Small Terminal Blocks Lead to Big Advancements

As thousands of visitors strolled around the exhibitions at Light+Building 2016, a crowd formed around the OSRAM booth. “We’ve already attracted quite a bit of attention with our new LED driver,” says Nicolai Heber, product manager for LED Drivers & Industrialization at OSRAM, recalling the trade fair. This is a bit of an understatement, considering OSRAM’s new innovation nearly stole the show from the other producers.

And no wonder – the new linear driver from the “OPTOTRONIC Intelligent” series is called “UltraFlat,” and at only 11 millimeters thick, the reason is clear. But despite its miniature design, the driver provides up to 75 watts, is equipped with a corresponding temperature management system, supports DALI and can also be programmed using Near Field Communication (NFC) wireless technology – though not via DALI or LEDset.

The Munich-based lighting specialist is opening up whole new dimensions with its new driver. Whereas the standard thickness of LED units was once 30millimeters, about 15 years ago this shrank to 21 or 22 millimeters – and that’s where the standard has remained up to now. In other words, while LED modules were getting flatter and flatter, the shape of the control gear hardly changed.

OSRAM is now injecting new dynamism into the market – and creating great competitive advantages for lighting manufacturers. From the very beginning, our idea was to provide an ultra-flat LED driver for the high-end lighting segment. “Above all, our goal is to impress customers with attractive designs, even more than costs and energy efficiency” says Heber, outlining the market demands from the manufacturers’ point of view. After all, it was the manufacturers who told OSRAM they wanted a thinner driver. However, at the beginning of the development process, it was not at all clear how thin the new driver could actually be, says Heber. OSRAM’s light designers wanted to offer clear added value, so they set a target of cutting driver thickness in half. After more than a year of exploring possibilities, it became clear that the target thickness of 11 millimeters would be feasible. But there was a further constraint: The thin design could not be allowed to compromise the functionality. Even in a flat enclosure, high standards had to be upheld concerning service life, temperature resistance, light quality and other technical details.