Makita becoming serious about lighting.

[Jronman]

Makita announced a handful of different lighting solutions at GIE 2019. There is a smaller unit that creates 3000 lumens for roughly $149 and anther that creates 10,000 for $199. Both are hybrid powered:corded or cordless. The 3000 lumen option has one battery slot and the 10,000 lumen light has a dual battery slot that can run off one or 2 batteries. There will be a wide base tripod coming out that will be able to fit up to 2 of the new lights. They are also have Makitas XPT rating. You can leave it outside and not worry about it getting ruined by rain. Also a new handheld spot light is coming. 

[Jjwillac]

Also hybrid wobble lights that can be connected in series.

[kat]

You could get a 10.000 lumen chinese flashlight for $50-$100 even 2 years ago..

It's good that Makita is finally getting their hands on the latest LED tech. Better late than never I guess

[Jjwillac]

10 hours ago, kat said:

You could get a 10.000 lumen chinese flashlight for $50-$100 even 2 years ago..

It's good that Makita is finally getting their hands on the latest LED tech. Better late than never I guess

 You don't seem to have much positive to say very often?

 

Although I agree Makita has been (still is) sorely lacking in lighting, I'm glad to see them making gains.  I'm not aware of any other brands with 10,000 lumen work lights? I would still like to see a tower type light that is one relatively compact (very relative in this case) unit for transportation rather than tripods to mount multiple directional lights.

[paulengr]

I think Milwaukee and Dewalt top out at around 3500 lumens currently. Battery life at 3500 lumens is terrible even with large ones. 10,000 lumens isn’t going to be very practical except plugged in but that’s ok because we need that too on some jobs, I’m slowly coming around to the idea that having 2 or 3 lights is much better than one big one though. More uniform lighting with fewer shadows.

[Jjwillac]

Some milwaukee lights are in the 4,500-5,000 lumen range.  I agree that 10,000 lumens has to pose a runtime issue (though the new Makita light can use 2 batteries @ 18v I think) and has limited application on many sites.  I suppose you could use the 6 battery backpack with the light to get better run time?

 

I could see 10,000 lumens being useful from some big area lights (similar to the wobbles) though.

[HiltiWpg]

It's a 3 source light, 10000 lumens is most likely AC source.

Unless they have some new tech for efficiency!

 

The small work light is only 3000 lumens.

 

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[paulengr]

Well in theory 300 lumens per Watt can be done.

https://www.cree.com/news-media/news/article/cree-first-to-break-300-lumens-per-watt-barrier

But realistically that’s a lab number. Workibg it backwards Milwaukee claims around 2 hours of the same 5 Ah battery at 3000 lumens on their flagship 2135-20 rocket. So if we can get 100% out of the battery, we would get 5 x 18 = 90 Watt-hours, dividing by 2 hours gives us a 45 W draw so they are getting roughly 3000 / 45 = 67 lumens per Watt. I’m reasonably sure the LEDs are more efficient than that but this is kind of an “end to end” comparison with all inefficiency lumped into the lumens per Watt number. Obviously there is room for improvement.

So with 10,000 lumens we can guesstimate 333% more power draw so with two 6 Ah batteries the largest officially available that gets us 1.44 hours run time. Realistically it’s probably less than that since battery output (Ah) is less as current demand increases. There is certainly room for improvement and a full two hours run time might not be impossible.

[kat]

 

19 hours ago, Jjwillac said:

 You don't seem to have much positive to say very often?

 

Although I agree Makita has been (still is) sorely lacking in lighting, I'm glad to see them making gains.  I'm not aware of any other brands with 10,000 lumen work lights? I would still like to see a tower type light that is one relatively compact (very relative in this case) unit for transportation rather than tripods to mount multiple directional lights.

 

There are many chinese manufacturers like Acebeam, Fenix, Imalent... that have even 60.000 lumen flashlights and most are IP rated for underwater use, 2-3m drops, so you could call them worklights. And they are made from aero-grade aluminum, not plastic like Makitas and Milwakees...

