Up to the task

Jake Dyson’s CSYS LED task light employs thermal management technology more commonly found in satellites and computer processor chips - and he’s claiming it will last 160,000 hours. Ben Cronin meets him at his studio to find out why he’s so confident about his figures

When Jake Dyson creates a new product, he normally takes his time. The Clerkenwell-based designer’s first concept was a meticulous six years in the making, while his Motorlight variable angle lights took a mere two years to progress from the studio into production. So when he recently announced that he has spent the last 18 months refining the LED task light, the results were always going to be interesting.

To be a luminaire designer in the age of the LED, you have to understand the laws of thermodynamics, but Dyson has taken this to a whole new level to perfect the heat management of his CSYS desk lamp - named after the system of co-ordinates that defines an object’s position in the X, Y and Z axis. In fact, he’s so confident in the rigour of his research that he thinks most of us will have shuffled off this mortal coil before the first of his lamps fails.

“We felt that no one had done a nice LED task light and thought that it was something that needed to be done well,” Jake Dyson

“We felt that no one had done a nice LED task light and thought that it was something that needed to be done well,” he says. “We got together with a specialist thermal management company in the Far East and we built our own climate chamber in the studio, with thermal imaging cameras and fans to simulate situations where there was no convection of air. We also had an electric reading showing the drop in efficiency of the LEDs according to the temperature. So we’ve done a huge amount of thermal and electrical testing on our system.”

Form and function

Form resolutely follows function in the resultant prototype that sits on a workbench in Dyson’s studio, so much so, in fact, that the entire horizontal arm of the lamp acts as a heat sink drawing thermal energy away from the array of diodes at its tip.

To explain his concept, the industrial designer uses everything at his disposal, alternately rummaging through boxes of computer processors, or inviting us to touch-test the conductive qualities of copper when dunked in a mug of hot water.

“An evacuated copper heat pipe runs through the centre of the arm and this is bonded to the aluminium heat sink on the outside to transmit heat into the surrounding air,” explains Dyson. “The heat is taken straight through the copper, which is one of the fastest conductors of heat, and then immediately goes
into the heat pipe at one end and shoots down towards the other end of the arm. By the time it reaches the furthestmost point, it’s cooled and recirculates back down and is reheated, so you get a continual loop inside the pipe of heating and cooling,” he says.

Dyson is convinced that this is the longest heat pipe of its type - pushing the boundaries of a technology more readily associated with computer processors, fighter jets and satellites - and the readings from his thermal imaging camera show that the size pays dividends. “We know from our camera that the LEDs run at just 30°C above ambient, from where we can extrapolate the lamp life by referring to our LED manufacturer’s data sheets,” he says. “Our own LED manufacturer says a junction temperature of 60°C will give a lifetime of 160,000 hours, but this is a very conservative estimate based on an ambient temperature of 30°C.”

Raise your crane

Designing a premium task light, however, is not just about thermal management. There’s also the question of ergonomics and aesthetics. In keeping with Dyson’s philosophy of visual mechanics, the rollers and counterbalance that allow the lamp to rotate up and down through the three axes are housed on the outside, adding to a 50s-industrial, crane-like aesthetic. In addition, the counterbalance acts to avert any annoying sagging. “I’ve been so disappointed in task lights, the way they don’t hold their position,” he says. “The thing about this light is no matter where you let go, it stays exactly where it is.”

The mechanics allow the user to direct the warm white light at different heights and depths within the horizontal and vertical axes, but there is also something clever about the optical design: the diodes are set back in the lamp head in such a way, that, to suffer glare you would have to lie beneath the lamp and look directly into the LEDs.

Dyson gives short shrift when asked which other task lights and designers he has derived inspiration from, but when pushed, he does reveal one abiding benchmark. “If you take someone else’s work as a reference, you’re not being original,” he says. “But if I had to choose a product I admire, then I’d say the Tizio table lamp by Richard Sapper. It was the first task light to incorporate halogen and it’s still the best-selling desk light. That’s my ambition: to incorporate new technology into a product and for it to still be the best product in 40 years time.” If those LED data sheets are to be relied upon, a few of his lamps might still be working when the time comes for posterity to pass judgement.

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