“The main drive to start the SlimStyle project was to maintain our leadership position in LED lighting worldwide,” says Agnieszka Kudyba, Integral Project Leader at Philips Lighting. “We’re in the midst of the LED revolution. Now we need to make sure we get mass adoption. The challenge was to get a replacement for the 60 W bulb, lasting for 25,000 hours, below 10 dollars. And we had to get it on the shelf within six months in order to strengthen our position as a leader in LED lighting. And we did it!”
The main architectural challenges in this project were to achieve the lowest cost possible and to fulfill US ENERGY STAR requirements. “From past experience we learned that we needed to reduce the number of components of the lamp,” explains Gon Weijers, Architect, Philips Lighting. “So we moved from more than 10 parts to only five parts in this lamp, which makes disassembly and recycling of the lamp much easier. And also, its compactness and low weight reduces shipping costs and CO2 emissions. The combination of all these insights led us to the design of this lamp, which is flat, functional and innovative.”
Having defined the required design, there were still significant technical hurdles to be overcome. As Peter Bukkems, Senior Mechanical Engineer, Philips Lighting explains: “For me as mechanical engineer the biggest challenge was to combine the thermal and optical disciplines into one product. We solved the thermal performance by removing the expensive aluminum heat sink and making direct contact from the LED board towards the covers. We integrated the optics into the clean plastic materials. We made the assembly complete by using ultrasonic welding – we didn’t use any screws or glue in the design, but simply melted the two covers together.”
Innovative design, affordable price, lasting energy savings, and no compromise on light quality – it’s a winning combination.