 

And I doubt that these Makita lights can sustain 10.000 lumens. That is probably the peak output for a minute or two, after which they step down due to heat. 10.000 lumens needs active cooling, and not plastic lol.

 

Acebeam has lights that can sustain over 10.000 lumens without step down, but they have heavy heatsinks and some have fans.

With the current LED tech the max sustainable output for lights that size is about 1500-2000 lumen, and probably much lower for plastics.

 

 

[paulengr]

 
 
There are many chinese manufacturers like Acebeam, Fenix, Imalent... that have even 60.000 lumen flashlights and most are IP rated for underwater use, 2-3m drops, so you could call them worklights. And they are made from aero-grade aluminum, not plastic like Makitas and Milwakees...
 
And I doubt that these Makita lights can sustain 10.000 lumens. That is probably the peak output for a minute or two, after which they step down due to heat. 10.000 lumens needs active cooling, and not plastic lol.
 
Acebeam has lights that can sustain over 10.000 lumens without step down, but they have heavy heatsinks and some have fans.
With the current LED tech the max sustainable output for lights that size is about 1500-2000 lumen, and probably much lower for plastics.
 
 

First in terms of Milwaukee and Dewalt you don’t know what you are talking about. Your response sounds like trolling for Sechzuan Province. I have Milwaukees and my crew also has Dewalt equipment. The Milwaukee rockets for instance have nothing but aluminum on the “head” and an aluminum telescoping pole. The only thing plastic is the base and some trim. Rockets are not light. Neither is the Dewalt one. In fact even their 18/20 V “flashlights” which I would hardly place in that category have a sizable aluminum heat sink.No fans involved. Those eat a ton of power.

By way of example the first all LED power shovel and dragline excavator were projects I did. Pretty cutting edge stuff at the time almost 10 years ago. The “headlights” had 180,000 lumens output all passive cooling (no fans) with 200% heat sinking (it is after all a dirty mining environment). Each light weighed 120 lbs., nearly all of it heat sink. So fans are nice but not necessary at any lumen level,

As to dimming, they don’t and I doubt they would except at full discharge 2+ hours later. This is total BS. Do you have a domestic (European or American) battery operated LED work light? Or are you just an Asian troll?

There are three design issues with power LEDs. The first one is it outputs light all forward in about a 120 degree beam angle. Reflector optics don’t work. You need lenses so just putting LEDs in existing fixtures like putting LEDs in a Maglight is really inefficient. Second they put off a light of heat, also unfortunately right at the surface of the diode, and the diode life quickly vanishes if it gets more than beach sand warm. So massive heat sinks, with or without fans, are an absolute must. Early on you could tell the Asian knockoffs by the size of the heat sink. Third high output LEDs exhibit negative resistance and also variable resistance with temperature. That means that as voltage gets close to the operating point resistance decreases with increasing voltage leading to a runaway thermal failure issue and that controlling voltage is useless because resistance varies. You can get some output with a simple series resistor (and horrible efficiency) but nothing like full output. The key is controlling current, not voltage. Most are constant output but some have on board temperature sensors so you can run them even harder by controlling current at the measured thermal limit. They need about 6 Volts minimum. So dimming should not happen until the batteries are almost completely dead. But the obvious thing here is that until that point battery voltage does not matter.

Finally one of the big problems with China is they do not have product liability or truth in advertising laws. So if the light output is say 2500 lumens at the LED itself under optimal (not achieved) conditions ignoring the lenses they will just round it up to 10,000 lumens. That is the situation the domestic companies found themselves in 10 years ago which is why we kept seeing “60 W EQUIVALENT” advertising instead of actual lumens. Eventually they started leaking actual test results and the Chinese manufacturer lies were exposed along with a lot of domestics, too. Today it doesn’t matter if it says a million lumens. You can pretty quickly tell what works looking at what other contractors are using. I retired my Chinese no name stuff once the brand name stuff started beating it.

What I find truly funny about all this is that the better drivers are mostly designed and built by Phillips, a European company. Chinese designs are mostly low quality knock offs of their boards. The best LEDs and the majority of the high power LEDs are made by Cree. However unlike Intel, AMD, etc., Cree has their chip fab plant in Durham, NC.

