David Savastano, Editor03.02.22
Flexible lighting offers so many opportunities for designers, who can create lighting that fits whatever space and shape they wish. The challenge is developing the system.
Lumitronix may have the answer here. Founded in 2005 by Christian Hoffmann and Paul Sparenborg, Lumitronix began as a rigid LED lamp and module producer. With that knowledge, the company is now successfully working on producing flexible lighting on reel-to-reel.
Sparenborg, who is sales director for Lumitronix (Hoffmann serves as CEO), spoke about the early days of Lumitronix and how it has used its experience to grow and also to develop new products.
“We started to distribute LEDs with a small online shop,” Sparenborg said. “It was the right time for this lucky combination, enabling us to meet the high demand and quality requirements from the industry within only a few years. Our own in-house production was established in 2009.
“From then on, the first LED lamps and rigid LED modules were produced in Hechingen/Southern Germany,” he added. “With growing manpower and professionalisation, our in-house manufacturing competences were further expanded. In the following years and until today, Lumitronix has invested in expanding its production facility, including research and development.
“It took us many years to set up our flexible lighting technology,” Sparenborg recalled. “We started in 2018 and we were able to start mass production at the end of 2020. Today we employ 75 highly dedicated employees, hold several patents and continuously bring innovations to the market.”
With its LED technologies, Lumitronix operates in a wide range of segments.
“In addition to general lighting applications, we also serve a wide range of white goods appliances,” Sparenborg said. “Furthermore, we are a strong player in highly specialized lighting applications, such as disinfection, light therapy, visioning and signalling. We are pretty strong with lighting applications – producing various different flexible light sources for applications such as machine lights, specialty optical inspection systems and high-end ambient lighting fixtures.
“While we are already strongly established in the market for light applications, our presence for flexible (hybrid) electronics is still at the beginning and undergoing a strong growth,” he observed. “We see ourselves as a supplier for the entire industry and today we handle numerous customer-specific requirements within the framework of development projects and contract manufacturing.”
Lumitronix is substrate agnostic, using polyimide (PI), PET and paper as well as other substrates.
“For our lighting products, we process PI, PET and paper in mass production,” Sparenborg noted. “For customer-specific projects, however, we also use other flexible base materials that bring advantages for the end product. Sometimes a low combustion load is important, or special material properties like transparency are requested. Within a feasibility check, we can quickly determine whether we can process certain flexible substrate on our reel-to-reel production line.”
Textiles offer potential for lighting as well, although it does offer some challenges as well.
“We are actively working on developing textile-based lighting,” Sparenborg noted. “But it is more porous. We can apply a cover layer but then we lose a lot of the benefits of textiles.
Sparenborg pointed to a number of key advantages of flexible electronics for lighting, beginning with roll-to-roll production.
“The key advantage of roll-to-roll is that you don’t have the soldered connection points from one sheet to another – you have less probability of defects,” Sparenborg observed. “Secondly for us, it is much better to highly automate the process in roll-to-roll that it is sheet to sheet. There are also cost benefits.
“We have converted numerous customer projects that were previously implemented on rigid boards to flexible boards,” he added. “There are many advantages with which flexible LED modules score points over rigid boards, not least with volume pricing. Versatility, reduced installation labor, simplified inventory management and additional design possibilities are the best reasons for flexible LED solutions. Lightweight materials are able to reduce waste and weight in applications.”
With all of this, there are challenges that remain for flexible lighting, and Sparenborg believes that Lumitronix is well positioned to overcome these issues.
“There are hurdles to the market,” he said. “Bringing materials to the wall requires some competences. We need time for the application, and it has been difficult in the last two years to give this education.
Sparenborg noted that mechanical flexibility often comes along with mechanical stress, and Lumiotronix’s LUMPROTECT® lamination process is unique in that it protects without taking away flexibility.
“For us, the biggest highlight is our LUMPROTECT® technology, where we have added several layers of plastics to protect the electronics,” said Sparenborg. “The main problem for most applications is that flexible printed electronics should be flexible in the application. Without our covering technology, it doesn’t have the mechanical strength. We are adding more mechanical strength without adding so much more material.”
“The mechanical strength of our solutions also must fit reliably the application,” added Sparenborg. “With LUMPROTECT®, we have established a novel technology to keep mechanical flexibility and gain mechanical robustness. LUMPROTECT® is basically an innovative lamination process for flexible and large area electronics that protects the assembly against various kinds of physical stress, but also chemicals and weather conditions. We will introduce this technology in detail at LOPEC.”
Lumitronix offers commercially a wide standard portfolio of self-produced flexible LED modules – 100% made in Germany.
“We have various custom applications for flexible printed electronics in mass production,” Sparenborg added. “Different technical approaches to hybrid flexible electronics are under development according to customer specifications.
“The most innovative and fascinating application has been integrating LEDs into paper as a base material and applying it to wallpaper that can be applied what the classic wet glue,” Sparenborg noted. “It lights up the room with LEDs that are integrated. We are doing this this by integrating classic printed circuit boards and then using our innovative pick and place processes and reflow soldering processes to create this printed wallpaper with silver tracks. It was presented two years ago at the largest fair for wallcoverings and the feedback was very good.”
Sparenborg sees opportunities ahead for Lumitronix in the flexible lighting space.
“Flexible lighting on the one hand opens up completely new design possibilities and enables multi-dimensional lighting installations,” he observed. “On the other hand, completely new applications can also be realized. With environmental protection, flexible LED modules can be more easily implemented in applications with direct user contact like wearables or in industrial applications.
“When sensitive electronics are safely protected and retain their flexibility, a multitude of new fields of application open up quite naturally,” Sparenborg concluded. “Our goal is to bring challenging and at times futuristic requirements of our customers quickly and reliably to the mass market.”
