The difference between rope light vs strip light

In today's market, due to the product names haven't been standardized, the names of various LED light strips are a bit confusing. According to the input voltage, LED strip lights can be classified into high voltage LED strip lights and low voltage strip lights. Due to the high-volt LED strip are commonly sealed by protection tube, which makes it look like a rope so that LED Rope Light is its another well-known name. Therefore, in this post, we are actually talking about the difference between high and low voltage LED strip lights.

IP65 waterproof LED rope light

LED rope light i.e. high voltage LED light strip is a flexible LED light fixture directly driven by high voltage alternating current without the adaptor. The rope light is completely wrapped in the insulating sleeve, for its high working voltage is dangerous. Although it will result in the light strips' sizes increasing, it also improves their dust and water protection rating. In addition, the high voltage AC direct driving mode can save a lot of cost of power supplies, and let the LED strip can be connected longer length in series. In order to control the heat production, high voltage strips' power cannot be high as the low voltage strips, resulting in the relatively low brightness.

Low voltage LED strips are commonly driven by direct currents, such as 5V, 12V, 24V, etc, having really high safety and stability. The regular low-volt lights have no waterproof processing, their PCB direct expose in the air, which makes them have a good heat dissipation performance. Of course, they can also be manufactured to IP65, IP67, IP68 waterproof for outdoor use. Thanks to the excellent heat dissipating efficiency, low voltage LED strips can use higher power of SMD light sources and achieve higher brightness.

These are the main differences between the rope light and LED strip. MLDR ® is a LED lighting manufacturer, producing and selling all kinds of LED light strips.

LED Light Strips' Situation and Improvement - Applications

LED lights have been developed for many years, its technology and market have stabilized. As the market space growth of LED lights has stabilized, and a lot of enterprises have joined the field in recent years, the market competition has become increasingly fierce.

According to the material classification of the PCB, the LED light strips are divided into the LED rigid strip and the LED flexible strip (LED tape light). Further subdivision, LED strips can be divided into high voltage LED strips and low voltage LED strips.

At present, there are two main applications for LED strip lights. The first one is indoor lighting, such as ceilings, TV backgrounds, cabinets, showcases, etc. Another one is outdoor lighting, such as the building, tree, advertising light box, etc.

Since the LED hard strips have good heat dissipation effect and long service life, they are widely used in places with high-quality requirements. LED tape lights are accepted by the average consumer in the market for their flexibility and convenience. Low-voltage LED strip lights are generally used in places with high safety requirements, such as public places and other places that people can easily reach. High-voltage LED strips are mainly used in the ceiling, air, and other places that people can't easily touch. Furthermore, since the low-voltage strip requires an additional transformer, its overall cost will be higher than that of the high-voltage light.

In fact, the applications of all these LED strips have no such very differences. In the vast majority of cases, they are universal. In order to seek breakthroughs and differentiation in this highly competitive market, more and more LED strip manufacturers are developing and producing professional LED strips for use in a specific field.

Why LED light strips lead the way in the lighting industry?

LED light strips, including LED hard strip lights and LED flexible tape lights, have become more and more important in the field of modern lighting. From the appearance point of view, LED strips are ultra-thin, energy-saving and environmentally friendly, and have a wide range of uses. It has been recognized by more and more consumers and has developed very well in the field of lighting.

LED strip lights

The application of LED strip lights are very wide, from the home field to the office field to some special lighting fields, we can develop it. Nowadays, the market share of LED light strips in the LED lighting industry is really big. We can understand why LED strip lights can occupy such a huge market share from the following aspects:

Firstly, the LED light strips have taken the place of the traditional commercial lighting. Thanks to the variety and multi-function, LED light strips have replaced most of the market share of traditional fluorescent lights and energy-saving lights. Of course, strip lights manufacturers are still developing and producing new products with more functions.

Secondly, the products are becoming more and more popular. In fact, the applications of LED light strips have become blurred, some products are no longer limited to high-end commercial places, especially the LED tape lights, which are widely used as the personal decorative lighting in houses, gardens, etc.

Thirdly, the development cost continues to decrease. Since 2010, the patent of LED chip technology gradually thawed and the price of LED chip gradually decrease. As far as LED strip suppliers are concerned, it is beneficial to the development of products and markets. At that time, the LED market can further reduce the production cost through large-scale production.

Through the above analysis, we can know that the LED strip lights will become more and more popular in the future, and its stability will be further improved.

