This report describes a project, which was carried out as a final thesis covering 30 ECTS during the final semester of the Master of Science programme Industrial Design. The assignment was issued by Fagerhults Belysning AB in Habo. The assignment was to design a family of products in which LED was to be used as a source of light.
The main focus in the initial part of the project was to find a way to design the inside of armature which was suitable for LED technology. An armature, already in the range of products at Fagerhult, with the desired qualities that was to be strived after was the Zintra. The lighting source of the Zintra is a compact fluorescent lamp. With its opal anti-glare barrier the Zintra gives a soft and pleasant light in many directions.
The family of products is intended for the public environments. The design was supposed to be suitable for many different places. The products should be decorative, both while switched on and switched off, impactful alone or in groups.
The challenge in this project was to find an efficient way to direct the light from the LEDs out of the armature. The problem was that the LEDs emits aimed light while most other light sources, among them the compact fluorescent lamp, emits light in all directions.
A big part of the project was experimenting with the LEDs to achieve a good light from the armatures. A good armature is anti-glaring, has sufficient illumination power and aims the light correctly. To avoid spots of light or shadows forming on the opal anti-glare barrier was an important goal with the experiments.
The result of the work is a suggestion of an outer, esthetic form of the armature as well as a suggestion for a technical solution to use LEDs. The development of the pendant armature received the most attention, being the most difficult armature to design with LEDs. The reasoning was that if the pendant armature would work with LED, so would the less complicated wall and ceiling armatures.