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The innovators: Dyson's son shines after lightbulb moment: A new generation of lighting units is designed to save energy and last a lifetime
[September 22, 2014]

The innovators: Dyson's son shines after lightbulb moment: A new generation of lighting units is designed to save energy and last a lifetime


(Guardian (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) From spending a summer as a teenager constructing vacuum cleaners to witnessing his father's frustrations as he worked in the basement of their home, Jake Dyson, son of Sir James Dyson, has been surrounded by the highs and lows of invention for most of his life.



But although he is following in the footsteps of his father, the 41-year-old is keen to point out that his work on a new way of lighting offices and kitchens is all his own.

"What I have learned is self taught, but what I have taken from him is perseverance; that can-do-and-won't-give-up," he said.


The younger Dyson, one of three children of the inventor, recently unveiled the latest addition to his range of high-end lighting units designed to save energy by slimming the number of lights required in the home and the office.

It has taken him 10 years to get this far. He set up his design studio in London in 2004 and produced a halogen light, then switched his focus to light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which are lauded for their long life.

But while other manufacturers were claiming that their lights could last for 30,000 hours, Dyson wanted to make one that would last for life. The problem was that the semiconductor chips that produce the light also generate intense heat, which damages the chip, reducing the brightness and changing the colour.

A cooling system was needed to stop the chips overheating and thus lengthen their life span, Dyson said. The system he developed works much like technology in laptop computers and satellites, extracting the heat from the chip to "calm" it.

The key is heat pipe technology that can move the heat created by the LED away from the chip. Keeping the temperature of the chip low in turn allows more powerful LEDs to be used, and their brightness, colour and energy efficiency to be maintained, Dyson said.

Each copper pipe in the cooling system contains a drop of water that heats up inside the pipe, turns to steam and disperses the heat as it moves down the pipe and away from the chip. It allows the LED chip to be kept at about 45C, well below previous temperatures.

Dyson first used heat pipes in a range of lights called CSYS, which included versions for the floor and for a desk. Last week, he unveiled a new overhead light called the Ariel, in honour of the first British satellite, which was sent up in the early 1960s and used a similar cooling method.

The light - designed to illuminate long desks in offices, boardroom tables and kitchen islands - uses six heat rods to reduce the temperature of the powerful single LED light.

"We do that by using six heat pipes which overlap in the centre of the light, and three move out down the heat sink of the wings [of which there are two]. The heat generated from that chip shoots into the heat pipes, down the wing, and a convection of air runs through the wings and cools them," said Dyson.

The powerful LED chips in the light fittings would be damaged in six minutes if they were left uncooled, but with the whole system in place they can emit more light; the 8 sq metres area lit by an Ariel would normally require four lights, said Dyson.

"We are trying to move away from having multiple lamps in the ceiling or multiple recess spotlights, for example, so we are trying to get an enormous spread of powerful light from one fitting," he said.

At pounds 1,300 on the high street or around pounds 850 for trade customers when available next May, the lights clearly come at a premium. But Dyson points out that the fittings have a 37-year life span, saving on installation and efficiency. "Our business model is to make and design lights which last for life, not to make lights which need to be ripped out and replaced every seven years," he said.

The units are aimed at offices or boardrooms where, instead of having individual lights and further strip lighting to give general illumination, the product would solely light up an individual surface, added Dyson. "It was about that sort of refinement, less fittings, more efficiency, less power required and giving incredibly even force of light," he said. In kitchens, the unit gives out the same light as six spotlights.

The younger Dyson worked with his father for two years before going his own way in his 20s, but he thinks father and son may work together in the future.

"We don't talk about our work but he is very proud of me, I am very proud of him. It is great. But I have done this on my own completely, right from the word go. I spent a year and a half in Asia learning about supply chain manufacturing, setting up my own supply chain in Asia and just learning how to design, develop, test and manufacture a product to extreme quality," he said.

Jake Dyson Products, the company behind his inventions, employs a staff of 20 in London and in offices abroad, breaking even financially despite the high development costs.

"The thing you have to remember when you are designing products and starting from scratch is there is a lot of investment. There is tooling, design time - it goes on for two years, we don't make things in three months," said Dyson.

Product family: The Dyson name is synonymous with inventions that do more with less. Jake Dyson's light gets a large area of even illumination from a single LED; James Dyson's signature products do the job of traditional appliances, but take something away: the vacuum cleaner was bagless, the fan is bladeless, the hand-dryer has no heater. For his latest launch, the 360 Eye robotic vacuum cleaner, (below with James Dyson) the human toil has been removed.

The robotic vacuum, which was 16 years in development involving 200 engineers, relies on two breakthroughs: a powerful, lightweight digital motor and a machine vision system that uses a single fisheye camera lens to create a 360-degree 3D map of the room.

Captions: Bright chap: Jake Dyson, the son of Sir James Dyson, with his innovative Ariel LED lamp, which can light up a whole kitchen with a single bulb, and will last a lifetime Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian (c) 2014 Guardian Newspapers Limited.

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