LED LIGHT ON A SHEET
Calling it “radically innovative”, Grote Industries unveiled its remarkable LightForm technology during a press conference at last week’s Mid-America Trucking Show.
It’s unlike any other sort of LED illumination, a thin-film, solid-state lighting device less than a millimeter thick. It’s flexible, bendable, comes in strips a few inches or many feet long and in many colors that can be combined on the same strip in as many patterns as might be needed. LightForm strips can be bent around corners, over contoured areas, and into complicated shapes.
Better yet, because it uses substantially less material than a conventional LED marker lamp, for instance, mounting a LightForm lamp can be quickly done by peel-and-stick means, using the familiar adhesive now found on conspicuity tape and other such products.
“We can achieve the same FMVSS 108 photometric requirements for a P2-rated marker lamp, with just 2% of the material used in a traditional LED lamp,” said Dominic Grote, vice president of sales and marketing, “all while eliminating the installation cost and time associated with drilling holes, affixing mounting brackets, and utilizing traditional fasteners.”
He added that the company would draw on its optical expertise to engineer never-before-seen light patterns and configurations. Asked how long a LightForm strip could be, he said the engineers haven’t found the maximum yet, implying that there might not be a limit for all intents and purposes.
“LightForm is a game changer that will dramatically alter the way the industry uses lighting, while challenging all of our imaginations in the process,” Grote went on, noting that it was also the 20th anniversary of the family-run company’s introduction of the first commercially viable LED marker lamp.
“LightForm will change the shape, design and application of interior and exterior vehicle lighting in ways we haven’t even begun to imagine. In the evolution of lighting, this is a totally new species.”
Grote engineers have subjected the product to a rigorous battery of stress tests including salt baths, extreme humidity, heat and cold. Said to be “far beyond the mere prototype stage,” it’s not quite ready for market.
LightForm is also for interior use and will seemingly change the way accent and environmental lighting is designed and applied. It’s suited not just to trucks but also to aircraft and watercraft interiors.
Have your say
This is a moderated forum. Comments will no longer be published unless they are accompanied by a first and last name and a verifiable email address. (Today's Trucking will not publish or share the email address.) Profane language and content deemed to be libelous, racist, or threatening in nature will not be published under any circumstances.