Lumitronix may have the answer here. Founded in 2005 by Christian Hoffmann and Paul Sparenborg, Lumitronix began as a rigid LED lamp and module producer. With that knowledge, the company is now successfully working on producing flexible lighting on reel-to-reel.
Sparenborg, who is sales director for Lumitronix (Hoffmann serves as CEO), spoke about the early days of Lumitronix and how it has used its experience to grow and also to develop new products.
“We started to distribute LEDs with a small online shop,” Sparenborg said. “It was the right time for this lucky combination, enabling us to meet the high demand and quality requirements from the industry within only a few years. Our own in-house production was established in 2009.
“From then on, the first LED lamps and rigid LED modules were produced in Hechingen/Southern Germany,” he added. “With growing manpower and professionalisation, our in-house manufacturing competences were further expanded. In the following years and until today, Lumitronix has invested in expanding its production facility, including research and development.
“It took us many years to set up our flexible lighting technology,” Sparenborg recalled. “We started in 2018 and we were able to start mass production at the end of 2020. Today we employ 75 highly dedicated employees, hold several patents and continuously bring innovations to the market.”
With its LED technologies, Lumitronix operates in a wide range of segments.
“In addition to general lighting applications, we also serve a wide range of white goods appliances,” Sparenborg said. “Furthermore, we are a strong player in highly specialized lighting applications, such as disinfection, light therapy, visioning and signalling. We are pretty strong with lighting applications – producing various different flexible light sources for applications such as machine lights, specialty optical inspection systems and high-end ambient lighting fixtures.
“While we are already strongly established in the market for light applications, our presence for flexible (hybrid) electronics is still at the beginning and undergoing a strong growth,” he observed. “We see ourselves as a supplier for the entire industry and today we handle numerous customer-specific requirements within the framework of development projects and contract manufacturing.”
Lumitronix is substrate agnostic, using polyimide (PI), PET and paper as well as other substrates.
“For our lighting products, we process PI, PET and paper in mass production,” Sparenborg noted. “For customer-specific projects, however, we also use other flexible base materials that bring advantages for the end product. Sometimes a low combustion load is important, or special material properties like transparency are requested. Within a feasibility check, we can quickly determine whether we can process certain flexible substrate on our reel-to-reel production line.”
Textiles offer potential for lighting as well, although it does offer some challenges as well.
“We are actively working on developing textile-based lighting,” Sparenborg noted. “But it is more porous. We can apply a cover layer but then we lose a lot of the benefits of textiles.
Sparenborg pointed to a number of key advantages of flexible electronics for lighting, beginning with roll-to-roll production.
“The key advantage of roll-to-roll is that you don’t have the soldered connection points from one sheet to another – you have less probability of defects,” Sparenborg observed. “Secondly for us, it is much better to highly automate the process in roll-to-roll that it is sheet to sheet. There are also cost benefits.
“We have converted numerous customer projects that were previously implemented on rigid boards to flexible boards,” he added. “There are many advantages with which flexible LED modules score points over rigid boards, not least with volume pricing. Versatility, reduced installation labor, simplified inventory management and additional design possibilities are the best reasons for flexible LED solutions. Lightweight materials are able to reduce waste and weight in applications.”
With all of this, there are challenges that remain for flexible lighting, and Sparenborg believes that Lumitronix is well positioned to overcome these issues.
“There are hurdles to the market,” he said. “Bringing materials to the wall requires some competences. We need time for the application, and it has been difficult in the last two years to give this education.
Sparenborg noted that mechanical flexibility often comes along with mechanical stress, and Lumiotronix’s LUMPROTECT® lamination process is unique in that it protects without taking away flexibility.
“For us, the biggest highlight is our LUMPROTECT® technology, where we have added several layers of plastics to protect the electronics,” said Sparenborg. “The main problem for most applications is that flexible printed electronics should be flexible in the application. Without our covering technology, it doesn’t have the mechanical strength. We are adding more mechanical strength without adding so much more material.”
“The mechanical strength of our solutions also must fit reliably the application,” added Sparenborg. “With LUMPROTECT®, we have established a novel technology to keep mechanical flexibility and gain mechanical robustness. LUMPROTECT® is basically an innovative lamination process for flexible and large area electronics that protects the assembly against various kinds of physical stress, but also chemicals and weather conditions. We will introduce this technology in detail at LOPEC.”
Lumitronix offers commercially a wide standard portfolio of self-produced flexible LED modules – 100% made in Germany.
“We have various custom applications for flexible printed electronics in mass production,” Sparenborg added. “Different technical approaches to hybrid flexible electronics are under development according to customer specifications.
“The most innovative and fascinating application has been integrating LEDs into paper as a base material and applying it to wallpaper that can be applied what the classic wet glue,” Sparenborg noted. “It lights up the room with LEDs that are integrated. We are doing this this by integrating classic printed circuit boards and then using our innovative pick and place processes and reflow soldering processes to create this printed wallpaper with silver tracks. It was presented two years ago at the largest fair for wallcoverings and the feedback was very good.”
Sparenborg sees opportunities ahead for Lumitronix in the flexible lighting space.
“Flexible lighting on the one hand opens up completely new design possibilities and enables multi-dimensional lighting installations,” he observed. “On the other hand, completely new applications can also be realized. With environmental protection, flexible LED modules can be more easily implemented in applications with direct user contact like wearables or in industrial applications.
“When sensitive electronics are safely protected and retain their flexibility, a multitude of new fields of application open up quite naturally,” Sparenborg concluded. “Our goal is to bring challenging and at times futuristic requirements of our customers quickly and reliably to the mass market.”