LED Sign Projector (Commercial & Industrial Safety)

Full Transcript

Kevin
This is Kevin and Charlie with CommercialLEDlights.com on our 5th episode of our LED Lighting podcast. We also have our lead engineer Peter here today to discuss the topic of LED sign projectors for commercial and industrial applications. How you doing, Charlie, Peter?

Peter
Fine today so far.

Charlie
Doing well, Kevin.

Kevin
Awesome. I think for this one, LED sign projector. This is something that I think is really impactful towards the future of industrial safety. As we can see, this product is increasing in demand. So let's just start off right away off the top Charlie. What is the LED sign projector? Tell us a little bit about this

Charlie
Sure. An LED sign projector is a device that will project an image, any image for that matter, under the floor, under the wall, wherever it is that you're looking to display something and while some of these have, you know, exists in the past, our product being the LED technology, you get the benefit of it being much longer lasting, a much better, clearer, concise image. And running much cooler in temperature as well. So these are some of the reasons why the LED projectors are really becoming more and more popular in the commercial and industrial segment.

Kevin
Absolutely. And so what are some of the common images that are displayed like for example, like an LED stop sign pedestrian crossing. Tell me a little bit about that.

Charlie
Yeah. So the nice thing about the projectors and the projectors that we carry in particular is they're all custom ordered to our customers needs. So we do offer a variety of images that you can select from and those would be, you know, your stop sign, pedestrian crossings, might maybe just something as simple as a red circle. Those are some of the ones that we offer as well.

Kevin
Peter I know you have some experience around power plants. Talk to me a little bit about the applications for a sign projector, let's say in a power plant environment.

Peter
Well, these power plants are pretty large, they’re as long as a football field, maybe even a length of a football field and a half. And there's a lot of people driving around, the maintenance people have their maintenance carts, they're toting their tools and their carts, they're driving around, shift supervisors are driving around in carts, there's forklifts driving around. So as they're coming out of a room where maybe pedestrians are walking, you would really like to have some kind of a warning sign. I have in instances been walking past the doorway where a cart would be pulling up and would be startled and it would be really nice to have maybe a pedestrian walkway sign or a stop sign or some kind of a signal and just even regular manufacturing plants, large ones. I know there's a lot of them that are very large and there's people driving around in these motorized vehicles and so that would be a very good application.

Kevin
My understanding is that the applications for this are like overhead cranes and possibly heavy industrial machinery. Can you talk a little bit about other applications finally or elaborate on that further?

Peter
Yeah, the crane option is really kind of unique with the projectors and that one of our best sellers is a crane safety light, which you can project / it displays a beam, or a line, or a spot beam, onto the ground. And one of the, I'll call the limitations, with that product is the higher you go, the longer that line gets. So if someone has a crane that's 30 or 40 ft, while that light will certainly meet the needs, you're gonna have a 30 or 40 ft line on the ground or 30 by 30, 40 by 40 box, around whatever it is that you might be moving around on the crane. We do have many customers that, that might be, that might be too big, or they need a circle, or they need a rectangle, or just a six ft by six ft box on a 40 ft crane. So that's when we talk to those customers about the projectors because we can literally make whatever they want to be displayed on the ground and they might want it yellow, you know, instead of red or blue. So we can do the yellow circle that's six ft in diameter, that is, 10 inches, the line would be 10 inches so it really meets their needs. So outside of the stop signs, pedestrian crossings and so on, it really does trip over into the crane safety light segment as well.

Kevin
Interesting. And that leads us right into our next stop of custom images. If someone wants to use a custom image, one that's not offered in our stock images, I know we have 20 or so of those. How can this be accomplished? How can they use a custom image?

Charlie
Yeah. So most of the time our stock images, if you will, that are on the site, meet our customer needs. However, if the customer has a specific pedestrian crossing image, if they want, if they want to include their logo somewhere in it as well, or again in the crane light application, they might really have a very specific area that they want to have demarcated by the image projected. That can't be accomplished by some other product. So we can work with our customers creating that image, or we've had them where they send us literally a jpeg and they tell us how big they want it, and at what height and we make that happen for them.

Kevin
Okay. Is that an additional cost?

Charlie
No, typically we can do that for no additional cost. If there is, say a high multi, multi color image, sometimes there's an upcharge, but it's pretty nominal.

Kevin
Okay. What's the size of the images projected? What's the minimum or maximum, so to speak.

Charlie
Yeah, I mean the minimum is down 2" and the maximum, I mean would be depending on the size of the projector, which we'll get into here shortly, could be upwards of 40 or 50 ft, depending on the height and the lens that we pair on a specific projector. So again, it's truly customized to our customer in terms of how much power the lensing the image is and so on.

Kevin
Okay. And I know there's different sizes of projectors, we have 80 watt and up to, I think 400 watt is our maximum. What are the different sizes?

Charlie
Yeah, that's exactly right, Kevin, it's 80 to 400 watts, so we can go 80, 100, 150, so there's several of them in that range and there's a reason, you don't just carry a 200 and 400, because if you only need 80 you don't need to pay for more than what it is that you need. But if you have a very high crane or mounting height, then of course you're gonna need a higher watt in a higher power projector. Or if it's a medium height, but you need a very small image, then we might need to step up the wattage on that projector to be able to really focus that. And then we would also pair that with a specific lens to accomplish that. And then additionally, another thing that we will ask our customers when we are working on getting them to the projector is the ambient light. And it's really actually a very important question and important for us to get it right because if they're in a very bright facility, maybe it's near windows or they get a lot of exterior daylight, then we would likely have to increase the amount of wattage so that the image displays how they want brightly on the ground or wall or wherever it is. So, these are just some of the questions we asked to make sure that we we accomplish whatever it is our customers are looking for.

Kevin
Okay, great. Sounds like there's a lot of flexibility there. And is there a kind of a maximum mounting height, so to speak?

Charlie
Typically we've sold them where we can get up to 70 ft. That is going to take a, 400 watt projector to display what it is or whatever it is that they want up at that height. So, this would be dry docks, things like that where they're 70 or 80 ft up, hoist and cranes, that they want to get the image down on the ground.

Kevin
Great, awesome. Yeah. This is a product again, that's been increasing in demand and I think that this will, this can influence the future of industrial safety in general because since it is a LED sign on the ground, you don't have the risk of dust covering it up, or scratches to it, I think for like safety and OSHA compliance and things of that nature.

Charlie
That's right. That's right. It's always there, it's not, it's not going to wear out. I mean, that's certainly an important safety element and they can be moved. Oftentimes plants are reconfigured, automotive assembly lines. I mean, you name it, if something is reconfigured, you can just, you just move the light. I mean it's as easy as that and you're often running.

Kevin
That's another point I need to think about. So yeah, it's a great product and unless you guys have anything else to add, I think that pretty much covers it. LED sign projectors in a nutshell.

Charlie
Yeah, I think that should do it. Thank you, Kevin.