 2021."

Good move for Cree, the LED lighting business is no longer a high profit business, it is loaded with plenty of cut throat cheap manufacturing which means Cree is not making as much profit as they want or need to generate.

Although, it isn't all that bad, Cree hasn't made a long lasting quality LED for quite some time and has been coasting on that name.. I swore off ever buying any more Cree branded LEDs a few yrs back, never was able to get them to last long.

By they way, this may affect any warranties on old LED product as the spin off may or may not honor it.. No laws say they must.

GordonThree wrote:
I thought the maximum was 300lm/watt for a phosphor conversion LED? The blue/uv they use to drive the phosphor is the bottleneck as I recall. If they could drive the phosphor with green LEDs instead, could be interesting.

I've heard 300 - 400 lumens/W is the "theoretical" maximum with current tech, but there is so much research going on that who knows what's down the road.

First thing I thought when reading the above: Space Technology

Could it also be the new technology is for military and space usage? One coronal solar discharge would destroy a lot of orbiting tech. For lighting habitally dark areas outside, and inside.

I thought the maximum was 300lm/watt for a phosphor conversion LED? The blue/uv they use to drive the phosphor is the bottleneck as I recall. If they could drive the phosphor with green LEDs instead, could be interesting.

I follow LED technology a bit & am pretty sure something as spectacular as a 400 W/lumen LED chip would have been noted on one of the several trade sources that I regularly peruse.

That's why I wrote silicon carbide? I haven't kept up with new tech because the gift lights I buy for remote ranches keeps me busy. I use obsolete CPU heatsinks with fans and 50 watt rated chips for the main room and 10 watt chips for the bedroom.

wa8yxm wrote:
WOW their LED's are already amazing I have a 1200 Lumen flashlight that draws 1 amp at 3 volts.. that's 3 watts 1200 lumen is 100 watts on ye old style lamps.

Something is wrong with those numbers. Cree has generally been one of the leaders in LED tech, but 400W/lumen just doesn't seem possible. Most LEDs are around 100 - 120 W/lumen, and 200 w/lumen is bleeding edge. Maybe one of the marketing wanks at Cree got a little over excited.

There is a newer Cree bulb that is supposed to be better than the old led's for enclosed spaces such as ceiling fixtures. Maybe they use the newer silicon-carbide technology.