Is the higher brightness of the LED lighting better?

With the development of LED technology and production technology, more and more high-power SMD LEDs are applied to LED light strips. So is the higher brightness of the LED lighting better? The answer is obvious: No. The higher the brightness of the LEDs, the higher it's power. The high power also means that the heat generated by the LED strips are more and the working temperature is higher. The excessive working temperature will result in the acceleration of light decay, the death of LEDs, and other problems, reducing the lifespan of the lights.

U5630G LED hard rigid strip lights

The SMD LEDs can work stably within the rated current range. Additional current will increase the brightness of the lights, but working at excessive current for a long time will reduce life, which is the reason why some products have high brightness in beginning, and dim quickly after several months.

As a China LED strip supplier, we have U5630G series LED strip lights made by 0.5W high-quality SMD 5630 LEDs and the high thermal conductivity aluminum PCBs, which have both the high brightness and the excellent heat-dissipation effect.?

How to ensure that the lenses work at the right temperature

As one of the most important parts of LED lights, LED lenses play a more and more important role in the LED lighting industry, which widely applicated in advertising lighting, office lighting, and home lighting. Relying on the reflecting lenses, LED curtain lattice strip lights have a wide beam angle up to 175 degrees, which fit well with thin light boxes, billboards, stretch ceilings and other backlighting. At present, most of the LED lenses in the market are made of PMMA or PC. Due to the temperature resistance of the materials is not high, so excessive heat will directly affect the performance of LED lenses. In this article, we will introduce how to reduce the impact of heat on the LED lens.

In the short-term use of LED lenses in the environment of overheating, color drift and light droop of LED light strips will have resulted. If working at such an environment for a long period of time, the light decay is accelerated and the life is shortened. In order to avoid the effects of overheating on the LED light fixtures, LED strip lights manufacturers often use passive and active cooling methods to dissipate heat.

Passive heat dissipation means that the heat is dissipated by the LED fixture itself. The most common passive heat sink for LED lattice curtain strips is the aluminum rigid PCB that has the excellent thermal conductivity, cooling the LED light source and LED lenses efficiently. Because the passive cooling system does not consume energy, it is the most energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Our LED curtain light strips are adapt this type of cooling method i.e. high heat-conductive aluminum PCB to control the temperature in a really low range.

Active cooling is generally used on high-power LED lights that the lights themselves have no capacity to dissipate such a lot heat. The common active energy-consuming cooling devices are pumps and fans.

For more detail of LED curtain lattice lights, please visit our product presentation MFS3030A. MLDRLED, the professional LED light strips manufacturer in Shenzhen, China.

LED heat dissipation technology and materials

Heat dissipation is a principal factor affecting the illumination intensity of LED lights. In order to achieve a better effect, all of the LED lights manufacturers and related research institutes have been working to improve the heat dissipation technology and materials.

In general, the heatsink can be divided into the passive heatsink and the active heatsink. Passive heat dissipation means that the heat of the LED light source is naturally radiated into the air through the heatsink, and the heat dissipation effect is proportional to the size of the heatsink. However, it can only be used in LED lights of relatively low power. For example, the aluminum PCB of the rigid LED light strip is equivalent to a heatsink. The high power LED lights such as the LED grow light commonly adopts active heat dissipation, that is, the heat emitted by the heat sink is forcibly taken away by the heatsink such as the fan, which is characterized by high cooling efficiency and the small volume.

Heat Conductivity Coefficient

As can be seen from the above table, silver and copper are the best thermal materials, followed by gold and aluminum. However, gold and silver are too expensive, so the current heat sink is mainly made of aluminum and copper. In comparison, both copper and aluminum alloy have their own advantages and disadvantages. Copper has good thermal conductivity, but the price is relatively expensive, the processing is difficult, the weight is too large, and the copper heat sink has a small heat capacity and is easily oxidized. On the other hand, pure aluminum is too soft to be used directly. The aluminum alloy used can provide sufficient hardness. The advantage of aluminum alloy is that it is cheap and light, but the thermal conductivity is much worse than copper. Of course, there are some radiators for other materials, such as fiberglass, ceramics, etc., and because of their price and process, they also have a place in the market.

The LED industry has extremely strict requirements on the alignment accuracy of the heat-dissipating substrate itself, and it needs to have characteristics such as high heat dissipation, small size, and good adhesion of metal lines. To improve LED luminous efficiency and service life, solving the heat dissipation problem of LED products is one of the most important issues at this stage.