And yes I see plenty of cheap Chinese lights on the job site. It’s the guys that have a lighting budget. You know, they have a different light every time you see them. I paid twice as much but it lasts 3 times longer and doesn’t burn out in the middle of a late night emergency job:

So sure I think 10,000 lumens is easily possible with Makita blue plastic trim over cast aluminum passive heat sinks. It’s going to be heavy but it’s an area/site light. As a task light it will supplement a backhoe or truck loading but if you need a light in a cabinet, better use a 200-500 lumen flash light or a 1000-1500 lumen task light. Or better still get two to reduce shadows. I have a few Makita crew tools but my work load is mostly electrical and mechanical. The Makita tool line is more geared towards carpenters. Hopefully lighting will only get better. I’m getting close to 50 and my sight isn’t what it used to be. If Makita makes something better though I’m sure I will get one or my crew will.

[Jjwillac]

Well, Makita's spot at the top of cordless lumens heap was short lived:

 

 

[kat]

That cannot be 27.000 sustainable lumens.

27.000 lumens for 3 hours would need shitload of batteries.

Plus there is no way it can output that without cooling and it doesn't look they have a water cooling system in there.

 

This is flat out false advertising. They claim 27.000 lumens when in reality you can only get that output for a few minutes.

[Jjwillac]

Maybe reread paulengr's post? Also worth noting that this is running off two (it appears) 72V batteries each with 40x 21700 cells.  That is a lot of juice.  

[paulengr]

Here’s an example 80,000 lumens 530 W “1000 W metal halide equivalent”. 40 lbs. All passive cooling.

https://www.phoenixlighting.com/sites/default/files/products/specification-sheets/n5499723f_highland_series_spec_sheet.pdf

Honestly the only real thermal problem with LEDs in general is the problem with pulling the heat off the LED die itself. After that point you just add thermal mass and plenty of cooling fins. Look at the Phoenix fixture. Or look at one of the Milwaukee fixtures in HD up close, what jumps out at you is that very little of the fixture is actually covered in LEDs. The vast majority is heat sink.

The only guys not using big heat sinks is Hollophane.

https://img.acuitybrands.com/public-assets/catalog/364529/phst.pdf?abl_version=10%2f29%2f2019+06:06:47&DOC_Type=SPEC_SHEET

Instead they rely on lots of vents and use passive convection (hot air rises) so their fixtures are very light.

I really don’t know anyone doing liquid cooling or even fans. Ok maybe I have. Don’t want to waste left over liquid nitrogen. If you chill a cheap LED the non-high power kind in al the electronics in the 90s then hook it to rectified 120 VAC it will act like a 1000 W metal halide lamp for about 10 seconds before it fries. Just make sure there are plenty of spare LEDs because it’s so much fun you can’t do just one.

[Jjwillac]

 

 

 

 

[Framer joe]

Good looking light...but hate wobbles...the smaller one is sweet 

[etc6849]

It seems pricing is a little higher than what's quoted in the OP (seeing $175 for the DML811 and $252 for the DML809).  I still really want one, but can't justify it without a sale price right now.

[Fireguy116]

So this picture was posted on makita tool nation on Facebook from an Australia expo. Looks like makita is finally going to come out with a tripod/rocket style light. I’m excited that this will come to the USA. I love these style likes. No other info was with the picture. 

[Jjwillac]

I'm surprised this hasn't been spotted or mentioned before; seems like the tripod light would be one of the major highlights (pun not intended) of their new lighting options.

[Jronman]

Wasn’t this at World of Concrete?

[Jjwillac]

New tripod lights with specs on pages 6/7.

 

https://cdn.makitatools.com/apps/wms/catalogs/LEDLightingCatalog/

[QuasarCZ]

Wau, a very nice find, thank you! Finally Makita lightning products that interest me. Could have higher lumen output but I like both of them very much.

[bee-man]

Does anyone have the tower light with articulating head (DML814)? How often do you find it useful to spread the light? I can see it being handy for central outdoor lighting, but I wonder if I really NEED the articulating function when the DML813 is on average about $50 cheaper.